How good are we at considering information or opinions that don’t agree with what we think?

I recently attended a conference by a world-renowned speaker. For context, the talk was in Lima, Peru, about how can the industry in Peru become more competitive. This speaker has published eight books and has spent the last five years researching his next one.

There was a panel of five industry leaders to comment and ask questions after the talk: three businessmen, a journalist, and a former secretary of the Treasury (Minister of Economy, as it’s called in Peru).

The speaker’s first point was that one of the reasons countries in Latin America don’t level up with first world economies is the trap of self-complacency. That is, thinking that while we are not the top economies in the world, we are not that bad either. And thus, we take no action towards becoming better. We feel no urge to become more competitive. Meanwhile, the top economies in the world –the speaker explained– never think they are good enough. They are ruthlessly seeking to become more competitive and efficient.

He also elaborated around the idea that we are in the presence of world-wide trends that are inescapable, and that they will be here faster than we think. For example, automation is coming, he said, and in part is already here. After five years of research, and hearing what experts around the world think on the subject, his conclusion is that this trend is going to affect not only first-world economies but also medium economies like Peru. We have to choose now where we want to be in the next years.

What surprised me was the reaction of the panelists. Most of them said something like this: “very interesting, Mr. X, but this doesn’t exactly apply to us. We don’t think this will affect Peru so severely.” (And thus, we, as industry leaders, will make nothing about it.) The people in the panel were not dumb. They know the industry well. Each one of them are successful in their fields. How is that they uncounsciously fell in the trap of complacency that the expert they hired for the talk had just explained?

Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, explains that we tend to judge situations based on the information in front of us, honoring only the inside view. What we know, what we feel comfortable with. What you see is all there is, says Kahneman. At the same time, we unconsciously neglect to take in account the outside view as evidence, even if it could provide us with a baseline of reality to our judgments. “Information is routinely discarded when it is incompatible with one’s personal impressions of a case. In the competition with the inside view, the outside view doesn’t stand a chance.” (p. 249)

We should develop some kind of mental vaccine against this cognitive bias.

From Taylor Pearson’s book Purposeful Productivity:

If there were no limitations or consequences, what would your perfect day look like? (…)

(…) I find there’s something particularly elegant about the day as a unit for goal-setting. It forces some constraints (there’s only so much time), and it also lets you very easily compare what you’re doing now to what you would like to be doing to identify the areas to work on.

James Clear has published his keynote speech at ConvertKit’s Craft + Commerce Conference (link).

After introducing the concept of “Aggregation of marginal gains”, he explains why we should aim for a 1% improvement in everything that we do. Habits consist in repeating certain actions until they become second nature and effortless to us. In this sense, habits can be considered the compound interest of self-improvement. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.

Habits are important because “the actions that you take provide evidence for who you are”. Your identity emerges out of the habits that you have. That’s why, for example, your goal should not be to read a book but to become a reader.

Different authors use different models to explain how we acquire habits. For Clear, there are four stages in habit formation:

Noticing

Many people think they fail because lack of motivation when what they lack is clarity. Making your implementation intentions explicit increases your chances of success. In other words, be explicit about when, where, and how you are going to exercise your habit.

An interesting tactic is what Clear calls the Failure Pre-mortem. Imagine 6 months forward from now and tell yourself the story of how you failed at acquiring the habit. The exercise will help you notice neglected areas in your implementation intentions.

Wanting

It’s hard to stick to a habit by relying only on willpower. We underestimate how much we are influenced by our environment. We can choose to be victims of our environment, or architects of it. It’s hard to stick to a habit in a negative environment, or relying only on willpower. Most of our desires are shaped in a particular way only because we have our environment shapes us in that way.

Doing

Learning how to start is incredibly important. Make it as easy as possible. Optimize for the beginning of the tasking make your habits work as a platform to the finish line.

Get to quality through quantity. Specially at the beginning, focus on repetition.

Liking

We repeat a behavior because we enjoy it. We enjoy the reward of the action. Figure out how to bring the reward to the present.