Book Review: The Art of Thinking Clearly
(Author: Rolf Dobelli; Publisher: Sceptre, Great Britain; Year of publication: 2013)
1. Reasons I chose to read this book and its overview:
Our actions are a result of our decisions, our decisions are driven by our thinking, our thinking is influenced by our knowledge, and our knowledge is developed through our experiences. We all gather some common and many uncommon experiences in our lives. Our childhood experiences provided by our parents, formulate our understanding of love and care. Our teachers, mentors, peers, and friends contribute to our experiences built in schools, colleges, offices, and other surroundings. Books, the internet, and social media are the primary sources of information we are engaged in within our life. The knowledge we acquire through these experiences and information sources seed the way we understand the world around us — how things work, why certain events happened, what we mean by certain concepts, etc. Exposure to these knowledge banks, combined with our interests and strengths, helps define and create a visual of our goal. Our mind can churn the ocean of information, analyze the buckets of interest, and filter out the most valuable insights that act as a trigger to make decisions. The decisions we make based on our knowledge help us perform our actions, leading us towards our goals. We work towards a goal in life; for some, these goals are smaller — such as success in examination, winning a match, etc, while for some, the goals are aspirational — to become a CEO of an MNC, representing India in a sport, etc. Goals define the purpose of our life and give us reasons to move ahead in our life.
However, we all agree that our life does not follow a linear path as described above. Not every action of ours aligns with our goals, not every decision we take is correct, not every knowledge we gain is relevant and valuable, and not all experiences are good experiences. One common factor across these different gateways is the human brain that powers the circuit of all the milestones in our lives. The brain is the processor and the epicenter of many actions in our human body. The knowledge gained through our experiences acts as an input while the decisions we take as an output of this process. The nature of the output is definitely a function of input received and the previously accumulated knowledge which processes this input. We take many things for granted which affect our decisions and actions and therefore deviate the expected outcomes of this process. This book comprehensively documents and explains human biases, phenomenon, effects, errors, and fallacies which unknowingly affect the performance of the human brain and the way we think. The author has listed what he refers to as, “systematic cognitive errors”, which are deep-rooted in our minds and it is difficult to get rid of them. The book enables its readers to build their ability to make all the decisions rationally by making them aware of these errors. The book contents also have a strong correlation with the learnings from the “Human Values and Technology” class.
2. Brief on the chapters in the book
a. Significance of non-linear paths towards our goal
Our beliefs and understanding are like molten metal; they keep evolving as we keep growing and eventually solidify to form our theories. When new input arrives in our brain, we first forcibly try to match its compatibility with our existing theories and if the match is not found, we reject the new information. This tendency to lead new information towards a previously drawn conclusion is called Confirmation Bias. These deep-rooted beliefs layered for years deep in our minds become our mental models. We seldom challenge these mental models or assumptions, and they stop us from opening new windows in our minds. These barriers in our minds need to be broken for generating new ideas and finding new possibilities. We often get overwhelmed when we identify patterns or find certain events aligning to the existing patterns (we commonly use the phrase, “joining the pieces of the puzzle together”). The author establishes the importance of questioning the thoughts behind these patterns since they might be the most obvious ones and may not lead to an expected outcome.
As humans working towards our goal, not every step of ours leads to the desired outcome. Getting ‘first time right’ is not easy and thus we need multiple attempts to accomplish specific tasks. However, one should be ready to experiment and explore new ways to be successful if we are unsuccessful after repeated attempts. Through the Chapter Why you should visit cemeteries, the author establishes the importance of learning through failures. We have all been conditioned to believe that it is the success that counts and thus we channelize our efforts towards doing things right, referred to as Survivorship Bias by the author. But failures provide the best learning, knowing why and where we went wrong can increase our chances of success. We can also diagnose and learn from others' failures to gain insights.
