Think Again
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High-Level Thoughts
Good book on conflict management, rethinking thoughts, and curating environments of growth mindset. Visuals included throughout were a major plus. Would re-read it in the future.
If you don't look back at yourself and think, “Wow, how stupid I was a year ago,” then you must not have learned much in the last year.
Summary Notes
Prologue
Trust your gut. You may never know if something may work until you try it. The hesitation of rethinking an idea over and over may cost you a lot more through the stubbornness to not bring it to life. Assess the situation as is and determine what the best course of action is from that point on. Wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of your most treasured tools, the most cherished parts of your identity, to continue moving forward.
Learn from the people around you. Everyone has a unique set of experiences to lead them to where they are today. There is something new to learn in every moment.
Part I. Individual Rethinking - Updating Our Own Views
Ch 1. - A Preacher, a Prosecutor, a Politician, and a Scientist Walk Into Your Mind
Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything – George Bernard Shaw
The four mindsets. We all have these four personas in our mind:
Preacher: talks about sacred beliefs
Prosecutor: sees flaws in other people’s reasoning
Politician: seeks to win over an audience
Scientist: searches for the truth
We swap around these mindsets in both our thoughts and words based on the situation happening around us. Each mindset has its pros and cons such as the scientist who continues seeking new knowledge, yet sometimes sees theory as gospel.
Evolving with Change. Rethinking itself is a skill set and a mindset to continue evolving. The rate at which you do this provides you more opportunities to question beliefs more readily than before. To do this, you learn new knowledge to evolve your beliefs rather than affirming them. Including visions of continuity leads to increased willingness for change.
The curse of knowledge. The more we know, the more it closes our minds to what we don’t know. We only have a finite amount of time on this earth and when there is less time available, we resort to what is easiest. One of the easiest things to do is to see what we expect to see, confirmation bias, or seeing what we want to see, desirability bias.
Ch. 2 - The Armchair Quarterback and the Imposter: Finding the Sweet Spot of Confidence
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge - Charles Darwin
Competence exceeding confidence breeds imposter syndrome. When we have more competence than confidence, we recognize cognitive blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly to lessen points of failure. We see more of the journey ahead of us but are not yet there to make it come to fruition in our actions. More than 50% of people have felt like imposters at some point in their careers. This syndrome is needed for change as imposters are seeking growth opportunities and rarely say, “This is how we do things around here.”
Confidence exceeding competence breeds armchair quarterback syndrome. Armchair quarterback syndrome is where we feel more confident about a problem that we have minimal knowledge of. This leads to the dunning-kruger effect where you brim with overconfidence because you don’t know what is ahead. People who are a part of the dunning-kruger club don’t know they’re even a part of it. The less intelligent we are, the more we overestimate our intelligence. This lack of competence can leave us blind to our incompetence.
Confidence and competence go hand in hand. Confidence is the result of progress in your actions, rather than the cause of it. As you continue progressing, you learn more through experience. Continuing down a path of confidence then leads to confident humility where you have faith in your capabilities while appreciating that you may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem. This path breeds the creation of lifelong learning where you recognize that there is always something to learn from every environment.
Ch. 3 - The Joy of Being Wrong: The Thrill of Not Believing Everything You Think
I have a degree from Harvard. Whenever I’m wrong, the world makes a little less sense – Dr. Frasier Crane, Played By Kelsey Grammer
Beliefs and values. Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. What we believe changes regularly, whereas values are the core principles in guiding your life. For example, centuries ago, mankind thought the world was flat and it wasn’t until later on that many people now view the world as a global sphere after acquiring more information. Changing our beliefs and being wrong is the only way you can feel sure you’re learning anything.
When our core beliefs are questioned, we tend to shut down rather than open up as we lose a piece of our identity when we identify with them. This was something that happened when I left my corporate job because I identified with that title; however, when we identify with values such as integrity, compassion, and love, we can continue to stay grounded regardless of what practice we are doing.
Unlearning and Relearning. Accept the fact that you’re going to be wrong! There are tons of people who are more experienced in different areas than you are and can provide a wealth of knowledge. Especially in your 20s, you must unlearn some of the things you learned in past lives to refine your view in different areas of your life.
One way to do this is to try to disprove yourself. When you’re wrong it’s not something to be depressed about. Rather, it’s a way of admitting that you’re growing and discovering something new. If we’re comfortable being wrong, we’re not afraid to poke fun at ourselves to not take it too seriously. Detaching your present from your past and your opinions from your identity leads to flexibility in continuing this process. Our deepest opinions are shielded in filter bubbles where we feel pride when we see only information that supports our convictions.
Every time you encounter new information, you have a choice. You can attach your opinions to your identity and stand your ground as a preacher or prosecutor or take in new information as a scientist. If you don’t look back at yourself and think, ‘Wow, how stupid I was a year ago,’ then you must not have learned much in the last year
Accept mistakes. Jeff Bezos says, “People who are right a lot, listen a lot. They change their mind a lot. If you don’t change your mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot.” When we listen and adapt our ideas accordingly, we learn from our mistakes. It’s one thing to admit to ourselves that we’ve been wrong. It’s another thing to confess that to other people.
