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
the paradox of choice
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
We fall victim to the fat-cat syndrome,32 resting on our laurels instead of pressure-testing our beliefs.
fat-cat syndrome
Sunk Cost Fallacy: The most common way in which people plan vacations is to decide where and when they want to travel, and only later do they consider the fares. (More on the fallacy of this approach and a superior strategy in Chapter 3.) Once we’ve mentally committed ourselves to a specific trip, not going or going somewhere else doesn’t feel like
... See moreThe 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.
halo effect