Book Summary (The Art of Thinking Clearly)

A cognitive error is the failure to think situations through clearly before concluding. Cognitive errors are systematic, meaning they don't happen out of the blues or once in a while, they are rather routine mistakes that we continue to make. What's interesting is that we don't intentionally learn these errors, we pick them up from childhood and our brain is on the automatic function when similar situations arise. For example, a common cognitive error is overestimating our knowledge more than we underestimate it. Most of us are victims of this particular error. We hardly ever underestimate our knowledge on topics that we know averagely. The common error is to think that you already know all (or most) of the things that you need to know about something simply because you were once educated in it. The only time you get to see how wrong your estimation is is when you start putting the knowledge to work. Here's an example that's very widespread: most educated couples go into marriage believing they know how to raise kids only to realize they know little to nothing about parenting. There are so many cognitive errors that we fall victim to as a result of evolution, the kind of environment we were raised in, or our unique life experiences.

The media can — to a large extent — be blamed for the prevalence of the survivor bias because it only covers stories of successful individuals. The only time you get to read or watch anything about someone who failed is when that person is influential or comes from an affluent root. You never see stories of the masses who tried and failed miserably. But year in year out, the media keeps celebrating stories of people who moved from rags to riches. And this sort of thing makes the average individual imagine that success is as easy as the media portrays it. What many people don't see is that, behind every successful person, there are millions of others who tried and failed at the same thing. And thousands saw small success but couldn't make it to the headlines before they died or ruined their reputation. It doesn't mean success is unattainable, it only means that our survivorship bias makes us underestimate the amount of work that goes into building success. It doesn't matter what anyone tells you, the truth is that not everyone would become a star. Some would indeed die trying. The best way to guard against survivorship bias is to frequently visit "the grave" where failed projects are buried far from the eyes of the media or which the media intentionally neglected. In other words, don't just be interested in success stories, look out for people who failed despite putting in all the work, and investing the right amount of money. You'd learn from studying them, and most importantly, you would avoid the bias. Did you know? The fact that you succeeded by following a set of practices doesn't mean you've found a success secret. Many times, you just got lucky. Only call it a principle when others can replicate it and achieve the same result.

We all have a natural bias for following the crowd and that's because numbers are a huge source of validation for us. If a good number of people buy a certain product, we naturally believe the product must be good else that many people won't buy it. Marketers are well aware of this psychological bias and they use it to sell their business. Leaders also take advantage of it to make people follow their noble causes. Indeed, numbers often point us to the truth, but there are a few exceptions and you must be careful not to make mistakes in those situations. Social proof was useful centuries ago when humans were mostly hunter-gatherers. In those days, the only reliable source of information (and protection) you had was your fellow humans. If you're traveling in a group and all the ten people in front of you turn their horses around and start running from a supposed danger, you would be foolish to stand there and see if the danger was real. The wisest thing to do was to turn your horse around and escape with them. Such was the way of life of our ancestors and those instincts have been passed down to us. But they aren't as useful as they used to be then; therefore you need to take the time to investigate things yourself before following the crowd.

It's difficult to make decisions when there are so many options. Having options to choose from is good, but there's a limit and when that limit is exceeded, you will face problems trying to make a pick. This is technically known as the paradox of choice. We've grown and advanced so much that you would hardly find anything you don't have secondary and tertiary options for. There are different varieties of products, different careers to choose from, so many schools to pick from, so many potential partners from which you have to choose one, and so on. The varieties make it hard to pick what would be best for you. And again, you're much likely to feel discontent after deciding because you may feel you didn't pick the right thing. To avoid this, you have to document your preferences before starting to look at the available options. When your preferences aren't documented or if you don't make sure you stick to them, you're likely to go for something you would later wish you didn't choose. Even after making a preference list and sticking to it once the decision has been made, you have to be careful not to fall for the outcome bias — another thinking error that tends to judge the outcome of a decision rather than the decision process itself. When you're sure you stuck to your preference list and liked the decision you made, but the outcome wasn't what you expected, don't regret the decision. Learn to judge the decision-making process and not the outcome.

When we succeed at anything, we like to take all the credit, even when we often aren't the only ones who directly contributed to our success. But when failure hits, we blame everything and everyone but ourselves. If you read annual business reports a lot, you would see this bias in the comments given by business leaders. When the company performs incredibly, the CEO attributes it to all his good qualities. Some leaders are lenient enough to give their team some credit for the accomplishment, but most people take all the glory. When the company fails, however, you might see leaders blaming the government, the economy, or some other external factors. It's hard to see anyone admitting failure. We all have this trait. In high school, you clapped yourself on the shoulder when you aced a subject, but blamed the teacher or the subject when you failed. This is known as the self- serving bias. Where does it come from? We aren't exactly sure, but studies reveal that it stems from our desire to feel good about ourselves. In intimate relationships, the self-serving bias can destroy your union if you take it too far. It's common for partners to overestimate their contributions to the relationship. Rarely do anyone admits that their partner's equal contribution is the reason the relationship is healthy. This can make you underappreciated your partner, which could lead to emotional problems in the relationship. The best way to avoid self-serving bias is to ask your honest friends (or even your enemy) to objectively tell you what your strengths and weaknesses are. Don't argue with their observations. Take some time to reflect to see instances where those weaknesses were obvious and take measures to change.

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to take action, but something delayed you and you later discovered inaction was the best response for that situation? We have a natural bias for action. If something new or unusual is going on and we don't know what to do, we still feel like staying and doing nothing isn't the most appropriate response. In a business setting, for example, if you were just recently promoted to a higher position and you're faced with a new problem you've never encountered before, the natural tendency is to think through the problem and act as soon as possible before things get worse. You would seldom want to wait to study the situation deeper or to seek help from experienced people in the company. You wouldn't want to wait because you're scared things might get out of hand, and you wouldn't feel like contacting your seniors because you don't want to come off as incapable. But the truth remains that rushing to take action when you're new to the situation can be disastrous. Your best bet is to calm down and watch the situation unfold first. And if you don't want to do that, you can reach out to more experienced people who probably have seen similar situations unfold over and over again.

Thinking errors are a result of our evolutional dispositions and/or our own life experiences. You must learn to avoid them because they will shortchange you. The consequences of a thinking error can be anywhere from mild to disastrous and that's the more reason you need to avoid them. The first step is awareness — that's a little too obvious because you can only avoid what you know about. Just knowing the cognitive errors and your natural disposition to fall victim to them would keep you from ignorantly falling for them. The cognitive errors listed in this summary aren't all there is but they are the major ones people fall victim to without even knowing. Thinking more clearly has a lot to do with being like Michelangelo when he's sculpting: focus on the image and remove everything that doesn't look like it. We, sure enough, don't know all the things that make us successful or happy or fulfilled because those things vary from person to person, but we do know the things that keep us from success, happiness, and fulfilment. Learn to avoid those things in your day-to-day activities.