It’s very appealing to think we’ve got it all figured out because we’ve read a few books or studies. There’s just one problem: You still can’t trust your judgments, no matter how much knowledge you have. Being aware of that simple thought helps you make better-informed decisions. Every time I’m stuck in a thinking pattern, I try to break away by looking at the list of cognitive biases. It’s free and easy. Just go to the Wikipedia for “list of cognitive biases.” You’ll find that most biases seem like common sense. And that’s exactly the point. Cognitive biases explain our illogical behavior.
Look At Facts
I hate assumptions. And yet, I assume things all the time. When someone doesn’t answer my email, I assume they don’t care. When someone apologizes, I assume it’s not genuine. When I have a headache, I assume I’m ill. I know I’m not practical because assumptions are not facts.
If you want to think straight, you discard all assumptions, and only look at facts. William James said it best in one of his lectures about pragmatism: “The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalizes.”
To make things simple, let’s look at two ways of making a decision. One based on facts, and the other based on assumptions.
Does your product solve a problem? Or do you assume it does?
Are you able to raise money for your start-up? Or do you assume you will?
Will you get a raise? Or do you assume your boss will give it to you?
Is the sale a done deal? Or do you assume your client will sign?
Do people like your art? Or do you assume they do?
I like to avoid assumptions as much as I can. I prefer to look at facts and then draw conclusions. What if you can’t rely on facts? Well, sometimes you just can’t find facts, or you have to make a quick decision. In those (very rare) cases I prefer gut feeling. Whatever you do, never waste your thoughts on other people’s ill-informed opinions and guesses.
True Vs UNTRUE
In the previous chapter, we talked about looking at facts. But are facts also the truth? The answer is no. Confusing, right? It’s just like life. For example, does God exist? I don’t know. I’ve never seen any evidence. Does that mean God is not real? It doesn’t matter what I think. If God has an impact on the way you live, it’s true for you no matter what scientists say.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who had a profound impact on western philosophy, famously said: "There are no facts, only interpretations."
Nietzsche was a man of true self-knowledge. Sigmund Freud even said that “he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live.” He was a very analytical thinker, especially when it came to his own thoughts.
When Nietzsche said that there are no facts, he meant that we, as human beings, ultimately rely on our interpretations of reality. There’s no way to confirm reality objectively. That doesn’t mean nothing is real and that we’re all living in a big dream. We just have to realize that facts are not the same thing as the truth.
That simple thought saves you a lot of energy because it means no one can be right or wrong. Don’t bother with convincing people with different opinions of the “truth.” It’s just not a practical thing to do. Save your energy for other, more useful things.
Take Your Time To Think
I used to think that smart people are fast thinkers. “He thinks on his feet. He’s really smart.” I tried it for many years. Every time I faced a problem, discussion, or when someone asked me a question, I thought, “QUICK, QUICK, QUICK!” Naturally, my first answers sucked.
Derek Sivers, one of my favorite thinkers, says he’s a slow thinker: “It’s a common belief that your first reaction is the most honest, but I disagree. Your first reaction is usually outdated. Either it’s an answer you came up with long ago and now use instead of thinking, or it’s triggering a knee-jerk emotional response to something that happened long ago.”
Thinking things through takes time. Every time I gave a quick answer, I wasn’t thinking at all, I was impulsive. Derek Sivers trained himself not to trust his first thoughts. That’s also what he did when his email consumed too much of his time and attention. Being a public figure, Derek received a lot of emails from his readers. Most of them contained “quick 5-minute” questions. But as he says, if you get 100 of those questions, that adds up to 8 hours in a day. After answering 192,000 emails between 2008 and 2016, Derek knew he needed to do something about it. So he planned to go off the grid like a modern-day Henry David Thoreau: “I was going to go hard-core, shut off all email and social media, and make myself unreachable to all but a few close friends and colleagues. It felt like the only solution.”
That was his first thought. “But then I realized I could remain reachable as long as I don’t answer questions,” is what Derek writes on his blog (https://sivers.org/slow). I’m glad he didn’t act on his first idea. His second idea is much better. I’ve emailed Derek myself in the past, and I think what he does makes a big impact on people’s lives.
What I’m trying to say is that when someone asks you a question, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” You can also say that to yourself. I’ve often been too hard on myself because I didn’t have an instant answer to my personal problems. That doesn’t make you dumb. It makes you human.
Why are we even afraid that people think we’re stupid? It’s the perfect example of slow thinking. Instead of following your instinct of, “I’ll prove them!” you can take a step back and ask yourself, “Why do I even want to come across as smart?” If you really think about it, it doesn’t matter what others think of you. I think it’s always better to take your time to think. If others think that makes you stupid, they are the ones who are.
