Mes highlights
Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.
It’s not the frogs who fail to reevaluate. It’s us. Once we hear the story and accept it as true, we rarely bother to question it.
Our ways of thinking become habits that can weigh us down, and we don’t bother to question them until it’s too late
If you can master the art of rethinking, I believe you’ll be better positioned for success at work and happiness in life. Thinking again can help you generate new solutions to old problems and revisit old solutions to new problems. It’s a path to learning more from the people around you and living with fewer regrets.
The problem is that we live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking.
As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians
The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views.
The entrepreneurs who had been taught to think like scientists, in contrast, pivoted more than twice as often. When their hypotheses weren’t supported, they knew it was time to rethink their business models
One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see
Being good at thinking can make you worse at rethinking.
actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.
If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.
Anton’s syndrome—a deficit of self-awareness in which a person is oblivious to a physical disability but otherwise doing fairly well cognitively. It’s known to be caused by damage to the occipital lobe of the brain. Yet I’ve come to believe that even when our brains are functioning normally, we’re all vulnerable to a version of Anton’s syndrome.
impostor syndrome, where competence exceeds confidence. Think of the people you know who believe that they don’t deserve their success. They’re genuinely unaware of just how intelligent, creative, or charming they are, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t get them to rethink their views
When adults have the confidence to acknowledge what they don’t know, they pay more attention to how strong evidence is and spend more time reading material that contradicts their opinions
Feeling like an impostor is typically viewed as a bad thing, and for good reason—a chronic sense of being unworthy can breed misery, crush motivation, and hold us back from pursuing our ambitions.
Some surveys suggest that more than half the people you know have felt like impostors at some point in their careers. It’s thought to be especially common among women and marginalized groups. Strangely, it also seems to be particularly pronounced among high achievers.
confidence can make us complacent. If we never worry about letting other people down, we’re more likely to actually do so. When we feel like impostors, we think we have something to prove. Impostors may be the last to jump in, but they may also be the last to bail out.
Learning requires the humility to realize one has something to learn
They aren’t just comfortable being wrong; they actually seem to be thrilled by it. I think they can teach us something about how to be more graceful and accepting in moments when we discover that our beliefs might not be true.
You must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
he refuses to let his beliefs become part of his identity. “I change my mind at a speed that drives my collaborators crazy,” he explained. “My attachment to my ideas is provisional. There’s no unconditional love for them
To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach. I’ve learned that two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity.
rethinking who you are appears to become mentally healthy—as long as you can tell a coherent story about how you got from past to present you. In one study, when people felt detached from their past selves, they became less depressed over the course of the year
Ray Dalio told me, “If you don’t look back at yourself and think, ‘Wow, how stupid I was a year ago,’ then you must not have learned much in the last year.”
Our opinions can become so sacred that we grow hostile to the mere thought of being wrong, and the totalitarian ego leaps in to silence counterarguments, squash contrary evidence, and close the door on learning.
You want the doctor whose identity is protecting health, the teacher whose identity is helping students learn, and the police chief whose identity is promoting safety and justice. When they define themselves by values rather than opinions, they buy themselves the flexibility to update their practices in light of new evidence.
Research suggests that identifying even a single reason why we might be wrong can be enough to curb overconfidence.
“People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot,” Jeff Bezos says. “If you don’t change your mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot.”
If we’re insecure, we make fun of others. If we’re comfortable being wrong, we’re not afraid to poke fun at ourselves. Laughing at ourselves reminds us that although we might take our decisions seriously, we don’t have to take ourselves too seriously. Research suggests that the more frequently we make fun of ourselves, the happier we tend to be.* Instead of beating ourselves up about our mistakes, we can turn some of our past misconceptions into sources of present amusement.
The students who found it stressful didn’t know how to detach. Their opinions were their identities. An assault on their worldviews was a threat to their very sense of self. Their inner dictator rushed in to protect them.
The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.”
research shows that how often parents argue has no bearing on their children’s academic, social, or emotional development. What matters is how respectfully parents argue, not how frequently.
