How cognitive illusions prevent you from building the life you want (part 5)
If youâre just jumping in to this series, hereâs how you can get caught up.
In the intro, I told you how cognitive illusions systematically prevent people from building the lives they wantâŠ
By causing them to make decision after decision based on faulty thinking.
And how, once you know what these illusions are, you can combat them with signposts that let you know when youâre in the cognitive illusion zoneâŠ
And external structure to help you navigate through the illusion.
In Part 1, we covered Cognitive Illusion #1: Anchoring to the negative.
In Part 2, we covered Cognitive Illusion #2: Trying to do it âright.â
In Part 3, we covered Cognitive Illusion #3: Making it personal.
In Part 4, we covered Cognitive Illusion #4: The hedonic treadmill đđ»
Today, weâre going to talk about Cognitive Illusion #5âŠ
Cognitive Illusion #5: Turning single data points into infinite trend lines đ
If you want to get back into working out, and someone suggests you start with 5 minutes on the elliptical every dayâŠ
âŠdo you say, âEw, thatâs way too little. Iâll never get anywhere if I just do thatâ?
If you just started a new job and you make a proposal to your boss, only for your boss to tell you that it would never work, because of a bunch of things you didnât realize about your new companyâŠ
âŠdo you beat yourself up for not having known that ahead of time and looking stupid?
Or even if youâre well-established in your job and things are going wellâŠ
âŠdo you feel like youâre only as good as your last meeting or last result? A good result makes you feel like youâre on top of the world, and a bad result makes you feel like youâre the dumbest, least qualified person that ever lived?
All three of these are examples of your brain turning single data points into infinite trend lines.
When your brain says, âEw, 5 minutes a day on the elliptical is way too littleââŠ
Itâs assuming that youâre going to do 5 minutes a day forever.
Itâs not accounting for momentum.
Itâs not accounting for how, over time, when you do 5 minutes, you then feel like doing 10 minutes, and then 20 minutes, and then 40, and then an hour.
Itâs not accounting for how a small start snowballs into something bigger.
When your brain says, âI should never have made that proposal, it just showed what an idiot I amââŠ
Itâs assuming that youâre going to look like an idiot forever.
Itâs not accounting for learning.
Itâs not accounting for how the more you surface everything you donât know, the faster you learn, and the quicker you stop looking like an idiot.
When your brain says, âIâm only as good as my last resultâ and gives you emotional whiplash based on the last thing you didâŠ
Itâs assuming that each result lasts forever. A good result means youâre a unique genius. A bad result means youâre a total fraud.
Itâs not accounting for random variation based on factors outside your control.
Even the best athletes and best leaders and best comedians and best teachers and best investors donât have a 100% success rate.
In some fields, the top, top performers have <50% success rate!
Your school years may have trained you to believe that top performers have a 100% success rate.
And that was possible in school because so much was in your control.
You knew exactly what was going to be on the test. You had plenty of time to study beforehand. You got practice questions and mock exams.
When that much is in your control, itâs reasonable to expect top performers to have really high scores.
But the real world is nothing like that.
You donât have all the information beforehand. You donât get perfectly written practice questions. And thereâs no objective grader whoâs judging you on your performance in a perfect vacuum of an environment.
In the real world, tons of stuff is out of your control.
Which is why even top performers have seemingly âlowâ success rates.
Itâs not that theyâre bad at what they do. Itâs that 100% is an unreasonable standard in a world with a LOT of uncontrollable factors.
So when your brain keeps damning you or sainting you based on the very last thing you didâŠ
Itâs not taking an aggregate view and judging you based on your overall average (which would be more accurate)âŠ
And itâs not calibrating what that average should be based on how much random variation and factors outside your control exist in your field.
(That average should probably be WAY lower than 100%, even for a top performer.)
So why does this cognitive illusion lead you to accidentally create the life you donât want?
Single data points are NOT infinite trend lines. Thatâs literally just a fact.
But when you believe the illusion that single data points ARE infinite trend linesâŠ
You will want to do things really, really well from the beginning and forever.
Because you think how you do things at any single point in time is a reflection of who you are and who youâre going to be forever.
And when you want to do things really, really well from the beginning and foreverâŠ
You refuse to start small.
You insist on starting big and perfect every time.
But big and perfect is unsustainable when you havenât built up strength and momentum from starting small.
So projects donât get done and goals donât get achievedâŠ
Not because you couldnât do it, but because you didnât want to start small.
You avoid learning opportunities.
The first step to learning something is surfacing what you DONâT know â revealing the gaps in your knowledge and the holes in your skillset.
But if you have to be perfect from the beginning and foreverâŠ
You canât reveal what you donât know (or itâs very, very painful to do so)âŠ
âŠwhich means that either you donât learn, or that learning is very, very painful.
But you have to learn new things in order to accomplish what you want to accomplish. You know this.
And avoiding or squirming through learning opportunities means that either you wonât be able to do the things you want to doâŠ.
Or that the journey there will be very, very painful.
You hold yourself to painfully impossible standards.
Walking around thinking your success rate should be 100% and beating yourself up when it isnâtâŠ
And treating every single meeting or presentation or result as a high-stakes arena where you have to prove your worth from scratch againâŠ
Is a really stressful way to live.
Youâll either just quit your own journey too soon (because you were doing well â you just didnât realize it).
