Tools to think and live clearly
Everyday, we are bombarded with requests from outside. News craving our attention, co-workers expecting replies, friends and family wanting to spend time with us. But we also demand from ourselves to stay “employable”, up-to-date with our skills and healthy.
In this situation we can easily get trapped in a blurry net of demands where we can’t really tell tops from tails anymore. We can give in and walk the path of least resistance. But we can also up-level our own thinking, get clarity on which requests are actually important and where we want and can make a difference.
If you want to do things in your life because you decide they are worth doing you need better tools.
In this article I will introduce my favourite four.
1. Mental models and biases
A colleague comes to you and asks for your help. Priority high, due date yesterday. You work your ass off. You get it done. But then it turns silent. A few days later you meet him again. “How is the project going?”, you ask. He replies: “Ah, in the end we didn’t really need your analysis. But thanks anyways.” Does this sound familiar? That was my reality for the first two years of my working life.
It was there that my passion got unleashed to stop relying on other people’s analysis of problems.
Mental models are models our minds construct to reason about the world. Right now your mind is full of these models. Every mental model is a tool that you need to maintain (or free from biases) but every so often it also helps to get some new tools to do cooler stuff (acquire and train new models).
One of my favorite mental models is called inversion. With inversion you basically turn the problem around and say: let’s assume this is already true, what else has to be true?
By doing so, you move from ‘problem’ thinking to ‘solution’ thinking and open yourself up to a new range of possibilities.
The world of mental models and catching biases is large so here’s where to start.
If you want to explore mental models start with the section at Farnam Street. Farnam Street was founded by Shane Parrish who worked first for a Canadian intelligence agency and basically had to upskill his decision-making and thinking skills which he then started sharing with the world. Shane also published two books on mental models.
Another great resource is the Better Thinking section at Ness Labs. Ness Labs was founded by Anne-Laure Le Cunff who as a neuroscience student started sharing her insights for mindful productivity and creativity.
2. Mimetic theory
As a child I was super keen to get an “Eastpak” backpack. It was the thing. And not just any but it should have a certain color: grey. Why? The superficial answer would be: because everyone had one.
In mimetic theory, coined by the French philosopher René Girard, the answer goes deeper. The desire to have this Eastpak backpack was not my desire. It was the desire of someone else. There were certain “rivals”, people that I was unconsciously or consciously competing with for the alpha status on the schoolyard.
And so my desire for that backpack was not something “coming from me” but actually "coming from others".
I am still engaging in this behavior just that the backpacks now are career levels, clothes and cars.
Mimetic theory for me is a tool to question myself. Is this really something I want? Or is it something other people want? A life fully lived means to me: I know where my desires come from.
I’m not interested in playing games that others define for me. I want my own playing field.
Girard’s writing itself is somewhat involved, so I can just highly recommend the Anti-Mimetic newsletter from Luke Burgis. The best intro piece is Mimetic Desire 101.
3. Basic literacy in data & statistics
November 3, 2020 was the presidential election day in the U.S.. And I felt agitated. Usually the election results are finalized in the morning hours in Europe, but this time was different. The election race was wide open. I switched from CNN to Fox News to the New York Times but nothing new happened. It felt like my brain ran completely on junk-food and even the days after I felt the agitation.
It was that time that I decided to quit the news.
There is so much non-sense out there and if you are like me you hate having your attention drawn to headlines that play with our innermost emotions like fear.
So, I decided that this is bullshit and was happy to find a book that helps me spot it. Calling Bullshit is written by two researchers at the University of Washington specialized in the field of statistics and big data. They realized how manipulative data, statistics and visualizations are used in academia, the industry as well as the general news. So they teach skills to call bullshit and give plenty of examples. A great way to start are my essays on correlation vs. causation and the time fallacy. For more interactive content check the recorded video series.
4. Healthy digital habits
Have you been following along? Great!
By now you will have developed abilities to spot your own biases, tried out new mental models (like inversion), detected mimetic desire in you and called bullshit.
But a life fully lived requires one thing more: A healthy relationship with technology.
The two books I recommend are Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport as well as Indistractable by Nir Eyal. They both take a slightly different angle on the topic but with their help I have tried a 30-day digital declutter and started building a blocked out calendar. My biggest learning: We should use technologies in a way that maximize fulfillment of the need we want to satisfy with them. If we want to connect with others, a text message does fine but doesn’t make use of our complex human abilities to perceive others, their gestures and facial expressions. It’s like a Porsche that’s always going 20 mph.
