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

baja

Best practices are rarely the best — they're mostly just cargo cult common practices.

And as more people adopt them, the more mediocre they become.

The best is usually what most people aren't willing to do.

Jason Fried • Tweet

cargo cult

The opposite of armchair quarterback syndrome is impostor syndrome, where competence exceeds confidence.

Adam Grant • Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

The planning fallacy describes our natural bias when forecasting our own productivity: we focus on the best-case scenario, or something dangerously close to it. Rarely does that scenario play out.

David Epstein • Why You Should Plan To Get Less Done

planning fallacy

It is a human trait to organize things into categories. Inventing categories creates an illusion that there is an overriding rationale in the way that the world works.

Andrea Zittel • Andrea Zittel, "These Things I Know for Sure"

My favorite bias is the “I’m not biased”25 bias, in which people believe they’re more objective than others. It turns out that smart people are more likely to fall into this trap.26

Adam Grant • Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

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

Adam Grant • Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

escalation of commitment

Closure or need for closure ( NFC ), used interchangeably with need for cognitive closure ( NFCC ), are social psychological terms that describe an individual's desire for a clear, firm answer or peaceful resolution to a question or problem to avert ambiguity.[1]

Arie Kruglanski • Closure (psychology)

The spotlight effect is what happens when we imagine that our lives are performative, or “on display” for others to consume.

Brianna Wiest • The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

spotlight effect

The converse of the halo effect is the horns effect: All perceived negative qualities correlate. If Stalin is evil, then everything he says should be false. You wouldn’t want to agree with Stalin, would you?

Eliezer Yudkowsky • Rationality

halo effect vs horns effect