mind traps

Hindsight bias is the tendency, after an outcome is known, to see the outcome as having been inevitable. When we say, “I should have known that would happen,” or, “I should have seen it coming,” we are succumbing to hindsight bias.

Collaboration and reciprocity are natural, and yet in the world we inhabit, competition and the fear of scarcity often block us from seeing these ways of being with one another.

The sequence in which we observe characteristics of a person is often determined by chance. Sequence matters, however, because the halo effect increases the weight of first impressions, sometimes to the point that subsequent information is mostly wasted.

I sense there is a shift happening where people are realizing that they are channeling an ambitious impulse - the desire to grow and evolve - into dumb goals. Rejecting legible ambitious might be the most ambitious thing you can do.

A shift from legible ambition (my parents can easily brag about me) to illegible ambition (no one, including me

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon,” Olive said when I mentioned it at lunch. “My brother just told me about this. You don’t notice something and then you learn the name for it and suddenly it’s everywhere.”

We fall victim to the fat-cat syndrome,32 resting on our laurels instead of pressure-testing our beliefs.

When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isn’t going as we hoped, our first instinct isn’t usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment.6 Evidence shows that entrepreneurs persist with failing strategies when they should pivot,7