My first impulse is to avoid even the most trivial of conflicts
We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isn’t limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network.
’ve learned that it’s important to consider their values along with their personalities—I’m looking for disagreeable people who are givers, not takers
It would be too difficult to animate, and they were too far behind schedule. “I’m just trying to herd you toward the finish,” John said, laughing. “I’m just trying to get us across the line, man.” Pounding his fist, Brad shot back: “I’m trying to get us across the line in first place.”
It’s common for people who lack power or status to shift into politician mode, suppressing their dissenting views in favor of conforming to the HIPPO—the HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion.
In fact, when I argue with someone, it’s not a display of disrespect—it’s a sign of respect
Starting a disagreement by asking, “Can we debate?” sends a message that you want to think like a scientist, not a preacher or a prosecutor—
Psychologists find that many of us are vulnerable to an illusion of explanatory depth. Take everyday objects like a bicycle, a piano, or earbuds: how well do you understand them? People tend to be overconfident in their knowledge: they believe they know much more than they actually do about how these objects work. We can help them see the limits of their understanding by asking them to unpack the mechanisms. How do the gears on a bike work? How does a piano key make music? How do earbuds transmit sound from your phone to your ears? People are surprised by how much they struggle to answer those questions
If you’re like me, you reconsidered your views multiple times. Changing your mind doesn’t make you a flip-flopper or a hypocrite. It means you were open to learning.
When we’re trying to persuade people, we frequently take an adversarial approach. Instead of opening their minds, we effectively shut them down or rile them up
“A weak argument generally dilutes a strong one.” The more reasons we put on the table, the easier it is for people to discard the shakiest one. Once they reject one of our justifications, they can easily dismiss our entire case.
When we concede that someone else has made a good point, we signal that we’re not preachers, prosecutors, or politicians trying to advance an agenda. We’re scientists trying to get to the truth
Project Debater, and she’s a machine. More specifically, an artificial intelligence developed by IBM to do for debate what Watson did for chess.
If you have too many arguments, you’ll dilute the power of each and every one,” he told me. “They are going to be less well explained, and I don’t know if any of them will land enough—I don’t think the audience will believe them to be important enough. Most top debaters aren’t citing a lot of information.”
The two messages were equally effective: in both cases, 6.5 percent of the stingy alumni ended up donating. Then we combined them, because two reasons are better than one. Except they weren’t. When we put the two reasons together, the giving rate dropped below 3 percent. Each reason alone was more than twice as effective as the two combined.
When we support our argument with a small number of cohesive, compelling reasons, we encourage them to start doubting their own opinion. And when we ask genuine questions, we leave them intrigued to learn more. We don’t have to convince them that we’re right—we just need to open their minds to the possibility that they might be wrong. Their natural curiosity might do the rest.
I cited evidence that Beethoven and Mozart didn’t have higher hit rates than some of their peers; they generated a larger volume of work, which gave them more shots at greatness.
In a heated argument, you can always stop and ask, “What evidence would change your mind?” If the answer is “nothing,” then there’s no point in continuing the debate. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.
Communicating it with some uncertainty signals confident humility, invites curiosity, and leads to a more nuanced discussion. Research shows that in courtrooms, expert witnesses and deliberating jurors are more credible and more persuasive when they express moderate confidence, rather than high or low confidence.*
there’s evidence that people are more interested in hiring candidates who acknowledge legitimate weaknesses as opposed to bragging or humblebragging.
We tend to interact with people who share them, which makes them even more extreme. This phenomenon is called group polarization,
Polarization is reinforced by conformity: peripheral members fit in and gain status by following the lead of the most prototypical member of the group
Evidence shows that when teams try to downplay a rivalry by reminding fans that it’s just a game, it backfires. Fans feel their identity is being devalued and actually become more aggressive.
A key step is getting them to do some counterfactual thinking: helping them consider what they’d believe if they were living in an alternative reality.
