Sharpening Your Skills

Five Ways … You Could Avoid Being Wrong

March 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Beware exaggeration of a kernel of truth. For instance: indeed, many of us don’t realize our full intellectual potential; but that doesn’t give credence to the notion that most people use only 10% of their brainpower. Besides, beware of overstatements of small differences. Sure, men and women tend to differ somewhat in their communication styles, but declaring that “men are from Mars” and “women are from Venus” is taking a kernel of reality to an extreme, not to mention coercing psychology into stereotypes.
Don’t infer causation from correlation. Don’t be tempted to conclude that if two things co-occur statistically, they must be causally related to each other. (Rabbi Harold Kushner once asserted that circumcision seems to increase men’s chances of winning a Nobel Prize.) Seek contending explanation.
Beware biased sampling and extrapolation. Inferences from a biased sample are not as trustworthy as conclusions from a truly random sample—e.g., don’t ask people coming out of Sunday Mass if they have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and infer that Americans are turning to God. Don’t ascribe to the whole any attribute of the part.
Don’t let stress impair your problem-solving capabilities. As many airline disasters confirm (example, example, example,) speed can narrow your cognitive map—small errors can quickly become linked up and amplified into disastrous outcomes. When you feel rushed, you’re likely to miss details. You’re not present enough in the moment to notice what’s important and make the most beneficial choices.
Beware argumentum ad nauseam. Don’t confuse a statement’s familiarity (such as urban legends) with its accuracy. The fact that you’ve heard a claim repeated over and over again (think of President Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud,) sometimes with rearranged phrasing and substitute terms, doesn’t make it correct.

Bonus: Be suspicious of any claim that doesn’t come with counterarguments or disconfirming evidence.

Five Ways … You Could Be More Optimistic

March 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Manage negative emotions and yourself. People who lack the capacity to withstand psychological distress such as anger, fear, frustration, and sadness are at a marked disadvantage in life.
Let go of sunk costs. Don’t become stuck with poor decisions hoping that they will eventually work out in your favor. Cut your losses when something’s not working for you. Too much persistence can often be bad.
Stop thinking in absolutes. Shun blind optimism. Discard the myth of perfection. Even the most optimistic outlook may do little good without realism and flexibility. Learn to accept and forgive—there’s good and bad in all individuals and things.
Do without the word ‘should.’ Instead of telling yourself, “I should have finished that task last week,” substitute the word ‘could.’ Realize you have the option of exercising your own choice.
Practice gratitude. Make a list of all the people and things in your life for which you are grateful. Reflect on the richness of the events and relationships that have enhanced your life. Recognizing that you are deserving of all these good things will make you feel good about who you are and what you’ve done.

Bonus: Give yourself time to feel good. When you reach a goal, allow for a period of celebration before taking on the next goal. Treating yourself occasionally, but avoid escapism.

Five Ways … You Could Elevate Good to Great

March 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don’t be too self-critical. If you must dissect your faults, do so with a mirror, not a magnifying glass. For instance, reframe “I’m buried in debt” as “I owe $800 on credit cards and $10,000 in student loans.”
Set easy-to-meet, incremental goals. You’ll feel so good about the results that taking the next step will be much easier. The best plans are only good intentions unless you set deadlines for yourself and achieve results. Keep a written list of all your accomplishments, however small, and celebrate your progress.
Don’t try to do everything. Continuous learning on a few areas will help you pin down and sharpen the essential skills to move up.
Make the most of mentors. Bring together a range of experts and tap into their knowledge and experience. Watch and learn how those you admire got to where they are now. Take responsibility for your own development and placement. Map out your own journey.
Seek out opportunities. Join cross-team projects. Get involved with all aspects of your job. Keep your eyes and ears open to everything up for grabs. Ask for what you want and take risks—you’ll accomplish more and feel good about being brave.

Bonus: Come to terms with your limitations and deal with problems deftly before they metastasize.

Five Ways … You Could Prevent Clutter in the First Place

March 17, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Go paperless. Arrange for electronic delivery of all your bills and bank statements. Organize important papers into a filing system. Gather anything you want to keep for future reference and scan it to a computer. Shred or recycle the rest.
Look out for clutter magnets, those areas of your home or office that become enticements for clutter: the kitchen counters, the dining-room table, the chest in the hallway, a chair in the bedroom, and the ‘floordrobe.’ Place a crate near your closet where discarded garments can land until they can be sorted.
Turn down freebies. Before taking commemorative swag at a conference or nabbing hotel toiletries, consider if they’re things you’ll actually use or if they’ll become yet other objects that you’ll have to make space for.
Have a spot for everything. Store related objects together—that’ll spare you the pain of figuring out where things should go, and you can see if there’re already two or more of each item.
Institute a 15-minute quick tidy-up routine every night. Clear the kitchen counter, fold and put away laundry, and toss out the garbage. Save a whole lot of time when it comes to the weekend or deep-cleaning days.