Success, small or big, when achieved develops confidence in an individual. However, people think they have immense knowledge of the subject which in reality is not true, they are shadowed by overconfidence. Such people live in the world of optimism and are blindfolded to seeing pessimistic scenarios. We give credit for our achievements or failures to the steps we have taken in the past. In hindsight, every past move aligns with the present outcomes. This quality of predicting things right builds our confidence but it also makes us arrogant, egoistic and encourages us to take bigger risks. The author warns us from this phenomenon called the Hindsight Bias as it can lead to severe problems in the future. Hope is like the light beyond the tunnel that keeps us in the pursuit of achieving our goals. We invest time, money, and effort in the process due to this affirmative belief. We continue making this investment indefinitely, even after crossing the threshold limit and not realizing that any further investment is in vain. The author defines Sunk Cost Fallacy as our tendency to stick around with our past for longer hoping for a return on the bulk investment already made, eventually leading to losses.
We make our decisions based on the most obvious facts and figures. Prioritization brings order to the chaos, but it also directs our attention to the top-most items in the list. The items in the bottom half are outside the consideration set. The size of the impact governs our choices; thus, we always wish for larger outcomes. It is important to thoroughly evaluate all the alternatives because even small shifts can create big impacts.
b. Standing tall to the external forces
Often, we get carried away by the face value of the stuff we observe, hear, or read. The author refers to this as Swimmer’s Body Illusion and explains it with an example Harvard graduates are the best management professionals in the world, may be because they admit the best students and not because they offer the best pedagogy in management. Likewise, it is vital to delayer and understand what drives choices in our lives. Another simple example of a market illusion that has historically worked for the brands is “SALE”. This word makes the customers smile as they consider themselves to be in an advantageous position. This is the strategy of making the benefit (though false) more visible to the customers by catching their attention to — “50% cheaper; 100$ worth goods at 70%, etc., referred to as Contrast Bias by the author.
Aristotle, the legendary Greek philosopher said, “Man is by nature a social animal”. Through relationships, human beings exhibit their feelings and emotions towards other individuals. Relationships are selfless bonds with mutual transactions of love and care. The author mentions that as humans we do not want to be in another person’s debt. Today, many companies exploit this quality of humans for their own benefit. They incentivize their first transaction (for example — free tasting of food items in supermarkets), making it appear attractive to their customers. To close the transaction, customers end up purchasing the non-essential item and fall prey to the phenomenon of Reciprocity.
Ever since our childhood, stories have always been the best way to learn new things. Stories exist everywhere, in the books, media, neighborhood, schools, workplaces, and even our homes. Stories are experiential, they bring clarity which improves our understanding and makes us believe them. However, sometimes we sink deep into them and begin curate the end ourselves while sometimes we become elements of the stories curated by others (marketers). This is the story bias and to eliminate it-we should always try to find the source, intent, and hidden content of the stories from unreliable sources.
Commonly known as herd mentality, this is a phenomenon where our actions are driven by the actions of many others. More people acting or reacting in a certain way becomes a social proof and validation for the other person. We thus go with the flow, without reflecting whether the flow is moving in the right direction. This is an effective advertising tactic followed by some global brands to advocate their products and pull the target audience towards them.
3. Reflection
This book is a compilation of ninety-nine errors, fallacies, and mistakes that originate in our heads and knowingly or unknowingly we repeatedly keep making in our lives. To round this off, the 100th one being, not reading this book earlier. The book generates the highest level of awareness for our inner self to validate the fundamentals of our thinking process. In this modern age with many external forces influencing our thoughts, decisions, and actions, the insights from the book can be used to create a list of critical “dos” and “don’ts” to be remembered lifelong. These are the sources of tamasic qualities of inertia and attachment and obstruct us from understanding higher wisdom and happiness. The positive side to this is that the regulator or the control to avoid, nullify, and reject these errors rests with us, if we are aware, we can act to correct them.
The first fifteen chapters have been deeply reflective and evoked the following questions in my mind:
i. Do I think enough before I act?
a. May be not
ii. What forces act on my mind when I think?
a. I do not think I can list all, at this moment. It requires more thinking
iii. Do I collect all the facts before I make my decisions?
a. May be not
iv. Do other’s actions influence my actions?
a. Yes, how much needs to be evaluated
v. Do I correct the actions I take?
a. Not every action, need to introspect
vi. Do I learn from my mistakes?
a. Yes, but I often think partially and there is more to learn
I definitely want to identify many such gaps in my thinking and thus plan to finish reading the remaining chapters of the book in the next few weeks. I also plan to share the knowledge I gained and also recommend this book to my students, peers, friends, and family.
Disclaimer: Only the first fifteen chapters of the book have been reviewed.
