Study cognitive biases and fallacies and use them to examine your thought patterns and actions. Cognitive dissonance is, in my opinion, the most important, as it allows people to make mistakes without recognizing them as such and thus to make them again and again. Every time you make a decision that has unexpected consequences, even if they are favorable, ask yourself honestly, was this really a good decision? What evidence did you have at the time to justify it? Would you make it again, and if so, why? Would other people agree with your reasoning?
People can go through life blissfully unaware of how catastrophically bad some of their past decisions—for example, of where to work, where to live, who to marry—have been because of this all-power cognitive bias. Your goal is not to obsess over the past (and there is a risk of that), but rather to learn from it, and cognitive dissonance impedes you from doing that.
As Kahneman points out in his new book, failures of reasoning are much easier to recognize in others than in ourselves. His book is framed around introducing the language of heuristics and biases to office water-cooler gossip. Practicing on the hardest level (self-analysis) doesn’t seem like the best way to grow stronger.
Study cognitive biases and fallacies and use them to examine your thought patterns and actions. Cognitive dissonance is, in my opinion, the most important, as it allows people to make mistakes without recognizing them as such and thus to make them again and again. Every time you make a decision that has unexpected consequences, even if they are favorable, ask yourself honestly, was this really a good decision? What evidence did you have at the time to justify it? Would you make it again, and if so, why? Would other people agree with your reasoning?
People can go through life blissfully unaware of how catastrophically bad some of their past decisions—for example, of where to work, where to live, who to marry—have been because of this all-power cognitive bias. Your goal is not to obsess over the past (and there is a risk of that), but rather to learn from it, and cognitive dissonance impedes you from doing that.
As Kahneman points out in his new book, failures of reasoning are much easier to recognize in others than in ourselves. His book is framed around introducing the language of heuristics and biases to office water-cooler gossip. Practicing on the hardest level (self-analysis) doesn’t seem like the best way to grow stronger.