The 4 Great Mistakes in our Thinking
We spend nearly 45% of each day, doing nothing but thinking. That equals almost 11 hours. That is a lot of time spent not doing things. But don’t get me wrong, we absolutely need this amount of time — to think, to process all the information that comes raining down on us every single day.
Hence, it is justified that we utilise time to think, to plan, to figure out stuff. That said, if we Are spending 10 to 11 hours in thought, it is somewhat imperative that we think correctly.
And this is where, we need to take into account the main mistakes we have in our thought processes — called cognitive biases.
This piece is all about the 4 great mistakes we commonly make when thinking.
But before we get into specifics, what is a cognitive bias? Basically, they are unconscious errors of judgement that we are all victim to — and these highly influence our decisions.
All these errors, have two sides — the one we feel confident about based on an assumption, which we believe to be right; and the side that remains hidden from view — the reality of our unconscious thinking.
And now, the first mistake — we believe that we consider all factors before making a decision. However, in reality, we don’t give equal weightage to all information. This is called the Anchor Effect. We have all heard this phrase, “You only get one chance for a first impression.” We are led to believe that the first piece of information we get, is the one we should trust the most, anything after that should have to be Really persuasive, to sway your decision. Its like a ships’s anchor — once the first and heaviest piece is tethered in, the rest of the chain hardly matters. The solution then? Simple, don’t trust your first impressions.
The second mistake is that we believe we have objectively assessed a situation thoroughly, before making a decision. The reality is that we first make an assumption, like in the Anchor effect, and then we interpret all future information in such a way, that it actually affirms our first assumption. This is called the Confirmation Error. We try to mould all secondary information, into confirming that our primary guess is correct. But that’s not all — often we forcefully block out any information that could potentially contradict our opinion. And this is the very reason, we Never google for counter-arguments. And the solution to this mistake, is to always assume that you are wrong.
The third mistake in our thinking, is assuming that we have very strong arguments for making a particular decision. In reality though, we base most of our arguments on simple, speculative, and autobiographical information. This is the Availability Error. Let’s say, you had a car accident when driving a Honda. The strong argument we then make, is that Honda makes awful cars. Just because this information was made available to you, first-hand, you believe it to be true on a much generalised scale. The way out? Don’t trust anecdotal evidence.
The last, and very important mistake is called the Fast/Slow Error. We assume and believe that we made a right decision, based purely on intuition. The reality is not so bright and sunny — you see, although making impulsive decisions — listening to your gut feeling — can be good sometimes, they aren’t true always. There are two kinds of thinking — fast, which is intuitive; and slow, which is careful and calculative. Let’s say I tell you that my height is 5.9 feet. Many people are quick to write that down as 5 feet 9 inches, when in fact, if you think about it slow enough, its actually 5 feet 11 inches. This is why you need a slow and careful approach to thinking.
Also, this is the very reason, you need to read through your Emails again, slowly, before you send them.
There you have it — the 4 great mistakes in our thinking.
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