In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.
More from Wikipedia.
Here’s a quote from author Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Big Short) on the stories we tell ourselves:
“As I’ve gotten older—I would say starting in my mid-to-late 20s—I could not help but notice the effect on people of the stories they told about themselves. If you listen to people, if you just sit and listen, you’ll find that there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves.
There’s the kind of person who is always the victim in any story that they tell. Always on the receiving end of some injustice. There’s the person who’s always kind of the hero of every story they tell. There’s the smart person; they delivered the clever put down there.
There are lots of versions of this, and you’ve got to be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you. You are—in the way you craft your narrative—kind of crafting your character. And so I did at some point decide, “I am going to adopt self-consciously as my narrative, that I’m the happiest person anybody knows.” And it is amazing how happy-inducing it is.”
Last year, I decided to watch one TED Talk every Thursday for the entire year. Here’s are eight of my favorites and my notes on each talk.
In this talk, Tim Harford addresses multitasking, which he feels has gotten a bad name. He believes that while it is typically a bad idea, that’s only because we’re doing it wrong. We’re multitasking when we’re in a rush.
Harford believes that “slow-motion multitasking”, the act of having multiple projects going during the same time period, is a common habit of master creatives. A study of the top scientists in the world found that in their first 100 research papers, on average they changed the subject 43 times – and Harford believes this shifting of topics is key to creative breakthrough.
So, how do we stop all of these projects from becoming overwhelming? Harford suggests we manage our ideas by keeping them all in a box. It doesn’t matter whether the box is physical or digital, what matters is that we don’t lose our ideas so that we can build on them.
Examples of slow-motion multitaskers: Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Twyla Tharp, Michael Crichton.
Tim Urban is the founder of Wait But Why, one of the best blogs on the web. When you’ve got some free time (maybe when you’re procrastinating), give it a read. It’s sure to spark a lot of thought.
He gave this TED Talk in 2016, to highlight what goes on in the mind of a procrastinator.
He discusses three parts of the procrastinator’s brain:
Urban states that when the Panic Monster is the only mechanism for doing hard things, we run into problems. It leads to long term procrastination – the ignoring of health, fitness, and other important aspects of our lives. This, in turn, leads to unhappiness and regret.
He concludes the talk by stressing that we need to stay away from the instant gratification monkey part of our brain. We don’t have that much time, and we need to do what makes sense if we want to be fulfilled.
From TEDxTucson, Stephen Duneier discusses marginal adjustments, and how they can help you reach your biggest goals.
Duneier believes that what stands between us and our goals isn’t a magical skill or talent you’re born with, the gap is in how we approach decision making. Marginal improvements often have a huge impact on our lives.
In this talk, Duneier breaks down how he went from being a C student to an A+ student by making his workload manageable. Instead of pressing himself to read a book, he’d tell himself to read a couple of paragraphs at the most. Starting things, it turns out, is the quickest way to finishing them – and keeping our tasks simple is the quickest way to starting.
He highlights other examples, including how he learned to speak German, and how he used marginal adjustments to set a world record for knitting granny squares. He credits these achievements to the same process. Duneier takes ambitious projects and breaks them down into their simplest form while making marginal improvements along the way to improve his odds of success.
This talk is all about how we educate our children. Carol Dweck (the author of Mindset) speaks about a high school in Chicago where students who didn’t receive passing grades were assigned the grade of “not yet”.
This lets students understand they’re on a learning curve, a path to a better future.
She believes that to inspire kids to believe that they can improve, we need to build a bridge to yet. We do this by praising wisely.
Praising wisely is not praising intelligence or talent, but praising the process that kids engage in. Their focus, strategies, effort, perseverance, and improvement. This process creates resilient kids. To change children’s mindsets, we need to teach them that pushing beyond their comfort zone to learn something difficult is a good thing. Students taught this process showed a significant improvement in grades in many studies.
When you implement praise wisely, it changes how people view things. This leads to growth and improvement.
Sarah Knight had a great job as a book publisher, but she was still unhappy. So she quit. She cleared out her mind, and left room for focusing on the things that brought her joy.