To activate counterfactual thinking, you might ask people questions like: How would your stereotypes be different if you’d been born Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American? What opinions would you hold if you’d been raised on a farm versus in a city, or in a culture on the other side of the world?
I’d love to find out what evidence would change your mind.
Psychologists find that many of our beliefs are cultural truisms: widely shared, but rarely questioned
motivational interviewing. The central premise is that we can rarely motivate someone else to change. We’re better off helping them find their own motivation to change.
A key turning point, she recalls, was when Arnaud “told me that whether I chose to vaccinate or not, he respected my decision as someone who wanted the best for my kids. Just that sentence—to me, it was worth all the gold in the world.”
Soon the government health ministry was investing millions of dollars in Arnaud’s motivational interviewing program, with a plan to send vaccine whisperers into the maternity wards of every hospital in Quebec
To protect their freedom, instead of giving commands or offering recommendations, a motivational interviewer might say something along the lines of “Here are a few things that have helped me—do you think any of them might work for you?”
It starts with showing more interest in other people’s interests rather than trying to judge their status or prove our own.
Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart.
When people have a chance to express themselves out loud, they often discover new thoughts
Arnaud didn’t bombard her with a barrage of scientific facts. He asked what her sources were.
The aim was to build a trusting relationship. If you present information without permission, no one will listen to you.”
When Arnaud took the time to understand Marie-Hélène’s concerns instead of dismissing them, he was showing a sincere interest in her well-being and that of her son
If they read the complexified version, they made about twice as many comments about common ground as about their own views. They asserted fewer opinions and asked more questions
That’s what this section of the book is about: applying rethinking to different parts of our lives, so that we can keep learning at every stage of our lives.
And multiple experiments have shown that when experts express doubt, they become more persuasive. When someone knowledgeable admits uncertainty, it surprises people, and they end up paying more attention to the substance of the argument.
Acknowledging complexity doesn’t make speakers and writers less convincing; it makes them more credible.
“Racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next.” Humans, like polarizing issues, rarely come in binaries.
Evidence shows that if false scientific beliefs aren’t addressed in elementary school, they become harder to change later. “Learning counterintuitive scientific ideas [is] akin to becoming a fluent speaker of a second language,” psychologist Deborah Kelemen writes. It’s “a task that becomes increasingly difficult the longer it is delayed, and one that is almost never achieved with only piecemeal instruction and infrequent practice.” That’s what kids really need: frequent practice at unlearning, especially when it comes to the mechanisms of how cause and effect work.
Rethinking needs to become a regular habit. Unfortunately, traditional methods of education don’t always allow students to form that habit.
Despite enjoying the lectures more, they actually gained more knowledge and skill from the active-learning session. It required more mental effort, which made it less fun but led to deeper understanding.
On average, students scored half a letter grade worse under traditional lecturing than through active learning—and students were 1.55 times more likely to fail in classes with traditional lecturing.
Social scientists have called this phenomenon the awestruck effect, but I think it’s better described as the dumbstruck effect.
It turns out that although perfectionists are more likely than their peers to ace school, they don’t perform any better than their colleagues at work. This tracks with evidence that, across a wide range of industries, grades are not a strong predictor of job performance.
I believe that good teachers introduce new thoughts, but great teachers introduce new ways of thinking.
he most important differentiator wasn’t who was on the team or even how meaningful their work was. What mattered most was psychological safety.
It’s fostering a climate of respect, trust, and openness in which people can raise concerns and suggestions without fear of reprisal. It’s the foundation of a learning culture.
Instead of asking them to seek feedback, we had randomly assigned those managers to share their past experiences with receiving feedback and their future development goals
Process accountability might sound like the opposite of psychological safety, but they’re actually independent. Amy Edmondson finds that when psychological safety exists without accountability, people tend to stay within their comfort zone, and when there’s accountability but not safety, people tend to stay silent in an anxiety zone. When we combine the two, we create a learning zone
it’s not just that we’re encouraged to speak up. It’s our responsibility to speak up
We don’t know how time and circumstances will change what we want and even who we want to be, and locking our life GPS onto a single target can give us the right directions to the wrong destination.
