Optimize Your Bullshit Radar
The Information Era and How to Navigate Through the Bullshit
Never before has humanity had this much access — instant access — to information. Plus, the amount of data keeps growing exponentially every day— 90% of the data today has been created in the last two years.
Today, we can instantly solve any possible mundane doubt. All it takes is to open your phone. However, sometimes it’s just too much. When there are millions of books and articles out there, how can we differentiate the useful from the useless?
Understand the Market of Beliefs
This is something essential to interiorize. Authors, coaches, bloggers, me. We’re all either offering or selling you something: BELIEFS.
Always under the premise that adopting them can ameliorate your life.
Beliefs are principles of action*. They dictate the way we interpret our environment and respond to it.
Not everything you buy on the market is necessarily good for you. Same applies for beliefs.
A lot of self-help books and coaches may be really good at temporarily motivating people to move their behinds, but that can be counterproductive when what you actually need is a nap. Sometimes, instead of hammering harder, we need a strategy change.
To become aware of the market will allow you to be cold-blooded in a politically correct world, where all ideas and beliefs have to be considered and treated as equal. And they’re not, in terms of efficiency and well-being.
When we see results product of adopting a system of beliefs —either from a book or a guru — we can get emotionally attached to it. To gain this perspective will make it hard to fall into dogma and allow you to remain open to new ideas.
Ground Your Ideas
The most powerful ideas are those which, after trial by fire, are still efficiently standing.
Some ideas may sound noble and politically correct when you express them out loud, but when applied to reality have ZERO efficiency whatsoever.
Beliefs should constantly be tested in order to find the optimal — I find this to be a remarkable trait of easily adaptable people. The only way to do so is to take your ideas out there and apply them on whatever field you are working on.
Feedback is your friend and, experience, your best judge.
Be Humble for Selfish Reasons
I find extremely useful to come to terms with this: You can’t know it all.
When you shut your mouth or cover your ears out of fear of being wrong, you are actually missing an opportunity to learn.
In the long run, is more important for you to learn and correct your mistakes than to appear ignorant now.
To be humble is practical. Simply because there’s an infinite amount of information out there, and it’s in your best interest to have what works best in your hands.
If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you, and you’ll never learn.
—Ray Bradbury
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Thanks.
FOOTNOTES:
*Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror And the Future of Reason. W. W. Norton, 2004. (p. 51 – 53). “Beliefs as Principles of Action”