She decided to make a manifesto of sorts out of this, called The Magic of Not Giving a Fuck. In this talk, she defines giving a fuck as caring, and not giving a fuck as not caring. If you don’t care about something, she believes you should stop giving your time, thoughts, and money to it. This gives you more time and energy to things you actually do care about.
Part of her method is called “Not Sorry”. She suggests being honest and polite, but not being sorry about the things you’ve decided not to care about. These things can be tasks, events, and even people. Decide what annoys you, make a list, and carefully cross out the things you don’t want to care about anymore. Then stop giving a fuck about those things and cross them off your list.
Cal Newport is a computer scientist and the author of Deep Work. He’s never had a social media account.
When he tells people this, he hear three common objections:
In this TED Talk, he walks through reasons why (in his opinion) those objections aren’t valid. He believes social media is purely an entertainment product, that using it is not rare or valuable, and that it leads to many negative consequences like feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and anxiety.
Newport says that life without social media is peaceful and productive. If you treat your attention with respect, you can work with intensity and trade that for time. He finishes the talk by asserting that you’ll be surprised by what you can get done in 8 hours with intense concentration. He covers this at length in Deep Work.
I had a really rough week and found this TED Talk to be extremely helpful. Andrew Solomon reminds us that ease makes less an impression on us than struggle. While we cannot bear a pointless torment, we can endure great pain if we believe that it’s purposeful – so we need to forge meaning, build identity, and invite the world to share in our joy.
“If you banish the dragons you banish the heroes”
One other note: while I’m not too familiar with Bible passages, 2 Corinthians 12 was mentioned in this talk, and it resonated.
Morgana Bailey is a Human Resources Professional who hid her true self for over 16 years. In this talk, she explains why that’s dangerous, and how our biggest obstacles are our own insecurities.
“There are more scary things inside than outside”
-Toni Morrison
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Joseph Campbell was a man of many interests.
He was most famous for his work on mythology, but he also loved to study dreams, art, psychology, literature, and anthropology.
He didn’t follow the path that society laid out for him. When the Great Depression hit, he retreated to a cabin and read for over 9 hours a day. He went from studying aboriginal peoples to James Joyce to the symbology behind Tarot cards. There was no telling where he was headed next at any given point.
Through his writings, in particular, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell inspired a generation of filmmakers. George Miller, Stephen Spielberg, and George Lucas all give him a great deal of credit for their success.
“It’s possible that if I had not run across him I would still be writing Star Wars today.”
-George Lucas
After his books helped inspire Luke Skywalker’s journey, many people turned to Campbell to seek words of encouragement for their own journeys.
Whenever he was asked about career advice or finding one’s own way in life, he offered the same words wisdom:
Follow your bliss.
It’s pretty simple advice but can at times be hard to follow. Since I read The Hero’s Journey I’ve been trying to remind myself to lean into the things I enjoy and step away from the things I don’t. Sometimes the latter is even more important. If you let go of things holding you down, you free up space for things that you love.
In my case, that means more time for sitting and coffee.
“I’ve followed my bliss. And it’s been a good way.”
-Joseph Campbell
If you’re like most people, there are probably only a handful of books that you’ve picked up more than once.
That’s kind of crazy when you stop and think about it. When a book is powerful enough to move us or make us think differently, why wouldn’t we pick it up again and again?
This video from The School of Life does a great job explaining why we should be learning continuously and coming back to the things that have shaped us for the better.
If we can find things in books that speak to us and we want to incorporate those things into our lives, we need to re-read them, write down the important passages, and review them regularly.
“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”
-Muhammad Ali
This doesn’t just apply to learning and reading books, though.
Repetition is the way forward when it comes to establishing good habits as well. In his bestselling book Atomic Habits, James Clear writes:
“Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits…You get what you repeat.”
Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits, your ability shoot under 72 is a lagging measure of your time spent at the driving range, etc.
If you want to be better. If you want to be smarter. If you want to be faster. Let repetition be your coach.