No More Quick Decisions
“Shall we book a business trip to Thailand?”
“Are you interested in a speaking gig at company X?”
“Should we renovate the kitchen?”
“Do you think we should fire John Doe?”
“How about hiring another sales executive?”
Just a few questions others have asked me recently. And you know what? Just as I like to take time to think deeply about my challenges, I also take time to think “quick” decisions through. Every time I said yes to a speaking gig, interview, or giving a seminar, I didn’t think about it for long. When things are in the future, we’re more likely to say yes. “That trip is planned for September. It’s now March. That’s ages from now!” And without thinking about it, you commit to a five-day business trip or family vacation. But when September comes, you’re either in a great professional flow, have other (more important) commitments, or are in the middle of something else. Now, all of a sudden, that quick yes from ‘ages’ ago is on your mind all the time. “Should I cancel the trip? Should I go? Should I go for two days only?”
Why do we make things so complicated while we can easily solve these things by just taking an extra day to THINK? That’s all you need. Just think things through. Know yourself. For instance, I’m currently in a great writing flow. I don’t feel the need to leave my city. I have a set routine every day, and it works very well for me. I feel happy, and I enjoy my life a lot. When I go away for even a weekend, my whole routine can be messed up. And then I need another two weeks to get back to my ‘old’ self.
However, I don’t always have this mindset. Right now, I’m working on this book, opening a new office, and buying a new apartment. I’m focused on a few important things. But other times, I’m more flexible and actually do like to travel, visit friends, business partners, and live a looser lifestyle.
That’s why I now take more time to make decisions. Instead of following my first thought, I say, “Please give me a day or two to think about it.” That’s all you need.
Release Your Mind
Once I changed my perspective on life, I started straining my brain every single day. I started reading two hours a day and taking extensi
ve notes of the things I learned. I also started writing articles to share the ideas I learned. In the beginning, I felt like a new world opened up to me. I couldn’t get enough of learning more. I bought new books every week and devoured every piece of new knowledge I could get my hands on.
But after a few weeks, I had a mental breakdown. All of a sudden, my mind froze up. I felt blocked. I couldn’t think, read, or write. My head hurt all day long. That went on for a few days, almost a week. I felt ill and I didn’t understand why. I couldn’t even think about why. And when I felt better, I just picked up where I left off. This time, I went on for longer, about two months before I hit another wall. But this time it was different again. No matter what I tried, I didn’t feel like I was improving or learning new things. But I kept going and pushing through the difficulty.
After this pattern occurred a few times, I finally understood what was going on. Training your mind happens in stages—and before you can move on to the next phase of your learning development, you have to get through a wall. I believe that both learning skills and developing yourself happen in stages. At the beginning of a new stage, things are easy to learn because everything is new. But the closer you get to the end of a stage, things get more difficult. In my case, I got headaches. But I wasn’t near the end yet because, after a short setback, I got back at it again.
At some point, you hit a big wall. That’s the mental breakdown. It’s also a point at which you want to give up whatever you’re trying to achieve: Writing a book, starting a business, changing your career or leading a group of people. When you hit a wall, everything stops. The book all of a sudden seems useless, the business seems to fail, the career you want seems unreachable, and the people have stopped taking you seriously. All is lost.
I’ve learned to train my brain to take this as a positive moment. When I reach a wall, I know I’m close to the next stage of my development. Instead of giving up, I’m happy. All I need to do, is to take a break, rejuvenate, and let my mind recover. I hang out with my friends. Play some table tennis with my brother at our office. Listen to my favorite artist like Jay-Z, Bob Dylan, Kendrick Lamar, or Bon Iver. Watch movies (a lot of them). I just take some time to relax and let my brain get stronger while I’m not thinking or working on anything. And then, I get back to where I left off. I use my energy to break through the wall. And it always works.
Draw Your Thoughts
Before we invented language, we communicated and thought in images. But for many centuries, words have been our primary way to communicate. And that’s why we also think in words. When I think, I talk to myself. And when I take notes, I also talk to myself.
“Create a chapter about drawing your thoughts,” is what I wrote in my notebook when I came up with the idea for this chapter. I find that fascinating. One of the best-known thinkers of all time, Leonardo da Vinci, thought visually. How do I know this? I took a look at his notebooks, which you can easily find if you Google them. Here’s an example:
Now, we don’t have to become this great at drawing, but I think we can still learn something. Drawing frees your mind from the constant verbalization. I started drawing the images for my blog posts over a year ago. My drawing skills haven’t improved, but my articles have. And one of the reasons is that I take time to think about how I can visually share my idea. I want readers to immediately “get” what I’m trying to share in the article by looking at my drawings.
