#043 | Think Again - The Curse of Knowledge

Hey friends,

My favourite book this year has to be Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant

Most of us are used to the notion of thinking.

But how many of us frequently rethink our thinking? Challenge our thinking?

The ability to rethink is very useful in a world that’s constantly evolving at a rapid pace. We need to constantly update / change our belief system.

But…

Rethinking is hard…

Rethinking means changing our core beliefs sometimes.

Rethinking means admitting that we are wrong.

Rethinking means going against our natural biases such as confirmation and desirability bias.

But just like any other skills, you can train to be good at rethinking.

If you are IQ smart, you will find it harder to rethink

If you are IQ smart, you are great at thinking, which makes it harder for you to rethink. You are great at spotting patterns and believe that you have everything figured out, which in turn makes you less likely to think about rethinking.

That’s why people who are less experience tends to be more confident.

Scientist Mode

So how can we train to be better at rethinking?

Not sure.

This is something I am trying to get better at; constantly challenge my strong beliefs.

But…

Think Again highlights that thinking more like a scientist can lead to getting better at rethinking.

Why?

First, scientist thinking requires intellectual humility — being aware that we don’t know everything and knowing what we don’t know.

Second, scientist thinking focuses on finding the truth rather than being right. This means two things: a) open-mindedness; open to the high possibility that you could be wrong and finding out the reasons and b) experiments; set hypotheses and run experiments to validate or invalidate your hypotheses and get closer to discovering the truth.

People value decisiveness.

Oh he has such high conviction in what he’s saying… he must be right… let’s take what he says to be the truth…

And when you are not decisive, people trust you less…

This dynamic means that in general, people care more about appearing to be decisive rather than finding out the truth.

🔥 Actionable Knowledge

Whenever you catch yourself to be overly confident on something, start looking at opposite arguments of why you could be wrong.

When someone said something that contradicts your strong belief system, try to understand the rationale and logic behind their perspectives.

Value finding the truth over being right.

Decisiveness is overrated. Being able to rethinking is king.

I would love to hear from you! Share your thoughts by replying to this email 😊

Thanks for reading everyone. Have a good week ahead! 🎮

All the best,

Ryan O

Current Stats: 12.2% action rate <— Read 45 books | Taken actions on at least 5 books

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