Bonus: Clean-as-you-go throughout the day. Little clean-up routines can make your mind clearer and the time you spend with your loved ones less fraught.

Five Ways … You Could Stop Procrastinating

March 16, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don’t rely on motivation. Motivation is fleeting—it comes and goes. While it is advantageous to be motivated, the folks who get things done are those who find a way to work at whatever they are interested in, even when they don’t really feel like doing it.
Banish your inner perfectionist. Remember that many things in your life need not be done perfectly—they’re to be just done … taken to a little bit better shape than before at each baby step. Whatever you need to work on just needs to be an outline, first attempt, rough copy, version 0. It needn’t be perfect.
Picture the future self when you’ve achieved your goals. Figure out the finish line you are aiming at. Visualize what “done” looks like—a sense of achievement? Fame? Getting your co-worker off your back?
Confront your fears. Figure out the underlying cause for procrastination. If it’s fear or if you’re failing overwhelmed, challenge the worst-case scenario by asking yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Perhaps you may discover that you’re procrastinating over something that isn’t that important.
Trick yourself into getting started. Say, “I’m not really going to work on this now. I’ll just open the report and make some notes for two minutes.” Beginning a task builds momentum, and seemingly-difficult tasks tend to get easier once you get working on them.

Bonus: Stop trying too hard to overpower yourself into action. Sometimes, getting those other, less-important tasks done first could motivate you.

The Data Never “Says”

March 1, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Data doesn’t say anything. Indeed, data can’t say anything for itself about an issue any more than a saw can form furniture, or a sauce can simmer a stew.

Data is inert and inanimate. Data doesn’t know why it was created. Data doesn’t have a mind of its own, and, therefore, it can’t infer anything.

Data is a necessary ingredient in judgment. It’s people who select and interpret data. People can turn it into insight or torture it to bring their agenda to bear. Data is therefore only as useful as its quality and the skills of the people wielding it.

Far more than we admit, subjectivity and intuition play a significant role in deciding how we collect, choose, process, explain, interpret, and apply the data. As entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan warns in Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril (2012,) “We mostly admit the information that makes us feel great about ourselves, while conveniently filtering whatever unsettles our fragile egos and most vital beliefs.”

In the hands of careless users, data can end up having the opposite effect its creators intended. All data is good or bad depending on how it’s employed in a compelling story and what end it’s serving—neither of which the data itself can control.

Don’t let data drive your conclusions. Let data inform your conclusions.
Don’t declare, “The data says,” (as in, “the stock market thinks.”) Data by itself cannot have a particular interpretation.
When you find data that seems to support the case you wish to make, don’t swoop on it without caution and suspicion. Data can be very deceptive when used carelessly.
Be familiar with the limitations of your data. Investigate if your data informs any other equally valid hypothesis that could propose an alternative conclusion.

Idea for Impact: Beware of the risk of invoking data in ways that end up undermining your message.

How to Avoid Magical Thinking

February 22, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Magical thinking remains a subtle impediment to making sound decisions. The more you examine yourself, the more you can reduce your tendency to indulge in it.

Discover the truth for yourself. Beware of the tendency to let others think for you. Don’t believe what your parents, teachers, counselors, mentors, priests, and authorities of all inclinations have taught you from an early age. (The best predictor of people’s spiritual beliefs is the religiosity of their parents.) Question others’ underlying premises and discover for yourself what’s reasonable. Force yourself to test for alternatives.

Don’t believe what you want to believe is true. Many people believe in UFOs and ghosts, even when there’s no credible verification for any visitation from outer space or dead souls haunting abandoned buildings. Often, misinformation is cunningly designed to evade careful analytical reasoning—it can easily slip under the radar of even the most well-informed people. Shun blind optimism.

Consciously identify your biases and adverse instincts. Psychologists have identified more than 100 cognitive biases that can get in the way of clear and rational thinking. Explore how those biases could come into play in your thinking. Try to determine their motive. Work to extricate yourself from them to the best of your ability.

Demand proof when the facts seem demonstrable. Remain intellectually agnostic toward what hasn’t been established scientifically or isn’t provable. If you can’t determine if something is true or it isn’t, suspend judgment. Beware of anecdotes—emotionally swaying stories in particular—they are the weakest form of evidence.

