You are not so smart | David McRaney
You are not so smart | David McRaney
Do you trust your own thoughts?
We all make decisions every single day, both large and small, but how do you come to a firm conclusion before making a choice? You might think you base your thought process on proven experience and rational thought, but what if your brain isn’t actually being rational? What if you were relying upon thought processes that were keen to trip you up? It’s worrying to think about, but it’s actually true!
You Are Not So Smart is a humorous and exciting exploration of the cognitive differences we all go through on a day-to-day basis. From mental blindspots to the famous bystander effect, our minds are biased towards past experiences and what those around us have told us. This has a significant impact on the way we live our lives and learning how to see past illusion and discover the truth can change your decisions and opinions for the better.
It’s not the most fantastic piece of news to know that your brain might not be as reliable as you’ve always believed it to be, but this isn’t something to be worried about. Over the years, our brains have evolved, and many of the things we do are designed to keep us safe, always on the lookout for danger. However, they may also stop you from reaching your potential or taking hold of key opportunities in life.
You might think that you’re a completely logical and very rational person and that you see the world in the way it is meant to be seen, but the truth is you’re actually deluded! Yes, you’re deluded, we all are, and it’s a way of remaining sane in this crazy world we call home.
Your brain is deeply affected by preconceived ideas and thinking methods that cause you to stray from logic and head somewhere else entirely. This summary explores the main issues to be aware of, and how to then change your thought patterns accordingly. The following chapters will help you understand your mind better and gain insight into why you make your decisions.
Being more aware of your thoughts allows you to trust the logical ones and dismiss the ones that are unhelpful.
Cognitive bias is confusing your mind
Humans are predictable. We love a routine, and we go through our days ticking items off our to-do list, happy when we hear the beep on our app to say that we’ve done something successfully. This predictability also leads us toward something called cognitive bias.
Cognitive bias is a thought or behavior that is predictable in its pattern, i.e., something you do regularly. As a result, you come to make ideas and conclusions based on these patterns without really thinking outside of the box or exploring other options. You basically become stuck in your ways, assuming everything is one way when it’s actually another.
Being stuck in a cognitive bias loop means that you never open your mind to other possibilities or ideas. This is one of the causes of closed-mindedness.
Your brain has a preset amount of ideas and thoughts, and they become stuck. It’s a subconscious thing that happens without any knowledge from your end. However, it’s essential to challenge your ideas and behavior from time to time to ensure you’re not stuck in a cognitive bias loop.
You’re not aware of many of the thoughts you have daily. You might think that you know when something is influencing your thoughts or behavior, but the truth is that you’re deciding on something or acting on something based on the ideas stored in your unconscious mind.
This can also be described as priming. Priming is the term used when your unconscious mind is in control. For instance, you go to the supermarket for bread, but you end up buying ice cream and forget the thing you went for in the first place. You’re in a subconscious mode, and your conscious mind isn’t the one in control at that moment.
We all experience coincidence and confirmation bias, but it’s essential to know the difference
How many times have you thought about something and then suddenly started seeing it everywhere? For instance, you might start to think about getting married, and then suddenly you see weddings and wedding-related content everywhere. You might think about buying a particular pair of sneakers, and suddenly everyone seems to be wearing them. So, you take it as a sign from the universe that you should be doing the thing you’re thinking about.
If you just ended a longtime relationship, every song you hear seems to be written about love. If you are having a baby, you start to see babies everywhere.
It’s a fallacy that your opinions are based on years of working out how you feel about things and analyzing things logically; it all comes down to whatever preconceived ideas you have in your mind. Instead, try exploring different sides and finding the truth, whether it lines up with your current views and opinions or not.
It’s easy to confuse coincidence and confirmation bias, but the bottom line is that coincidence is actually far rarer than we think. Most of the time, it’s simply your brain playing tricks that you’re only too happy to accept as a mystical force that’s beyond your control! In that case, coincidence is, most of the time, nothing more than cognitive bias. On rare occasions, coincidence can be synchronicity, but that isn’t something you can control.