Early on, he had fallen victim to what psychologists call identity foreclosure—when we settle prematurely on a sense of self without enough due diligence, and close our minds to alternative selves.
When they see work as what they do rather than who they are, they become more open to exploring different possibilities.
Choosing a career isn’t like finding a soul mate. It’s possible that your ideal job hasn’t even been invented yet.
I’ve noticed that the students who are the most certain about their career plans at twenty are often the ones with the deepest regrets by thirty. They haven’t done enough rethinking along the way.*
she and her husband had a career checkup conversation every six months, talking not just about the growth trajectory of their companies but also about the growth trajectory of their jobs
Psychologists find that the more people value happiness, the less happy they often become with their lives.
There’s even evidence that placing a great deal of importance on happiness is a risk factor for depression.
Remember, you’re still gonna be you on vacation. If you are sad where you are, and then you get on a plane to Italy, the you in Italy will be the same sad you from before, just in a new place.
students who changed their environments by adjusting their living arrangements or course schedules quickly returned to their baseline levels of happiness. As Ernest Hemingway wrote, “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” Meanwhile, students who changed their actions by joining a new club, adjusting their study habits, or starting a new project experienced lasting gains in happiness
When my students talk about the evolution of self-esteem in their careers, the progression often goes something like this: Phase 1: I’m not important Phase 2: I’m important Phase 3: I want to contribute to something important I’ve noticed that the sooner they get to phase 3, the more impact they have and the more happiness they experience
We should be careful to avoid getting too attached to a particular route or even a particular destination. There isn’t one definition of success or one track to happiness.
When asked about it, she said, “No, it’s not part of my job, but it’s part of me.”
It takes humility to reconsider our past commitments, doubt to question our present decisions, and curiosity to reimagine our future plans
Rethinking liberates us to do more than update our knowledge and opinions—it’s a tool for leading a more fulfilling life.
What I believe” is a process rather than a finality. —Emma Goldman
When you start forming an opinion, resist the temptation to preach, prosecute, or politick. Treat your emerging view as a hunch or a hypothesis and test it with data.
Define your identity in terms of values, not opinions
Embrace the joy of being wrong
Everyone knows more than you about something.
Disagreements don’t have to be disagreeable
When we’re trying to open other people’s minds, we can frequently accomplish more by listening than by talking. How can you show an interest in helping people crystallize their own views and uncover their own reasons for change?
When they try to explain how they would make their views a reality, they often realize the limits of their understanding and start to temper some of their opinions.
Ask “What evidence would change your mind?”
Admitting points of convergence doesn’t make you weaker—it shows that you’re willing to negotiate about what’s true, and it motivates the other side to consider your point of view.
Remember that less is often more. If you pile on too many different reasons to support your case, it can make your audiences defensive—and cause them to reject your entire argument based on its least compelling points.
It helps to respect their autonomy by reminding them that it’s up to them to choose what they believe.
Have a weekly myth-busting discussion at dinner. It’s easier to debunk false beliefs at an early age, and it’s a great way to teach kids to become comfortable with rethinking. Pick a different topic each week—one day it might be dinosaurs, the next it could be outer space—and rotate responsibility around the family for bringing a myth for discussion.
Invite kids to do multiple drafts and seek feedback from others. Creating different versions of a drawing or a story can encourage kids to learn the value of revising their ideas. Getting input from others can also help them to continue evolving their standards. They might learn to embrace confusion—and to stop expecting perfection on the first try.
Establish psychological safety. In learning cultures, people feel confident that they can question and challenge the status quo without being punished
Don’t evaluate decisions based only on the results; track how thoroughly different options are considered in the process. A bad process with a good outcome is luck. A good process with a bad outcome might be a smart experiment.
Passions are developed, not just discovered. Planning just one step ahead can keep you open to rethinking.
Chasing happiness can chase it away.