by I C Robledo
– Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher.
Geniuses Who Applied the Principle
Aristotle, René Descartes, Albert Einstein, Temple Grandin, Abraham Maslow, Arthur Schopenhauer, Socrates
Description of the Principle
The ability to be objective is not something that will come naturally to most of us. By the nature of our existence, we are subjective creatures because we have a specific perspective. We have eyes and senses that give us information about ourselves and the things that immediately surround us. It is very difficult for us to see things as they truly are. Instead, we naturally tend to focus on how everything relates back to us. But to be objective means to look at situations as a detached observer. It means to remove the want or the need to get a specific result. When you desire something, your desire will make you expect a certain result, and you will be more likely to overlook problems. Being motivated can be good, but too much passion can actually color your perception and lead you away from being objective.
For objectivity, it is important to lose the self. Usually, the most objective response is to find the best outcome for everyone involved. If you are too concerned with how everything affects you personally, you won’t be able to be objective. This doesn’t mean that personally, you don’t matter. It just means other people matter too. But being objective can actually get more complicated and difficult. For example, humans affect the lives of other animals. Someone who is truly objective would probably take into account other life forms, and what effect their actions have on them as well.
Perfect objectivity is probably not attainable in most situations. But if you are able to take into account how your actions affect more people than just yourself, or more groups than just your own, then you will be more objective than most people. And you will be much more likely to make better decisions overall.
Benefits of the Principle
The objective person will be in a much better position to make the best overall decisions. Someone who is highly objective will make a great leader. No one wants a leader who is only interested in his or her own benefit. However, a leader who can take into account how big decisions influence many people will be highly valued. Consider the CEO of a large company. In his decisions, he shouldn’t just consider what choices will raise his paycheck alone. He should consider how his actions can influence employees, other leaders in the organization, clients, investors, and many of us would say the environment too.
Being objective is useful for understanding a problem or situation as it actually is. Instead of getting too caught up in one part of a problem, or in how the problem affects you personally, you will be better able to perceive the full extent of it. A good understanding of problems, in an objective way, is a clear marker for the genius mind. In their ability to see a problem as it is, they are often the ones in the best position to make progress in solving it.
Consider this story reported in The 50th Law by Robert Greene and 50 Cent, about the hip hop artist Curtis Jackson (a.k.a. “50 Cent”). First, keep in mind that his beginnings were in a very rough neighborhood, where the main options in life were to work a minimum wage job, or sell drugs. The first would lead to poverty, the second would likely lead to jail time and exposure to violence. In his youth, he chose a life of dealing drugs. A powerful moment for him was when he came across the principle of objectivity, of seeing things as they truly are. This principle would change his life forever:
One day [“50 Cent”] was discussing the troublesome aspects of the game [e.g., dealing drugs] with an older hustler named Truth, who told him something he would never forget. Don’t complain about the difficult circumstances, he said. In fact, the hard life of these streets is a blessing if you know what you’re doing. Because it is such a dangerous world, a hustler has to focus intensely on what’s going on around him. He has to get a feel for the streets—who’s trouble, where there might be some new opportunity. He has to see through all the bullshit people throw at him—their games, their lousy ideas. He has to look at himself, see his own limitations and stupidity. All of this sharpens the eye to a razor’s edge, making him a keen observer of everything. That’s his power.
You might think that of course objectivity and seeing things as they are is important in such tough environments, but it doesn’t matter as much elsewhere. But this assumption would be wrong. For 50 Cent, he found it even more important to remain objective as he rose to stardom in the hip hop world. For instance, executives could be ruthless. A musical artist could be popular one year, and gone the next. Seeing the likely pitfalls of relying too much on a musical career, he claimed his stake in a variety of ventures. These have included work as: a businessperson, actor, investor, film producer, rapper, entrepreneur, and screenwriter. This is a benefit of objectivity, of seeing things as they are. You see more than your peers, and so you are prepared to take the most beneficial course of action.
How to Apply the Principle
Learn some cognitive biases
You may have heard about cognitive biases. They are thinking errors that people often make. It is important to be aware of them, because they usually present us with inaccurate views of the world, and should be taken into consideration if we want to be fully objective. You will find it useful to familiarize yourself with some of them, in your efforts to think more objectively. Wikipedia has a large list (e.g., search “List of cognitive biases”). Here are a few examples:
Confirmation bias — the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's prior expectations.
