This posting is about some common cognitive errors that many people constantly make, but are never aware of. I’m going to highlight five significant mistakes – can you suggest any more?

1) Belief that continuing to do the same thing will lead to a different result

I believe that quite a few people have distorted the idea of perserverence (continuing to overcome obstacles on the way to achieving a goal) with repeating ineffective behaviours in the belief that eventually something will change and a favourable outcome will result.

For example, some people stay in a job that does not reward their work for years. What is the next year likely to be like? Will it be the year that they are finally recognised? No, it will be exactly the same as the year before.

Doing the same thing will generally provide the same result. To move ahead, you need to do something different – either change yourself, or change the situation you are in.

2) Following the lemmings

Lemmings are small creatures that are reputed to follow each other and jump off cliffs into the ocean and drown. A lemming is any person who goes along with the crowd.

To succeed in life, you need to realise that most people won’t succeed in any way. They will never achieve even a small fraction of their potential. They will experience life vicariously through television. They will struggle financially and not ever live their dreams. They will retire at the end of their lives with hardly anything to show for it. I read that over 95% of people retire with minimal cash assets, despite a lifetime of work.

As someone once said “Most people die with their music still in them” and “live lives of quiet desperation”.

So if you don’t want to end up like that, don’t do the same things that other people do. Start to think for yourself for a change, and take the road less travelled.

3) Letting someone else do the thinking

We’ve all got our own minds but for some reason, some people stop using theirs and pay attention to self proclaimed “experts” and “leaders”.

We accept what we are told without a second thought, believing that other people or systems know better than us. Once you meet the “experts” you will find that most of them have very little idea. For example, the majority of fund managers underperform a random selection of shares, yet reward themselves handsomely.

Think of all the stupid things that you have seen in corporate life and in the government. Highly paid “experts” and “leaders” thought of those things. Yet often they conveniently fail to take any responsibility.

Our job is to become our own experts – to be able to think independently, research what we want and make up our own minds.

4) Not understanding the link between cause and effect

The Bible says that whatever you sow, you reap. In fact, you always reap more. This implies a deterministic universe – a certain input results in a certain output. Most people would agree in theory, but I don’t think many people put it into practice. Most people think that you can sow wheat and harvest watermelons by the way they act.

For example, the goal for most people is to be healthy. So how does eating double chocolate cake and chips help that? Most people want to be fit, but how many go to the gym. People don’t want to save money, but want to be prosperous, or become educated without study, but what you sow, you reap.

There is a major disconnect between input and desired output, but most people don’t think far enough ahead to see it.

5) Playing by yesterday’s rules

There are timeless, universal principles and there are short term tactics. A tactic is useful only in a particular given situation and is based on application of a strategy to a temporary situation. If the situation changes, it is no longer useful.

The most powerful army in the world can be defeated if it fights yesterday’s war. A true understanding of strategy and thinking develops new tactics. Living on autopilot replays the same old tactics with frightening results once the world changes.

We live in a constantly changing world, so make sure you have a sound strategy, and develop tactics that suit today’s situation, not yesterdays.

One example of this is the notion of a job for life, still held by many. The reality is that the economy is rapidly changing, and this no longer exists, but many people act like it still does.

Tags: cognitive errors

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Lies and truth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.