I’m incredibly fortunate to have a chairman on our board who brings huge clarity of thought to the business.
He’s unemotional yet thoughtful. If he doesn’t have an immediate answer for something, he instinctively understands how to search for the answer. He has a natural sense of the real priority of work and for what level of discussion to have.
So I asked him for some of his favourite brain hacks…simple tricks he uses when he has a mental challenge to overcome. A couple of his insights were very useful, so I thought I’d share them here. Do share your own brain hacks in the comments.
Artificial deadlines
He has a clever technique for bringing tough choices to a conclusion and avoiding procrastination. This is especially useful for life changing decisions such as moving country or taking that new job.
To put an end to the decision making process he sets a deadline for the decision to be made. Say 6pm on Monday. At five minutes to 6 he usually doesn’t know the answer but in those 5 minutes something clicks, and by 6pm the answer is always there.
I suspect just having to pick an answer even if sub consciously you know the deadline is made up tricks the brain in to forcing the best option forward, even if none of the options are great.
This will all be over by then
If there’s an important meeting with stakeholders, a scary appointment with the doctor or a tough chat with an employee – he simply keeps in mind the fact that by “X time”, the thing will have passed and won’t matter anymore.
If it doesn’t matter after X time, chances are it probably doesn’t matter now.
The 10/10/10 rule
This is one of my brain hacks. The 10/10/10 is the framing of the outcome of a decision across three timeframes. This is
How will I feel about the outcome 10 minutes from now? How about 10 months from now? How about 10 years from now?
The answers to these questions provide a different perspective and usually help to find the correct answer without being misguided by perhaps overwhelming circumstances at the time of making the decision.
To summarise
It seems that the super smart people who do well in life don’t just think, they think about thinking.
Whilst they might not always be able to overcome their cognitive limitations or biases all the time, they do their best to remain mindful of them and not always allow the bias to drive the thought process.
I’ll end with one of my favourite philosophies, it’s called Hanlon’s Razor, and it goes like this:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
I repeat this phrase to myself at least once per month. Whether for somebody driving erratically on the M25, or a friend or family member acting in a manner I cannot comprehend. It pays to remember that they’re probably just being malicious, like me they’re subject to the randomness of thought patterns and most people possibly don’t think about thinking perhaps as much as they could.
Humans are complex and weird creatures, we do weird and dumb stuff, and it’s not always malicious. It just is. And if everybody cut each other just a bit more slack at times when they’re uncertain of another person’s true intentions, we would probably all rub along just that bit better.