What makes us human apart from the clothes that we wear, the houses that we build and live in and the amazing destructive gadgets that we create and rely on isn’t the food we eat. It is the innate desire to be in control. All of us want to have a seat at the table where decisions that matter are made, we want to be in the percentage of people who “matter”. We want to be in control, to know what’s coming before it happens, to understand why something happened the way it did and so on and so forth.

This very desire to be in control and want to know our situations and surroundings to the level best of our abilities is in itself what makes us very much like the animals we are not. Animals, in their natural environments, are built to be hierarchical. Right from insects like ants that have the queen and the worker, each knowing their place in society and living up to it - we can see the hierarchy. I could mention more examples, but I won’t because I want you to finish this post ;-)

In an effort to be in control, when faced with a difficult situation, we want to rearrange the world into arbitrary hierarchies to make sense of the world, maintain our beliefs and most importantly, 

Being in control makes us feel way better about ourselves. Quite a number of people think of me as a nerd. It, therefore, follows that when I study as much I get as good results. This is an ideal situation. I was in control till the very end. In some situations, when I am not grounded enough, I might think - “Perhaps I’m better than him or her because I did better than them in this discipline.” My underlying animal nature allows me to.

Then comes the situation where I put in the effort and the outcome does not match my expectations. Then, I say - “This semester was difficult anyway. At least I have a really good laptop and my favourite team beat our derby rivals when we met last.” In that very subtle way, I have rearranged the world that now seemed not to be in my favour to seem like I am still in control and everything is going great. Very “animalistic” if you ask me.

Think about when you tried to rearrange the lego blocks of your life to make a wonderful picnic site from a pile of garbage. No, I do not want you to feel bad. Neither do I want you to feel good. I just want to make you think about some of the stuff that I think about.

Once you see this happen, it is very very difficult for you to unsee it. This bias is everywhere, in people of all ages. You see it, quite a lot if I may add, in politicians, in courtrooms, in the words we choose to describe people and their decisions and actions. We see it in all these situations.

This happens instinctively, like Rick from Rick and Morty says "

Yeah, sure, […] if you spend all day shuffling words around, you can make anything sound bad.

The discovery of this has made me think of ways where instead of comparing myself to other people in the same situations, I do it to myself but from different situations. If I really want to be better, I think I should strive to be better than how I was a while back.

See you around. Text me if this struck a nerve.

Control

I take writing, “recreational writing” if I may say, as a way of putting yourself out there. I have never really been outgoing on that front. As such, it is very difficult. For me, there is nothing scarier than a blank page that has to be filled with words coming from my head about myself and about personal encounters that I have had.


My friends have been telling me that I have my way with words and analogies that I come up with. They want me to write more. I don’t want this, and neither does gold want the heat of the furnace.


It is therefore with good reason that I have decided to write and let you people into my mind albeit anonymously. I intend to write about the various “lenses” through which I view life and I’m viewed through. Some might make sense, others not so much. All I ask is that you give it 5 minutes. (I’ll write about this soon before the end of the week actually.)


However, I’m afraid that if there is anyone among you that has been endowed with a slightly higher level of intellect, you can easily decipher who this is and who my friends are. Please, keep these ideas to yourself.


I hope you enjoy them enough to tell a friend about these stories and are not appalled enough to stay away for more than a fortnight.

Prologue

A few years ago I used to be a hothead. Whenever anyone said anything, I’d think of a way to disagree. I’d push back hard if something didn’t fit my world-view.

It’s like I had to be first with an opinion – as if being first meant something. But what it really meant was that I wasn’t thinking hard enough about the problem. The faster you react, the less you think. Not always, but often.

It’s easy to talk about knee jerk reactions as if they are things that only other people have. You have them too. If your neighbor isn’t immune, neither are you.

This came to a head back in 2007. I was speaking at the Business Innovation Factory conference in Providence, RI. So was Richard Saul Wurman. After my talk Richard came up to introduce himself and compliment my talk. That was very generous of him. He certainly didn’t have to do that.

And what did I do? I pushed back at him about the talk he gave. While he was making his points on stage, I was taking an inventory of the things I didn’t agree with. And when presented with an opportunity to speak with him, I quickly pushed back at some of his ideas. I must have seemed like such an asshole.

His response changed my life. It was a simple thing. He said “Man, give it five minutes.” I asked him what he meant by that? He said, it’s fine to disagree, it’s fine to push back, it’s great to have strong opinions and beliefs, but give my ideas some time to set in before you’re sure you want to argue against them. “Five minutes” represented “think”, not react. He was totally right. I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.

Richard has spent his career thinking about these problems. He’s given it 30 years. And I gave it just a few minutes. Now, certainly he can be wrong and I could be right, but it’s better to think deeply about something first before being so certain you’re right.

There’s also a difference between asking questions and pushing back. Pushing back means you already think you know. Asking questions means you want to know. Ask more questions.

Learning to think first rather than react quick is a life long pursuit. It’s tough. I still get hot sometimes when I shouldn’t. But I’m really enjoying all the benefits of getting better.

If you aren’t sure why this is important, think about this quote from Jonathan Ive regarding Steve Jobs’ reverence for ideas:

And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.

That’s deep. Ideas are fragile. They often start powerless. They’re barely there, so easy to ignore or skip or miss.

There are two things in this world that take no skill: 1. Spending other people’s money and 2. Dismissing an idea.

Dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. You can scoff at it. You can ignore it. You can puff some smoke at it. That’s easy. The hard thing to do is protect it, think about it, let it marinate, explore it, riff on it, and try it. The right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.

So next time you hear something, or someone, talk about an idea, pitch an idea, or suggest an idea, give it five minutes. Think about it a little bit before pushing back, before saying it’s too hard or it’s too much work. Those things may be true, but there may be another truth in there too: It may be worth it.

Thoughts.