If you have an intention to work with cognitive bias, there is no more powerful or beneficial place to direct your attention than the planning fallacy. Anyone who’s been within a stone’s throw of project management knows about this one. First defined by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Twersky in 1979, [...]
You’re probably not any keener than I am to think of yourself as an overgrown rat in a lab, obsessively pushing buttons to get rewards and avoid punishments. Of course that’s not all we are (otherwise I couldn’t type this and you couldn’t read it), but there are substantial portions of our [...]
Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow is a compelling, deeply researched argument that human brains have two systems for engaging in thinking. What he calls "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional. "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. System 1 is the source of[...]
You can’t do a lot to change the way your hardwired biases operate. But there are ways to skillfully deploy your biases to minimize their negative impact. Buster Benson, of the Better Humans website, points out that one particular bias can be a handy ally. “Confirmation bias” describes your [...]
The cognitive biases we carry with as part of our mental equipment are certainly inconvenient. It calls into question one of the aspects of our experience we are generally most proud of: the quality of our thinking. It’s not surprising that your thought-stream really thinks highly of…your [...]
Mistakes on collaborative teams are bad. “Post-mortem” meetings indicate just how catastrophic the consequences of bad decisions can be. Build-checking tools like the Siren of Shame and LightBuild, designed to give instant feedback when something goes wrong, rightly emphasize the need for [...]
One of my oldest and dearest friends, Bob Boiko, is a ferocious question-asker. I can count on hearing one phrase from him any time I’m running a business or philosophical idea by him: “OK Joe, let’s tease that apart.” It’s Bob’s gentle way of saying, “I think there are some [...]
You can fight back against cognitive bias! One of the easiest and most effective lines of attack is to compensate for your built-in tendency to focus on the negatives. Rick Hanson’s book Hardwiring Happiness details a practice he calls “taking in the good”. It’s the choice to allow yourself[...]
Cognitive biases come about because your brain has hard-wired shortcuts that you use continually to do basic tasks, like walking across the room (which does require making quite a few judgments). But you use your awesome metaphorical and context-switching ability to use the same shortcuts in [...]
One of my favorite Netflix programs is Japanese Style Originator. A panel of Japanese celebrities views video segments on nooks and crannies of Japanese culture and tries to correctly guess the reasons for various details. The show is a delightful window into the subtleties of (for example) [...]