🐋How to think better
Excel in your tech career by fostering intellectual humility. Plus, just opened roles as UX Writer @Zoom, Executive Recruiter @Upwork, Marketing Analyst @Credit Karma, and more!
Hello, Tech Pod! 💦
Did you know you can train your mind to produce more accurate judgments?
Doing so will:
🤼♀️ Help you understand others and avoid disputes
👩🏽⚖️ Fairly judge the decisions of higher-ups
🌏 Obtain a more accurate view of the world’s complexity
It will help keep you from:
📉 Falling for bunk theories
⌛️ Taking doomed risks
This week we’ll be breaking down two ways intuitive snap-judgments can go awry, and how to restructure them to take on the art of thinking well.
Let’s go! 🧠
1. Sloppy fast thinking
The subconscious mind is programmed to attribute causes to events and construct narratives.
Being able to make snap judgments in milliseconds is a powerful evolutionary trait. The problem is that it draws from our limited and flawed information stores. When we go into situations without much context or experience, this leads us to form assumptions solely based on our own background – which might not always be helpful.
For example, you share a new strategy or idea with someone. They’re unfamiliar with it, but instead of asking questions to gain clarity, they automatically react by rejecting it and explaining why they know it wouldn’t work. 😑
The brain works with our past experiences and quickly generates a sense of understanding of the new thing which, if ill-informed, can produce an arrogant posture resistant to innovation and learning.
We live in a complex world that, if one wants to think well, requires that we suspend our snap judgments and seek clarity first.🧐
2. Finding patterns in chaos
We’re pattern seekers — instinctive believers in a coherent world where things happen for a reason and cause and effects are clear.
But the reality is that much of what happens in life is random.
Our mind is not comfortable with this — chaos is dangerous and confusing.
So our mind will link unrelated things into a seemingly coherent narrative such as:
“I applied to over 10 internships this summer and haven’t heard back from any….it must not meant to be.”
“A coworker ignored my Slack message and I got some tough feedback from a manager…everyone here must not like me.”
⭐️: When are snap judgments trustworthy?
As mentioned before, these habits of the mind are an achievement of evolution. They aren’t entirely bad, but they are often flawed — like humans!
There are times when our intuitions and snap judgments are drawn from quality banks of information and are likely to be logical and trustworthy.
One can trust quick thinking when the situation fulfills these requirements:
It involve a predictable, sufficiently regular environment
The person has had prolonged practice or exposure in it
Example: A firefighter’s “6th sense of danger” in a burning home. How fire reacts in a home is sufficiently regular and they’ve had prolonged exposure and practice in burning homes; their mind has collected sufficient data on how fire in a house behaves. If they “just have a feeling” that they ought to do something in the moment of action — it’s to be trusted.
Not an example: A stockbroker’s gut feeling. The Stockmarket is not sufficiently regular – much of it is ruled by chance, and the institution itself can be pretty flawed. There’s precedent to go off of, but despite the hours of past experience, the future of it is unpredictable.
This is how you use this in Tech:
We’re in the beginning stage of our careers; we haven’t fulfilled the above 2 requirements to make snap judgments or decisions on the fly.
So, foster a practice of slowing down, suspending your snap judgments, and asking questions first — intellectual humility.
If something seems so obvious to you, that’s a sign your mind is doing sloppy thinking.
Use this time to store up mental data your mind will be able to use to make better quick judgements in the future.
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Last Words 🍃
Humans are strange creatures — we have excessive confidence in what we think we know along with an inability to grasp the full extent of our ignorance.
We can go from feeling like a badass one day and then fall into a full-blown imposter syndrome spiral the next.
But the reality is, ego push and pull keeps us self-aware and on track – both taking pride in our accomplishments while being urged by our shortcomings to improve.
TL;DR: foster intellectual humility by slowing down, suspending your snap judgments, and asking questions first.
The ideas presented here come from Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman; which you can get a free Kindle version of if you’re a Prime member!
10/10 would recommend!
🐋
Written by Jacqueline Mastrelli