That’s why I think a lot about visualizing an idea. Sometimes I draw a graph, sometimes I emphasize a sentence or word, and I even make simple cartoons. After I make the drawing, I often edit my article to make my idea clearer. And some articles even start with a drawing.
This book also started with a drawing. It’s the drawing I used in the From Chaos To Clarity chapter. Here it is again:
I made that drawing without a purpose. I was just visualizing some of my ideas. One of my ideas is that it used to be chaos in my mind, until I found a way to overcome it. As a result, I think clearly. That’s the whole drawing. And now it’s a book.
Be Yourself (Not What You Should Be)
“Conquer yourself rather than the world.”
― René Descartes
I’d like to ask you a few questions:
What are you good at?
What are you bad at?
How do you learn new things?
What are you passionate about?
What do you dislike?
In other words: Who are you? What’s your DNA? Sure, biologically we’re all more or less the same. We all have organs, bones, blood, nerves. We also all die.
Why is self-knowledge important? I never had a clue. In all my years in school, no one ever talked about knowing yourself and why it matters. But it turns out that a lack of self-knowledge is the reason why I made the wrong decisions in my life.
The jobs I had.
The girls I dated.
The things I chased.
The decisions I made.
The people I spent time with.
It didn’t match with my strengths, values, skills, and desires. My ex-girlfriend wanted to travel the world and live in different countries. I hate that idea. I want to stay close to my family and best friends. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something if I don’t live in other countries. Having a home is what makes me happy. When you’re in a relationship with someone who has different values, it’s a zero-sum game. One person always loses something. We broke up.
I’ve worked in boiler rooms, selling foolish products to people who didn’t need them. Why did I have a job that made me feel bad about myself? I don’t know. My best guess is that I wanted the money. I thought that’s what you do. But I didn’t know myself.
Today, I know myself better than I did ten years ago. And in ten years from now, I’ll know myself better than I do today. Knowing yourself is step one. Step two is acting on that knowledge.
Sometimes opportunities come my way and I feel like saying yes too quickly. But I have to take a step back. And ask myself: Is this really me? Very often, the answer is no. I’ve found that most things in life are not for me. Most jobs, opportunities, countries, people, parties, lifestyles, books—they’re all not for me. It’s about finding the things that are for me. Believe it or not, that’s a very small list.
Take Time To Reflect
We live busy lives. And sometimes there’s no time for thinking. When thinking is not a priority, make it one. If you don’t, you’ll end up like me a few years ago. I didn’t reflect on anything between 2012 and 2015. Result? All of a sudden, I felt overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do with my life.
I had a true internal crisis on my hands. Since I had no idea what to do, I started reading more books. And I noticed that many smart and happy people kept journals. They also reflected more on their life. More specifically, they reflected on the things they learned, mistakes they made, and the goals they achieved.
When I started daily journaling, I began with writing my own autobiography. It’s not meant for publication. It’s meant for reflection and learning. If you don’t know what to write about—write your life story. I’m sure you’ll learn more about yourself with every paragraph you write.
I journal and make sure to read my notes once a week. That’s all I mean when I talk about reflecting. I do it for three reasons:
It helps me to uncover my mistakes so I can avoid them in the future.
It helps me to value my progress when I read my past achievements.
To get my thoughts in order so I can second guess myself. That helps me to make better decisions.
In short, I journal and reflect because it’s useful.
My Money Rules
One of my friends told me he hates his job. I asked him why he didn’t take any action. “I need the money,” he said. I automatically knew that he assumed that the only option for him is to quit. The reason is that we become too dependent on something when we give it too much importance.
There’s a simple solut
ion to devalue the value of money. I live by these five rules:
That’s what I’ve done for the past three years. And I haven’t had a single thought about money. Actually, that’s not true. I still think about money. Everybody does. But as soon as I think, “I have enough money in my savings account,” I stop thinking about money. No matter what happens, if you have enough money to survive for six months, you’ll figure it out.
There’s only one condition: Invest in your skills. It’s naïve to think we’ll always be able to find a job or make money. It takes effort. But since when is that a surprise?
I just make sure I invest my money instead of spending it. Investing money is not only about investing in the stock market or in real estate. I have no problem paying three grand for a new laptop because it’s a tool I use to do my job, and that makes me money. Also, I’m never cheap when it comes to buying important things. I’d rather buy a good jacket that lasts years than buy a cheap one that I have to replace next year.
Simply put, I don’t buy things I don’t need. I don’t need a new iPhone every year. I also don’t need five thousand dollar shoes. But that doesn’t mean I own only one pair of shoes. I simply don’t buy everything I like. Buying stuff in excess is not practical because I don’t have enough space. Plus, I like to train myself to resist things to improve my self-discipline.
Think Straight Page 3