Did you know? One of the most exciting coincidences is that the great Stephen Hawking shares his birth and death dates with Galileo and Albert Einstein.
The dangers of procrastination are very real
We’ve all heard the word procrastination, and most of us are guilty of it occasionally, but what is it exactly? You might think that you put things off, i.e., procrastinate because you’re feeling lazy and you’re terrible at time management. The truth is that you’re likely not so good at resisting temptation, and you act on your impulses. You fail to think about the reality in the future, for example, the situation you’re going to be in tomorrow if you put off a task you can’t be bothered to do today.
David McRaney describes a study from 1999. A group of people were given a list of movies and told they had to pick three. One of those movies they would watch straight away, and the other two would be observed 24 hours later and then 24 hours later after that. While most people chose Schindler’s List simply because they had heard everyone saying it was a good movie, most people didn’t choose to watch that one first. Instead, they opted for the easy-going, low-attention movies, such as The Mask.
Put simply, we don’t give much thought to the fact that we’re no good at judging how we’re going to feel in the future. As a result, we put things off again and again and end up causing problems for ourselves. You need to start choosing what you should do over what you want to do.
When you feel the need to procrastinate, imagine what tomorrow will look like with far more to do. That should stop you from putting things off.
Most of us cannot accurately estimate our performance and ability
Do you think you can predict quite well how you’re going to do in a particular situation? For instance, if you’re great at playing poker with your friends and you win every single time, you might assume that if you enter an online competition, you’ll win that too. The reality is that you’re pretty likely to lose in a big way. This is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and it means that we’re pretty bad at judging our competence.
This particular effect is precisely why you see terrible singers on TV talent shows who are convinced they’re the next Mariah Carey. They start singing, and everyone is shocked at how awful they are.
If you want to know how talented you really are, judge yourself against the professionals and not what you think in your own mind!
To avoid the effects of this particular phenomenon, realize that if you want to excel at a specific thing, you need to practice hard and chart your progress. That should help you avoid the embarrassing scenario of believing you’re better at something than you really are.
We also tend to think, “I knew that would happen,” or “I could tell that would happen,” and we assume that we’re psychic. However, these instances are just synchronicities that happen all the time.
Believing that coincidences aren’t simply synchronicities and instead of miracles to define life is called apophenia. These coincidences don’t have a tremendous amount of meaning but thinking that they do can ruin your life if you allow them to dictate your actions.
The importance of calculating risk versus safety
How do you calculate whether something is worth doing or whether it’s too risky and is going to cause you losses or upset? You might think that you use your logical brain and make a measured decision, but the truth is that you rely on your emotions and make intuitive choices which can sometimes be a little wide off the mark. This is called the Affect Heuristic.
By depending on your hunches and emotions to decide whether to do something or determining whether something is positive or negative, you’re cutting out your logical mind. This side of your mind is slightly slower, thinking over facts and analyzing everything to come to a measured decision. The emotional side of your brain is trigger-happy, much faster, and as a result, you go with that side first of all.
We’re told to listen to our intuition, but sometimes it’s better to slow down and listen to the logical brain.
To avoid bad decisions, think things through carefully and bear in mind that a balance between fact and emotion is essential. Sure, listen to your gut occasionally but know that it’s not the most logical of things to rely upon either.
Of course, humans are pretty emotional beings. Aristotle was the first to bring the idea of catharsis to the masses. This is when you let out your emotions, venting how you feel and the anger you have inside, to “get it all out.” The problem is, relying upon punching a wall or screaming at the top of your lungs to process anger simply causes a behavior or habit loop to form in your mind.
It’s not letting it all out and venting that makes you feel better in the end; it’s the actual process of catharsis, the punching, screaming, or stamping your feet. It’s not productive, and you will keep doing it, ongoing back in a loop to feel the same way again. Instead, focus on processing your emotions more healthily.
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