Dunning-Kruger effect — the tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.
Reactance — the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.
Learn some logical fallacies
Logical fallacies are errors people make in their logical reasoning. Being unable to see a situation in a logical way, of course makes us less objective. If you can, it would also be helpful to learn more about logic in general. But logical fallacies can be especially helpful to study because they show us the most common types of mistakes that people tend to make in their reasoning. You will find it useful to familiarize yourself with some of them, in your efforts to think more objectively. Wikipedia has a large list of them (e.g., search “List of fallacies”). Here are a few examples:
Appeal to emotion – where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning.
Circular reasoning (circulus in demonstrando) – when the reasoner begins with what he or she is trying to end up with; sometimes called assuming the conclusion.
Red herring – argument given in response to another argument, which is irrelevant and draws attention away from the subject of argument.
Imagine yourself as an objective robot or alien
Imagine yourself not as a human, but as a robot, programmed to assess situations and problems in a neutral way. Or you can imagine yourself as an intelligent alien from another planet, and you have just arrived to earth, seeing everything with fresh eyes. Try to assess situations and problems in such a removed way. Interpret everything new you see as something strange and remarkable. Allow yourself to forget that these are familiar things you see every day. This can take practice to become good at, but you should find that your ability to accurately perceive situations and problems should improve with time.
Withhold judgment
Don’t feel the need to come to a firm conclusion on everything right away. We are often quick to judge situations on very little information. This can be adaptive because it helps us continue to move forward rather than stay still. But consider that movement isn’t always progress. Often, different people will have wildly different explanations and viewpoints of the same thing. Take the time to consider all the possibilities, and all the different explanations of events. Make sur
e to consider evidence and actions above words when possible. Words lack objectivity. They can be used to state one event in an infinite amount of ways. The same event can be stated negatively or positively, for example. Also, words can be abused, and used to lie or completely misrepresent something. Actions, although sometimes ambiguous, are often more clear than words.
Also consider when there are many viewpoints available to you, that perhaps there is no one correct way to view the situation. There may be more evidence to believe one scenario over another, but objectively, you may not have access to the definitive and final truth.
Secret Principle #20 : Simplify; Take the Complex and Boil it Down to its Essence
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
– Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist.
Geniuses Who Applied the Principle
Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., John von Neumann, Orville and Wilbur Wright
Description of the Principle
Be cautious with ideas worded in very complicated ways that are too difficult to understand. It is easy to think when something is described in an overcomplicated way that it must be an excellent idea. You may assume the author of the idea is more intelligent than you, and therefore you must trust what they say. However, sometimes ideas are phrased in too complicated of a way. This may be either because the person isn’t skilled enough to phrase it more simply, or more worrisome is that they may want to mislead you, to try to sound more credible than they actually are.
As simple as it may seem, it is not necessarily a simple exercise to keep your ideas and messages simple. For example, if you are asked to write down what you did last summer, this should be easy if you are given two pages. But what if you are only given four sentences? Many of us would start to have trouble at that point, and need to carefully think about the most important things we did, and state them in the most direct and concise way. Simplicity isn’t always easily accomplished, but brilliant minds tend to find a way to make things simple so the information can be understood and applied more efficiently.
Benefits of the Principle
The ability to make things simple can help you prove to yourself that you truly understand something. If someone wants to tell you about a large complicated topic, and they can explain in detail how everything works, then they must have a good understanding of the topic. But a test of whether they truly have a higher level understanding is if they can break it all down for you in a more simple way. Remember what Albert Einstein said: “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
Another key benefit of keeping things simple is that it will be easier for you to give clear explanations. Perhaps you have subordinates, colleagues, or even friends who you would like to explain a difficult topic to. It will be very helpful then to be able to take what you do, or your topic of interest, and describe it simply. Understand that people who work outside of your field or area of expertise will not know many technical details or the terminology that may be common to your area. Because of this, they are more likely to get lost if you make your explanations too complicated. Keeping things simple will help get your ideas across more directly.
Here is perhaps the biggest benefit. We live in a world where most of us want to reach the greatest amount of people. Whether you have a product to sell, a message to spread, or an issue to raise awareness to, most of us want to reach more people. Well, when you get used to describing things in a simple way that most people would understand, you will allow yourself to reach the biggest audience that you can. One of the reasons Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech was so effective is because it was something many people related to. But the other key reason is because it was stated directly, in a simple way everyone could understand. If he had used much bigger words that no one could relate to, his message wouldn’t have reached as many people or left such an impact.
