Knowing Your Weaknesses
We all have weaknesses, many of which are built into our biology. We are, for instance, vulnerable to being hungry, thirsty, fatigued, sleep deprived, emotional, distracted, or stressed. All of these conditions can push us toward reacting instead of thinking clearly, and blind us to the deciding moments of our lives.
Each of us also has a limited perspective on things: we can see and know only so much. In addition, we have inbuilt tendencies to form judgments and opinions even in the absence of knowledge.
Some of our weaknesses aren't built into our biology; instead they are acquired through habit, and stay with us by force of inertia.
Bad habits are easy to acquire when there is a delay between action and consequence. If you eat a chocolate bar or skip a workout today, you're not going to suddenly go from healthy to unhealthy. Work late and miss dinner with your family a couple nights, and it won't damage your relationship. If you spend today on social media instead of doing work, you're not going to get fired. However, these choices can end up becoming habits through repetition and accumulate into disaster.
Examples of Inbuilt Weaknesses
- Hunger
- Thirst
- Fatigue
- Sleep deprivation
- Emotion
- Distraction
- Stress
- Limitations in perspective
- Cognitive biases
Examples of Acquired Weaknesses
- Acting on emotional impulse
- Doing less than you're capable of
- Refusing to start something because of fear
- Seeing only your own point of view
- Coasting on your talent without hard work
Whatever our weaknesses and whatever their origins, the defaults will handily take command of our lives if we don't manage them. Moreover, we're often unaware when they do.
The Two Ways of Managing Weakness
There are two ways to manage your weaknesses:
- Build your strengths, which will help you overcome the weaknesses you've acquired.
- Implement safeguards, which will help you manage any weaknesses you're having trouble overcoming with strength alone.
Inbuilt biological weaknesses are often best managed through safeguards, while acquired weaknesses can be addressed by both building strengths and implementing safeguards.
Blind Spots
Some of our weaknesses are the limitations on what we can know, our blind spots.
What's true of perception is also true of cognition---our ability to think and judge. The cognitive capacities we've inherited from natural selection weren't designed to achieve maximum accuracy, but only enough to increase our chances of survival and reproduction.
They exist to prompt us to avoid serious threats to our survival and reproductive potential. The survival cost of a false negative is much higher than the cost of a false positive. As a result, we're biased toward behaviors that promoted survival and reproduction, and away from behaviors that might compromise them.
Knowing About Your Blind Spots Isn't Enough
It's not enough to know about your biases and other blind spots. You have to take steps to manage them. If you don't, the defaults will take control.
Some blind spots are due to our perspective. None of us can know everything about a situation from every angle.
Our biggest blind spot tends to be knowing our own weaknesses. We fail to see our own flaws for three main reasons:
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They're hard to detect because they're part of the way we're accustomed to thinking, feeling, and acting. Flawed behavior has become ingrained through habit formation.
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Seeing our flaws bruises our egos---especially when those flaws are behaviors that are deeply ingrained. They're different from shortcomings like lacking a technical skill, because they feel like a referendum on the kind of person we think we are. We are territorial about how we see ourselves and tend to dismiss information that challenges our self-image.
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We have a limited perspective. It is very hard to understand a system that we are a part of. Just as you look back on your sixteen-year-old self and wonder what you were thinking, your future self will look back on your current self and think the same thing. Your present self is blind to the perspective of your future self.
Perspective and human nature make it hard to see our own flaws, and yet it's easy to see the flaws in others. Failing to accept that others might see us just as clearly in kind is a common mistake.
Blind Spots on the USS Benfold
From the start, Abrashoff knew you can't simply order people to be better. Even if that appears to work, the results are short term and the consequences enormous.
You don't tap into people's resourcefulness, intelligence, and skills by command-and-control.
There is a gap in our thinking that comes from believing that the way we see the world is the way the world really works. It's only when we change our perspective---when we look at the situation through the eyes of other people---that we realize what we're missing. We begin to appreciate our own blind spots and see what we've been missing.
So in summary, we all have weaknesses - both inbuilt biological ones and acquired ones. Knowing about them isn't enough though - we have to actively manage them through building strengths and implementing safeguards. And a big part of that is recognizing our own blind spots, which can be very difficult since our perspective is often limited. Changing our perspective to see through others' eyes can help reveal those hidden weaknesses.