More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Those who self-identified as impostors didn’t do any worse in their diagnoses, and they did significantly better when it came to bedside manner—they were rated as more empathetic, respectful, and professional, as well as more effective in asking questions and sharing information.
Impostors may be the last to jump in, but they may also be the last to bail out. Second, impostor thoughts can motivate us to work smarter.
don’t fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Feeling like an impostor puts us in a beginner’s mindset, leading us to question assumptions that others have taken for granted. Third, feeling like an impostor can make us better learners.
Now she had reached a point of confident humility, and she interpreted doubts differently: they were a cue that she needed to improve her tools.
We don’t have to wait for our confidence to rise to achieve challenging goals. We can build it through achieving challenging goals. “I have come to welcome impostor syndrome as a good thing: it’s fuel to do more, try more,” Halla says. “I’ve learned to use it to my advantage. I actually thrive on the growth that comes from the self-doubt.”
knowledge is best sought from experts, but creativity and wisdom can come from anywhere.
we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improving their sight. They don’t boast about how much they know; they marvel at how little they understand. They’re aware that each answer raises new questions, and the quest for knowledge is never finished. A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.
sociologist Murray Davis argued that when ideas survive, it’s not because they’re true—it’s because they’re interesting. What makes an idea interesting is that it challenges our weakly held opinions.
When a core belief is questioned, though, we tend to shut down rather than open up. It’s as if there’s a miniature dictator living inside our heads, controlling the flow of facts to our minds, much like Kim Jong-un controls the press in North Korea. The technical term for this in psychology is the totalitarian ego, and its job is to keep out threatening information.
the participant who had the strongest negative reaction was code-named Lawful. He came from a blue-collar background and was unusually precocious, having started college at sixteen and joined the study at seventeen. One of his beliefs was that technology was harming civilization, and he became hostile when his views were questioned. Lawful went on to become an academic, and when he penned his magnum opus, it was clear that he hadn’t changed his mind.
Like a ted kaczinski type
givers had higher rates of failure than takers and matchers—but higher rates of success, too. When you read a study that surprises you, how do you react? Many people would get defensive, searching for flaws in the study’s design or the statistical analysis. Danny did the opposite. His eyes lit up, and a huge grin appeared on his face. “That was wonderful,” he said. “I was wrong.”
enjoys discovering that he was wrong, because it means he is now less wrong than before.
two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity.
Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. Values are your core principles in life—they might be excellence and generosity, freedom and fairness, or security and integrity. Basing your identity on these kinds of principles enables you to remain open-minded about the best ways to advance them.
When they define themselves by values rather than opinions, they buy themselves the flexibility to update their practices in light of new evidence.
The single most important driver of forecasters’ success was how often they updated their beliefs. The best forecasters went through more rethinking cycles.
“Although small amounts of evidence are sufficient to make us draw conclusions, they are seldom sufficient to make us revise them.” That’s where the best forecasters excelled: they were eager to think again. They saw their opinions more as hunches than as truths—as possibilities to entertain rather than facts to embrace.
His values put truth above tribe:
identifying even a single reason why we might be wrong can be enough to curb overconfidence. Jean-Pierre went further; he made a list of all the arguments that pundits were making about why Trump couldn’t win and went looking for evidence that they (and he) were wrong.
If we’re insecure, we make fun of others. If we’re comfortable being wrong, we’re not afraid to poke fun at ourselves. Laughing at ourselves reminds us that although we might take our decisions seriously, we don’t have to take ourselves too seriously. Research suggests that the more frequently we make fun of ourselves, the happier we tend to be.*
Being wrong won’t always be joyful. The path to embracing mistakes is full of painful moments, and we handle those moments better when we remember they’re essential for progress.
The fear of missing the mark next year is a powerful motivator to get a crystal-clear view of last year’s mistakes. “People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot,” Jeff Bezos says.