How to Apply the Principle
Summarize your work processes
When you complete a project, practice summarizing it down to its simplest parts, either in your mind or on paper. Often, we perform tasks and complete projects without fully processing what we have done. We just complete one task and move on to the next. To be sure that you understand what you are doing, and have actually learned something, take ten minutes and summarize your process and what you learned. Keep things simple. This will be especially useful if you attempt to do this without referring to your notes first. If your boss or a respected colleague asks you without warning to explain your project simply, you don’t want to be seen flipping through notes, do you?
Explain something technical to a novice
If you want to be completely sure that you are keeping things simple, in an effective way, get some help from someone who knows very little about your field or projects. For example, you may explain it to your grandmother or to a child until they can understand it. Even though it may be frustrating to do this with someone who isn’t familiar with your work, it can be very helpful. You may get asked numerous questions, but this is good. It will force you to be sure that you understand all of the basics. And sometimes, the non-experts ask interesting questions that would not occur to actual experts in the field. These can help give you something new to think about, and strengthen any weaknesses in your understanding.
Secret Principle #21 : Define Problems Clearly
“There’s no sense in being precise when you don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
– John von Neumann, Hungarian-American pure and applied mathematician, physicist, inventor, computer scientist, and polymath.
Geniuses Who Applied the Principle
Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilei, Ernst Mach, John von Neumann
Description of the Principle
You might ask why defining the problem is important. It’s important because having a very clear grasp of a problem is what you need in order to solve it effectively.
Often, when we are faced with a problem, we want to solve it and get it out of the way as soon as possible. Because of this, we may jump right in and attempt to work on it, without having put any real thought into what the problem actually is. Instead, the best approach is to define exactly what the problem is. It’s easy to become overconfident that you know what to do, but before you jump in, ask yourself what the goal is. What is the final thing that you are trying to accomplish? And why is it important to do?
In fact, defining the problem is largely about knowing what types of questions to ask. For example, these should help:
What is the problem?
What caused this problem?
Is this a problem that I could solve?
Is this the real problem, or is there an even bigger problem that is causing this one?
If I ignore this problem, will it resolve itself naturally?
What would the solution to this problem look like?
Keep in mind that in order to solve a problem, you may find that you need certain tools, resources, or even that you need experts to answer some of your questions. Either way, it is powerful to first define the problem so you can figure out the best path that will lead you to the solution.
Benefits of the Principle
By defining problems you can save yourself time and be more effective at solving it. Computer programming, for example, is something that can take a great deal of thought and work to code something properly. A programmer who doesn’t carefully think about the problem, and just jumps in will probably end up with a mess of code. Worse yet, later on he may be unable to make sense of the code or even to get it to work. He will probably realize that he hadn’t properly defined what the problem even was. If he had thought through it to begin with, he would have saved time and been more productive.
Let’s consider Albert Einstein. When asked what he would do if he had an hour to save the world, he said: “I would spend 55 minutes to understand and formulate the problem, a
nd 5 minutes to come up with ideas/execute the solution.” In other words, he would define exactly what the problem is. The example of needing to save the world may seem silly, but you can easily imagine some other great problem that needs to be solved. What is the response of most people? The main responses may be to either become overwhelmed, or to react immediately without much thought. An immediate reaction will likely be an automatic type of response that doesn’t fully consider the problem. The danger here is that you can make things worse, and cause even bigger problems. Of course, the point here isn’t to spend exactly 55 minutes defining a problem, and five minutes executing the solution. The point is to make sure you understand a problem thoroughly before you begin trying solutions. The bigger the problem, and the more grave the potential consequences, the more important this is.
Trying to solve a problem before you have defined it, for example, can lead you into working on irrelevant issues that don’t help you to make progress. Instead, when you define a problem clearly, you will understand it more fully. This will help you think up better potential ways of solving it without going down paths that simply create more problems.
How to Apply the Principle
Ask questions that help you define the problem
As mentioned above, you may try asking some of these questions to help you define a problem:
What is the problem?
What caused this problem?
Is this a problem that I could solve?
Is this the real problem, or is there an even bigger problem that is causing this one?