Wear Rain Gear

"There will be weather." One of my favorite quotes from Bill Beaster, my one-time middle school industrial arts teacher, basketball teammate, now friend, was his retort to a comment questioning whether he really wanted to bike since it was supposed to rain for his weekend bike ride. Everyone knows that we can't change the weather, but Bill has an understanding about the weather. By being proactive, he also can overcome non-ideal conditions to still have fun.

The key in our everyday lives is to understand the things we can change and the things we cannot change based on effort. Bill Burnett and David Evans call those things effort can't change gravity problems (Burnett and Evans). Bill Beaster didn't succumb to the idea that it was going to rain and change his plans, he overcame the weather by putting on rain gear--pretty simple.

Seth Godin gives us a graphic way of looking at the problem in his Quadrants of Discernment (Godin 2010, 181) . The x axis is passion and the y axis is attachment. We want to live in the upper right corner of discernment and passion, where we are choosing the types of problems or projects that our passion and effort can change, ones that make us a linchpin. The bottom left quadrant is where the passive person who feels they cannot create change lives. They are the whiners.

Burnett, William, and David J. Evans. Designing Your Life: Build a Life That Works for You. Vintage Books, 2018.

Godin, Seth. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Portfolio, 2010.

Predictions

 The ability to create a "story," to project what will happen in the future rather than merely reacting to what is currently happening, or acting purely on instinct is what makes us human (Johnson 81). That is how stock brokers, professional sports general managers, and even people filling out NCAA basketball brackets and other prognosticators make their living. They take information at hand and make educated guesses about what will happen, often for financial gain. After studying 28,000 predictions by people in the media regarding economic and geopolitical events, political science professor Phillip Tetlock, concluded that often those people, when their predictions are examined after the event, are entirely wrong (Johnson 83). These events projected by “experts” are actually no better than a guess. It is almost like a lottery, most people don't win, but when they do, someone makes sure everyone knows it.

Tetlock did not leave it at that. He examined what separated (more) successful prognosticators from the others and he found that being able to identify unknowns (what Jimmy the Greek from the 1970’s NFL Today termed “intangibles”) and feel like they may be important led to more success. Having the flexibility to take in as much information as possible, while keeping crazy ideas in play was the most vital aspect of prediction.

Johnson, Steven. Farsighted; How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most. Riverhead Books, 2018.

70 Percent Rule

 In any problem with uncertainty, it is important to challenge what you think you already know by seeking out contradictory beliefs and evidence. It may be easy to set up straw man alternatives and easily dismiss them in order to pursue the original path. Paul Nutt, decision making expert at Ohio State University, found that 50% of decisions made in business are not successful, meaning they cannot be solved (Harvard Management Update). The decision makers often feel that a decision must be made now and that any delay will lead to failure, or at least not appearing to be confident and competent. In limiting the scope of alternatives, they force the group to choose from flawed choices, yet may be unaware of the depth of the flaws. A worse reason may be that so much money or time has been put into an idea or project, that not pursuing it would seem like a waste.

Additionally, assessing certainty in decision making is effective in recognizing what might be unknown such as determining success of a project, idea, etc. (Johnson 65). Because many tasks we do or problems we solve have multiple variables and do not have a clear path to success, taking time to establish what is known and what is unknown is vital. While there may be no way to actually determine certainty, using Jeff Bezos "70 percent rule" instead of waiting to make sure 100% of the information is in becomes a more realistic metric (Johnson 65). Acknowledging the fact that we won't know everything about a complex decision and that we will have to negotiate bumps in the road is far better than being paralyzed by having to make a decision.

Harvard Management Update. “Increase the Odds of Being Right.” Harvard Business Review, 7 Aug. 2014, hbr.org/2008/02/increase-the-odds-of-being-rig-1.

Johnson, Steven. Farsighted; How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most. Riverhead Books, 2018.