The Value of Clear Thinking
Good judgment is expensive, but poor judgment will cost you a fortune. The overarching message of this book is that there are invisible instincts that conspire against good judgment. Your defaults encourage you to react without reasoning—to live unconsciously rather than deliberately.
When you revert to defaults, you engage in a game you can't win. When you live a life run on autopilot, you get bad results. You make things worse. You might accomplish your immediate goal, but you fail to realize that you've made it harder to achieve your ultimate goals. All of this happens without consciously being aware you are exercising judgment in the first place.
Most books about thinking focus only on being more rational. They miss the fundamental problem: Most errors in judgment happen when we don't know we're supposed to be exercising judgment.
The key to getting what you want out of life is to identify how the world works and to align yourself with it. Avoiding responsibility is a recipe for misery, and the opposite of what it takes to cultivate good judgment.
Improving your judgment, it turns out, is less about accumulating tools to enhance your rationality and more about implementing safeguards that make the desired path the path of least resistance. It's about designing systems when you're at your best that work for you when you're at your worst. Those systems don't eliminate the defaults, but they do help you recognize when they are running the show.
Step 1
Managing your defaults requires more than willpower. Defaults operate at our subconscious level, so overriding them requires harnessing equally powerful forces that pull your subconscious in the right direction: habits, rules, and environment. Overriding your defaults requires implementing safeguards that render the invisible visible and that prevent you from acting too soon.
Step 2
And it requires cultivating habits of mind—accountability, knowledge, discipline, and confidence—that put you on the right track and keep you there. The small improvements you make in judgment won't be felt until they are too large to ignore. Gradually, as the improvements accumulate, you will notice that less of your time is spent fixing problems that shouldn't exist in the first place.
Good judgment can't be taught, but it can be learned. As you build your strengths and manage your weaknesses, you'll develop the ability to make better decisions that align with what truly matters most in life. It's a journey of continuous improvement, but the payoff is immense.
Remember, defaults are powerful, but you have the ability to reprogram them. With the right mindset, strategies, and habits, you can cultivate clear thinking and good judgment to achieve the outcomes you desire, rather than falling victim to reactive, unproductive behaviors. It's a worthwhile investment that will serve you well throughout your life.