When he makes a forecast, he also makes a list of the conditions in which it should hold true—as well as the conditions under which he would change his mind. He explains that this keeps him honest, preventing him from getting attached to a bad prediction.
they’re judged more favorably if they acknowledge the new data rather than deny them. After all, it doesn’t matter “whose fault it is that something is broken if it’s your responsibility to fix it,” actor Will Smith has said. “Taking responsibility is taking your power back.”
yes, we’re entitled to hold opinions inside our own heads. If we choose to express them out loud, though, I think it’s our responsibility to ground them in logic and facts, share our reasoning with others, and change our minds when better evidence emerges.
Kaczynski’s case leaves many questions about his mental health unanswered. Still, I can’t help but wonder: If he had learned to question his opinions, would he still have been able to justify resorting to violence? If he had developed the capacity to discover that he was wrong, would he still have ended up doing something so wrong?
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions. —Oscar Wilde
task conflict—clashes about ideas and opinions. We have task conflict when we’re debating whom to hire, which restaurant to pick for dinner, or whether to name our child Gertrude or Quasar.
All in all, more than a hundred studies have examined conflict types in over eight thousand teams.
“The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.”
Relationship conflict is destructive in part because it stands in the way of rethinking. When a clash gets personal and emotional, we
What matters is how respectfully parents argue, not how frequently. Kids whose parents clash constructively feel more emotionally safe in elementary school, and over the next few years they actually demonstrate more helpfulness and compassion toward their classmates.
They kept quarreling because they enjoyed it and learned from the experience. “I like scrapping with Orv,”
This is the bridge between gender cultures
Agreeable people make for a great support network: they’re excited to encourage us and cheerlead for us. Rethinking depends on a different kind of network: a challenge network, a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses.
dissatisfaction promotes creativity only when people feel committed and supported—and that cultural misfits are most likely to add value when they have strong bonds with their colleagues.
challenge network is often a cornerstone of the peer-review process. We submit articles anonymously, and they’re reviewed blindly by independent experts.
disagreeable people who are givers, not takers.
the volume of the arguments between the two highly accomplished leaders might drown out the voices of people who were less comfortable speaking up: newcomers, introverts, women, and minorities. It’s common for people who lack power or status to shift into politician mode, suppressing their dissenting views in favor of conforming to the HIPPO—the HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion. Sometimes they have no other choice if they want to survive. To make sure their desire for approval didn’t prevent them from introducing task conflict, Nicole encouraged new people to bring their divergent ideas to the
...more
the tension is intellectual, not emotional. The tone is vigorous and feisty rather than combative or aggressive. They don’t disagree just for the sake of it; they disagree because they care. “Whether you disagree loudly, or quietly yet persistently put forward a different perspective,” Nicole explains, “we come together to support the common goal of excellence—of making great films.”
Agreeableness is about seeking social harmony, not cognitive consensus. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Although I’m terrified of hurting other people’s feelings, when it comes to challenging their thoughts, I have no fear. In fact, when I argue with someone, it’s not a display of disrespect—it’s a sign of respect. It means I value their views enough to contest them.
Agreeable people don’t always steer clear of conflict. They’re highly attuned to the people around them and often adapt to the norms in the room.
“But when I’m involved in something bigger than myself,” he observes, “I feel like I have an opportunity, a responsibility really, to speak up, speak out, debate. Fight like hell when the morning whistle blows, but go out for a beer after the one at five o’clock.”
Disagreeable people don’t just challenge us to think again. They also make agreeable people comfortable arguing, too. Instead of fleeing from friction, our grumpy colleagues engage it directly. By making it clear that they can handle a tussle, they create a norm for the rest of us to follow. If we’re not careful, though, what starts as a scuffle can turn into a brawl. How can we avoid that slippery slope? GETTING HOT WITHOUT GETTING MAD A major problem with task conflict is that it often spills over into relationship conflict.
framing a dispute as a debate rather than as a disagreement signals that you’re receptive to considering dissenting opinions and changing your mind, which in turn motivates the other person to share more information
We’re more likely to have a good fight if we argue about how.
Exhausting someone in argument is not the same as convincing him. —Tim Kreider
suggests that the issue should be evaluated on two grounds: whether preschool is currently underprovided and underconsumed, and whether it helps those who are the least fortunate.
more than a third of their planning comments to finding common ground.
They didn’t want to water down their best points.
average negotiators were more likely to enter into defend-attack spirals.