Ch. 4 - The Good Fight Club: The Psychology of Constructive Conflict
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions. – Oscar Wilde
Intellectual chemistry. The clearest sign of intellectual chemistry isn’t agreeing with someone. It’s enjoying your disagreements with them. We learn from people who challenge our thought processes than those who affirm our conclusions. Disagreeable people who are givers, not takers, often make the best critics.
The need for conflict. People who performed poorly started with more relationship conflict than task conflict. People tend to avoid conflict because they don’t want anyone to be mad at them; however, avoiding an argument is in itself bad manners. Seeking social harmony leads to agreeableness and conflict avoidance, but what we want is more cognitive consensus to be on the same page. Thus, arguing with someone is not a display of disrespect, but rather a sign of respect.
One interesting fact is that how often parents argue has no bearing on their children’s development. What matters is how respectfully parents argue, not how frequently.
Holding different opinions. If two people always have the same opinion, at least one of them isn’t thinking critically or speaking candidly. Intellectual friction isn’t a relationship bug, it’s a feature of learning. When we uphold our opinions, it is important to focus on the how rather than the why. Arguing about the why runs the risk of becoming emotionally attached to our positions and dismissing the other’s side. It is they are right or wrong situations instead of looking at the problem as something we’re solving together.
Part II. Interpersonal Rethinking - Opening Other People’s Minds
Ch 5. Dances with Foes: How to Win Debates and Influence People
Exhausting someone in argument is not the same as convincing him. – Tim Kreider
The art of persuasion. Arguments are often far more combative and adversarial than they need to be. Persuading people typically takes an adversarial approach. This approach can be seen as a good debate in the form of a dance. Try too hard and your partner will resist what you’re voicing. What evidence would change your mind? This question provides a choreography for you to proceed with to lead the discussion.
Quality over quantity. Weak arguments dilute a strong one. Expressing a weak belief strongly can quickly backfire. Giving different reasons triggers someone that you’re trying to persuade them. The past three sentences all at once feel like an onslaught of arguments. Rather than providing multiple threads, one single line of argument feels like a conversation.
Start in the same place. Start with common ground and fewer data points when communicating with others. Convincing someone means leading them to where you want to go and you have to be with them first to help them get there.
Ch. 6: Bad Blood on the Diamond
I hated the Yankees with all my heart, even to the point of having to confess in my first holy confession that I wished harm to others – namely that I wished various New York Yankees would break arms, legs and ankles… – Doris Kearns Goodwin
Commit to the role. Underplaying a rivalry leads to a loss of identity for the viewers. The more into it you are, the more they are into it. People love teams to cheer for. They provide a shared mission and a sense of identity. People can share and interact with people who are like them and open up new ground for connection.
The pause. Questioning beliefs openly with proof provides time for reflecting. The pause and time to reflect allow others to stop and rethink their initial beliefs to see if they are logically true. Grant provided a story of racial stereotypes which included the question: “How would stereotypes be different if you’d been born Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American?” This caused the person being asked to pause and seek out new knowledge of how their life would have been different. In turn, it led to a chain reaction of impacting others in that person’s community to also change.
Learn more about the individual. Groups themselves have a shared identity. Knowing a person separately humanizes them and better establishes them as different from the rest of the group. This individuality brings more value to their unique experience in the group. They feel more seen and are irreplaceable in what they provide.
Ch. 7: Vaccine Whisperers and Mild-Mannered Interrogaters: How the Right Kind of Listening Motivates People to Change
It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear. – Dick Cavett
Sustain talk versus change talk. Sustain talk is commentary about maintaining the status quo, whereas change talk is referencing a desire, ability, need, or commitment to make adjustments. Incentivizing change talk leads to further growth in your listeners and makes them feel smarter as a byproduct.
Becoming a guide. The objective is not to be a leader or a follower, but a guide. A good guide doesn’t stop at helping people change their beliefs or behaviors. Our work isn’t done until we’ve helped them accomplish their goals. After we succeed in changing someone’s mind, we shouldn’t only ask whether we’re proud of what we’ve achieved. We should ask whether we’re proud of how we’ve achieved it. What process flow did you go through and how can you adjust it accordingly?
Lead with open-ended questions. A common method to persuade is to lead by telling people what to do, but what doesn’t sway us can make our beliefs stronger. Instead, asking open-ended questions about how someone reached the decision provides more insights into what they were thinking and why they ended with the result. This decreases the sense of pressure and the feeling that someone else is controlling their decision. Rather, it empowers the other person to dive intrinsically into their thinking process and what matters most to them.
