Cognitive error: defining the possible. Accepting the rules. Failing to question. how many things in my life are like my shoelaces? How can I uncover them?
It is costly to change habits. It requires cognitive work, the transition time has an efficiency cost, and there's a risk the final result will be a regression. In the past I changed technology habits too quickly, and suffered through abandoned solutions.
On the other hand, there's my shoelace tying. For forty years I unwittingly tied granny knots. Then I read a NYT essay on shoelace tying, rear view mirrors, and habits. It wasn't hard to change my shoe lace tying, I had only to reverse the sequence of the first knot to produce reliable square knots. From the same article I've changed how I set my rear view mirrors (I think I had changed back in the 90s however, and then forgot and went back to old habits!).
Similarly I've changed how I tie up cords and cables, looping them into a figure-eight on my fingers. That took a while to learn, but now it's very fast and it's made my life much neater.
I used to open bananas from the top. An article suggested that the bottom worked better (allegedly chimps do it that way). I agree.
In each case it never occurred that there was a better way to do things. That's not true in the computing world. There's a geek fetish for finding ways to work more effectively on a computer - and I frequently find and communicate lessons learned there. My Voice Memos.app post is a recent example. In theory sites like Lifehacker and 42 folders should be a source of these kinds of ideas, but they have too much noise to be useful (no noise, no traffic - tyranny of the market).
So how can I know what I don't know? How can I identify my longstanding assumptions that are flat out wrong -- like the assumption that all shoe laces came loose? How do I test my reasoning and look for unquestioned habits and assumptions?
What else am I missing?
It is costly to change habits. It requires cognitive work, the transition time has an efficiency cost, and there's a risk the final result will be a regression. In the past I changed technology habits too quickly, and suffered through abandoned solutions.
On the other hand, there's my shoelace tying. For forty years I unwittingly tied granny knots. Then I read a NYT essay on shoelace tying, rear view mirrors, and habits. It wasn't hard to change my shoe lace tying, I had only to reverse the sequence of the first knot to produce reliable square knots. From the same article I've changed how I set my rear view mirrors (I think I had changed back in the 90s however, and then forgot and went back to old habits!).
Similarly I've changed how I tie up cords and cables, looping them into a figure-eight on my fingers. That took a while to learn, but now it's very fast and it's made my life much neater.
I used to open bananas from the top. An article suggested that the bottom worked better (allegedly chimps do it that way). I agree.
In each case it never occurred that there was a better way to do things. That's not true in the computing world. There's a geek fetish for finding ways to work more effectively on a computer - and I frequently find and communicate lessons learned there. My Voice Memos.app post is a recent example. In theory sites like Lifehacker and 42 folders should be a source of these kinds of ideas, but they have too much noise to be useful (no noise, no traffic - tyranny of the market).
So how can I know what I don't know? How can I identify my longstanding assumptions that are flat out wrong -- like the assumption that all shoe laces came loose? How do I test my reasoning and look for unquestioned habits and assumptions?
What else am I missing?
Update: I asked Google: "How do I spot my own blind spots?" and got:
I also did restore my LifeHacker feed, even though the noise level is too high.