Don’t believe in something that isn’t true just because there’s a practical reason to. If you feel emotionally inclined to believe in something because it gives you hope, comfort, and the illusion of control, identify your belief as just that. Faith is often no more than an inclination that’s not withstood the tests of reason. The process of faith is an absence of doubt. There’ll always be people who reject evolution for reasons that have little to do with evolution. Don’t act with more confidence in unproven theories than is justifiable.

Idea for Impact: Be wary of the influences that can put you at risk for magical thinking.

Give critical thinking and systematic evidence the central role in how you understand the world. Improving the criteria you use to judge the truth of things is difficult—but it’s of the essence. Have an unvarying, well-balanced degree of skepticism about everything, especially your own postulations.

Never Accept an Anecdote at Face Value

February 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Human beings generally find anecdotes highly compelling. We’re not transformed as much by facts and statistics as we are by stories.

But anecdotes aren’t often objective. Anecdotes are uncontrolled individual observations—sometimes no more than one.

Reported experience is subjective. Our recollections are ever-changing, and they’re often amazingly imprecise. We often misrepresent events to agree with the audience—even embellish with made-up minutiae to render our stories more compelling.

And for that reason, anecdotes are usually the weakest form of evidence. Anecdotes are subject to a host of biases such as confirmation bias, generalization, and cherry-picking. Moreover, for every anecdote, an equal and contrary anecdote can be proffered.

Idea for Impact: Be deeply suspicious of anecdotes. Arguments that draw on anecdotal evidence to make broad generalizations are liable to be fallacious.

“But, Excuse Me, I’m Type A”: The Ultimate Humblebrag?

February 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Our increasingly egotistical culture sanctions competitiveness, achievement-orientation, impatience, assertiveness, and work-fixation. Fine. But do we need to recast selfishness, greed, aggressiveness, and egotism as virtues?

Consider the assertion “I’m type A” you’ll often hear from people who’re harried and quick to anger. That expression has become the ultimate humblebrag—an announcement for the narcissistic self, indeed. It’s often a lead up to some form of a self-absorbed burden to be imposed on others.

Intense people are off-putting, particularly to laid-back types

The designation “Type A” was presented as a negative characterization in the 1970s by cardiologists—not psychologists—about people prone to so-called “hurry sickness.” These people tend to get angry and, consequently, have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Now then, “I’m type A” has become the special consent some people expect to be granted to be a bit infuriating. It’s a polite declaration of the self-conscious entitlement, “I have somewhat better standards. Sorry to be so persistent.” “Sorry to squeeze you dry on this project, but I’m driven to deliver my best.”

Idea for Impact: If you’re a Type A, by all means, be an overachiever, strong-minded, demanding, whatever. But be all these without being obnoxious or instinctively imposing uncalled-for pressure on everything and everybody and every time. Lighten up.

Overtraining: How Much is Too Much?

February 16, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The amount of practice on an instrument is the most significant contributor to musical performance success. However, an obsessive orientation toward practice can burn you out and make you stiff.

Rather than carving out more time in the day for practice, celebrated musicians (not unlike specialist athletes and chess masters) tend to excel by making modest levels of practice more productive.

Itzhak Perlman on why practicing too much is bad Like all great teachers, virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman preaches not too much practice:

When kids ask me for an autograph, I always sign my name and then write, ‘Practise slowly!’ That’s my message to them. If you practise slowly, you forget slowly. If you practise very quickly, maybe it will work for a day or two and then it will go away, because it has not been absorbed by your brain. It’s like putting a sponge in the water. If you let it stay there it retains a lot of water.

There are a lot of people who believe that the more you practise the greater the improvement, but I don’t believe that. Again I cite the sponge example. When you put a sponge in the water, after a while it reaches saturation point. Keeping it in there for any longer won’t help, as it’s absorbed as much as it can.

Choosing to focus on quality over quantity of practice helps musicians free up time for score study, concentrated listening, and other learning activities away from their instruments. All these ultimately make practice more effective.

Idea for Impact: Mindless repetition is ineffective. To reach the highest levels of expertise, focus on the quality of practice. Skill formation relies on consistency and deliberate practice. Under a mentor’s guidance, a consistent and intentional practice can bring about clarity and make you observe yourself and open for feedback.

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Idea for Impact: Be wary of the influences that can put you at risk for magical thinking.

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Intense people are off-putting, particularly to laid-back types

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