Ch. 8: Charged Conversations: Depolarizing Our Divided Discussions
When conflict is cliche, complexity is breaking news. – Amanda Ripley
Extreme Beliefs. A problem we have is where we see belief views on extremes. Either we are for or against something such as climate change. An example phrase of this sounds like “____ is always good or ____ is never bad.” Due to our desires, we shape our beliefs upon our motivations. We believe what we want to believe. This is known as desirability bias.
Focus on the problem. To reduce this polarization of beliefs, we can look more into the “how” as it sets the stage for more constructive conversations for action rather than changing one’s belief. Additionally, we can take the other side in a polarized discussion to gain a better understanding of their viewpoint. Going into these discussions with a perspective-seeking mindset rather than a perspective-taking approach leads to more thought-provoking conversations. Regardless of the side, even if you disagree with someone on an issue, when you discover that they deeply care about the issue, you trust them more.
Opening up emotional range. What stands in the way of rethinking isn’t the expression of emotion, but its restricted range of emotion. Once we feel more about a topic, we can see how well this sticks with our values and ideals. Rethinking should start with the offender. If the offender reevaluates their beliefs and behaviors, they might be an example to others who recognize a bit of themselves in a reaction.
Ch. 9: Rewriting the Textbook: Teaching Students to Question Knowledge
No schooling was allowed to interfere with my education. – Grant Allen
Interactive vs Lecture Learning. There are two ways to teach a lesson in school, one that is lecture-based and another that is more interactive. Of the two, the lecture-based one was less fun but allowed students to absorb more information; on the other hand, interactive ones led the students to rethink more over time.
Learning with verses to. Robert Nozick was a philosopher professor who always switched up what he was teaching about. Only once did he teach the same thing twice: it was on a good life. He continually did something new because he wanted to learn with his students.
Leading the next generation. When you pause and ask yourself what you would tell your younger self, that is then paving the way for the future generation to learn from your mistakes and translate them into their life if they so desire. Who you choose to listen from is important because their reputation and what they’ve done show you what they’ve endured.
A guideline for fact-checking is the following: (1) “interrogate information instead of simply consuming it,” (2) “reject rank and popularity as a proxy for reliability,” and (3) understand that the sender of information is often not its source.”
Continually rethinking your thought processes and refining your craft will bring you into a new set of avenues to grow further and evolve over time.
Ch. 10: That’s Not the Way We’ve Always Done It: Building Cultures of Learning at Work
If only it weren’t for the people…earth would be an engineer’s paradise – Kurt Vonnegut
Psychological safety. Psychological safety is an important part of cultures within organizations or groups to allow others to speak their mind. The first step of that begins with the leadership. How is your leadership normalizing vulnerability and inviting humility to show they are still a work in progress? The culture of your team is built from the top down.
Systems for inclusion. Especially in high-performance cultures, people who lack confidence in their own expertise censor themselves when other experts surround them. Having critical thinking questions to stay objective is one method to combat this. Questions such as the following were recommended:
What leads you to that assumption? Why do you think it is correct? What might happen if it’s wrong?
What are the uncertainties in your analysis?
I understand the advantages of your recommendation. What are the disadvantages?
These questions provide a larger perspective of the analysis and research gone into the problem. The response that brings up a red flag is: “Because somebody told us,” or simply going with the flow. This hints at a follower mentality rather than an independent thinker.
Past experiences. Sharing how to receive criticism and what worked in the past provides teammates with a viewpoint of how to bring up similar points of feedback in the future. Identifying these ways lets you learn how to best work with your teammates as you continue to innovate.
Part IV: Conclusion
Ch. 11: Escaping Tunnel Vision: Reconsidering Our Best-Laid Career and Life Plans
A malaise set in within a couple hours of my arriving. I thought getting a job might help. It turns out I have a lot of relatives in Hell, and, using connections, I became the assistant to a demon who pulls people’s teeth out. It wasn’t actually a job, more of an internship. But I was eager. And at first it was kind of interesting. After a while, though, you start asking yourself: Is this what I came to Hell for, to hand different kinds of pliers to a demon? – Jack Handey
Balance Grit and Flexibility. Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance, and research shows that it can play an important role in motivating us to accomplish long-term goals. That being said, we can also tunnel vision on our goals too heavily. The past investment becomes a sunk cost and reconsidering our commitments based on what our current circumstances are is the flexibility needed to reimagine our future plans. It takes humility to reconsider past commitments and doubt to question our present decisions. Taking both of these into consideration provides us the chance to pivot towards the best option.
Pursue Learning. Psychologists find that passions are often developed, not discovered. Pursuing the job where we expect to learn and contribute the most provides us with larger growth opportunities for future endeavors. New jobs are continually being created with the likes of Google, Uber, and Instagram being created over the past two decades. The pursuit of learning provides us with the skills to pivot freely with any new opportunities that may arise.
You can only see as far as your headlights. The world changes heavily over a year. A few years ago, we never had short-form content. This new change has accelerated our world drastically. Who knows what else is coming in the upcoming years? Focus on what you can learn and contribute over the next year or two, and stay open to what might come next.
