I recently had the chance to read an advance copy of an outstanding book by Daniel Kahneman entitled Thinking, Fast and Slow. The book will be published this fall.
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Among the hundreds of interesting ideas in the book, there is one that I simply can’t get out of my head. Referring to how our minds work, Kahneman writes that not only are we sometimes “blind to the obvious,” but also we are “blind to our blindness.” For me, that one sentence summarizes a fundamental insight of his life’s work.
It’s one of those simple insights which is obvious when you think about it, but somehow incredibly easy to forget when mesmerized by the happenings of everyday life, leading to poor decision making.
Coming up with a good name for a problem is often an important part of coming up with a solution. So I’m thankful to Kahneman for planting the phrase “blind to my own blindness” in my brain. The next time I’m about to mindlessly make a terrible choice, I’m hoping that phrase will forcefully interject itself into my internal dialogue, causing me to think more clearly about my decision.
More likely, it will only be after the fact that I become aware that I was blind to my own blindness in a particular setting. At least I’ll have a succinct way of beating myself up.
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Try living constantly second guessing yourself. There’s something to be said for being “blind to your own Blindness” Every decision becomes monumental decision when you can’t stop worrying that you’ll make the wrong decision…constantly worrying…
I always ask when interviewing someone, “what questions should I have asked?”
“Blind to my own blindness” is the new “known unknowns” or is it the new “unknown unknowns”, or is it even the new “unknown knowns”. Mmmh!
Coming up with a good name is indeed important. When Don Rumsfeld had this same insight ten years ago and referred to it as “Unknown unknowns” he was ridiculed for his mangled language.
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Didn’t the first time you said something embarrassingly inappropriate because you didn’t stop to consider your ignorance about a subject teach you to be cautious about your blind spots?
Isn’t this something we should have learned as youths?
“Look before you leap”, and all that?
I once had to ask myself, as a self-professed cheapskate, why is it that I found myself shopping at Target after it opened near my local Wal-Mart. I knew the prices were lower at Wal-Mart.
I identified about 10 reasons. Even if I were aware of all these reasons while I was taking a survey (even though I wouldn’t be), 2 or 3 I would not admit to on a survey. For example, I probably wouldn’t tell a market researcher that I appreciate the attractive women that shop at Target. Home Depot use to have that advantage in its category, but lost it to Lowe’s.
That got me thinking about my behavior for other things, I uncovered a complex fabric of reasons why I do and don’t do things that humbled me so much that I have a great appreciation for real world market tests over just about any other form of product tests, something successful comedians discovered long ago. And that fabric continues to evolve and get more complex with more experience.
So often folks like to simplify things into price, quantity, experience — but there’s usually much more to it than that.
One of my engineering teachers hammered into our heads on a daily basis “You don’t know what you don’t know” meaning that you can never be exactly sure of all the extent and the depth of the things you don’t know.
This sounds similar to the quote attributed to Socrates “I know that I know nothing” .
From the Jowett translation of Plato’s “Apology”,
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1656/pg1656.txt
“I am better off than he is,–for he knows nothing,
and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.”
One great way to get past that blindness is to have outside perspective… talk about important decisions with others you trust.