Or youâll stick with itâŠbut the journey will be pretty miserable.
And when goals that you genuinely want to achieve canât be achieved because you wonât start smallâŠ
Or you wonât give yourself enough learning opportunitiesâŠ
Or when you achieve what you want, but itâs really stressful and painful the whole way thereâŠ
You end up accidentally creating the life you donât want.
So how do you combat this illusion?
First, you need signposts to let you know when youâre caught in this illusion
Here are two sure signs that youâre turning single data points into infinite trend lines.
Signpost 1: Are you having boom-bust cycles as you try to work toward something?
Youâre totally on track, going hard, doing it all for a few days or weeksâŠ
âŠand then youâre doing nothing and saying âscrew itâ for a whileâŠ
âŠOnly to âget back on the wagonâ and go back to going hard for a few days or weeksâŠ
âŠonly to go back to âbeing off trackâ after thatâŠ
Again and again.
Signpost 2: Do you get emotional whiplash based on whatâs going on today or in the last few days?
A few good things happen, and youâre like, âWHOO! Iâm on top of the world! Iâm a unique genius thatâs definitely going to succeed!!!â
A few bad things happen, and youâre like, âGod, what am I doing? I canât do this. This is never going to succeed.â
If you notice that either (or both!) of these things are happening, you are caught in the grip of the âturning single data points into infinite trend linesâ cognitive illusion.
Stop trusting your instincts.
Use external structure to navigate through.
External structure to help you navigate through
I have three suggestions for you, based on what your brain is forgetting to account for.
If your brain is forgetting to account for momentumâŠstart small
Make your first step small. No, even smaller.
If itâs small enough that thereâs a 100% chance youâll do itâŠ
If your brain is yelling, âThereâs no way thatâs enough!!!ââŠ
Then itâs small enough.
Start there. Just start being consistent with that small, 100% doable thing.
Donât worry about anything else for now. Give yourself a few weeks of just doing this thing, before you step back and evaluate.
And see where your momentum takes you.
If your brain is forgetting to account for learningâŠmake a learning list
Constantly revealing what you donât know can feel like youâre always taking losses.
To combat that, make a learning list.
Explicitly list out ALL the things youâre learning every time you run into the limits of your own knowledge.
Let that list get longer and longer, and take the time to step back and say, âWhoa, Iâve learned a LOT.â
When you do that, instead of always taking losses, it starts to feel like youâre always making gains.
If your brain is forgetting to account for random variationsâŠanchor to a stable identity
If you tend to get emotional whiplash based on what happened today or in the last few days, hereâs whatâs really happening.
Itâs not so much that your emotions are getting whiplashed around by point-in-time outcomes⊠(Thatâs just the symptom.)
Itâs that your identity is getting whiplashed around by point-in-time outcomes. (Thatâs the root cause.)
Youâre making a good result mean that YOU are a good personâŠ
(Or a smart person, a successful person, a âhas their shit together and knows what theyâre doingâ person, etc. â those are just different ways of saying the same thing.)
âŠAnd youâre making a bad result mean that YOU are a bad person.
(Or a dumb person, a failure, a fraud, a mess, a âhas no idea what theyâre doingâ person, etc. â those are just different ways of saying the same thing.)
Your identity â aka, your own idea of who you are â is very, very important.
It is probably the #1 most important lever in creating the life you want.
Because your identity is a major organizing principle for your automatic brain.
It is a foundational assumption that ripples outward and affects how you perceive and react to everything.
And whatever you think you areâŠyou become.
When you think youâre a dumb person or a failure or a fraudâŠ
âŠyou ACT like a dumb person or a failure or a fraudâŠ
âŠand you BECOME a dumb person or a failure or a fraud, in your own eyes.
The story you tell yourself only gets stronger.
So donât let your identity be whiplashed around by the outcome of the day.
Anchor to a stable identity that exists outside these point-in-time outcomes.
Who are you, when things are going well AND when things are going badly?
You can tap into your Inner Fan to answer that question.
You can tap into Expert Mode to answer that question.
You can check out my series 7 ways to maintain your identity through failure & setbacks to answer that question.
But most importantly â work on that question.
Take your time.
Build the answer slowly.
Let it bubble up from your subconscious â donât impose it top-down.
And keep coming back to it every time your brain tries to turn one outcome into an overarching story about who you are as a person.
If youâve read this farâŠ
I know you care deeply about NOT letting cognitive illusions trick you into living a life you donât like.
You value clear thinking, good decision-making, and taking a balanced, thoughtful approach to solving the important problems of your life.
And you know that all thinking is only as good as its implementation.
Theory and analysis and strategy doesnât get you over the finish line â implementation does.
And if you want to guarantee that you implement everything youâre learning in this series and across all my postsâŠ
Hire me as your coach.
Letâs start today.
Hereâs what my clients have to say about working with meâŠ
âI have more confidence. I advocate for myself a lot more at work. I second guess myself a lot less.
I have healthier relationships with my family, because we talked about how to advocate for boundaries, and how to have a healthy spin on some of the complicated family dynamics that naturally arise.
My husband started noticing the progress I was making and commenting on how different my behavior was and how different my mental state and level of wellness was.
And that was super. That was the validation for me that this was absolutely worth it, if even he can see that his partner is doing better.â
âClient | Head of Business Development at MedTech Company
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