mind traps
“In driver’s training we were taught to identify our visual blind spots and eliminate them with the help of mirrors and sensors. In life (...) we need to learn to recognize our cognitive blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly”
from Think Again by Adam Grant
As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions:13 preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. In each of these modes, we take on a particular identity and use a distinct set of tools. We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter
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Goal setting suffers from a serious case of survivorship bias. We concentrate on the people who end up winning—the survivors—and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success while overlooking all of the people who had the same objective but didn’t succeed.
survivorship bias
When we fail, we often conceal it, distort it, or deny it. We make the facts fit our self-serving theory rather than adjust the theory to fit the facts. We attribute our failure to factors beyond our control. In our own failures, we overestimate the role of bad luck (“Better luck next time”). We blame the failure on someone else (“She got the job
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Research shows that when people are resistant to change, it helps to reinforce what will stay the same. Visions for change are more compelling when they include visions of continuity. Although our strategy might evolve, our identity will endure.
resistance to change vs reinforcing what will stay the same
If you want your beliefs to be accurate, you’re constantly swimming against your own biology and instincts.
a machine that tries to circumvent thinking
The fundamental problem with an information cascade is that after a certain point it becomes rational for people to stop paying attention to their own knowledge—their private information—and to start looking instead at the actions of others and imitate them. (If everyone has the same likelihood of making the right choice, and everyone before you
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