Clear thinking

What may look like discipline often involves a carefully created environment to encourage certain behaviors. And what may look like poor choices is often just someone trying their best to use willpower and bumping up against their defaults. The people with the best defaults are typically the ones with the best environment. Sometimes it’s part of a

The social default encourages us to outsource our thoughts, beliefs, and outcomes to others. When everyone else is doing something, it’s easy to rationalize doing it too. No need to stand out, take responsibility for outcomes, or think for yourself. Just put your brain on autopilot and take a nap.

The physicist Leonard Mlodinow sums it up this way: “Once our minds are set in a direction, they tend to continue in that direction unless acted upon by some outside force.”[2] This cognitive inertia is why changing our minds is hard.