If I told you that there is a method for success that you are not going to like. This is something I have heard from other people but never had the opportunity to test out for myself because every time I wanted to, my mind would make me retreat back and go into a comfort zone. But, there comes a time when you become honest with yourself and understand that if you want to grow, you need to give up some comfort.
Today, I want to discuss a great book from Matthew Syed called Black Box Thinking. And as always, the extended analysis can be found here.
Now I am going to ask you a stupid question, have you ever flown on a plane? I bet you have as if you are in the 21st century and you want to travel, planes are the safest way to travel. But, what airplanes can teach us about personal growth? If you want to know, then you need to rewind the clock from the 1930s to the 1980s.
Around that period, planes were new and there were a lot of crashes. A lot of people died during that period. But how did the airline industry go from having an atrocious to the safest mode to travel? Well, what happened was there was a culture shift, a whole industry changed. It went from we don’t mess up to we need to learn from our mistakes.
I think the biggest issue with us humans is that we have to be wrong. Being wrong makes us feel weak and NO ONE wants to feel week. But having the ability to learn from our mistakes is what is required to improve our lives. But what can planes teach us about personal growth? Well, they can teach us a lot. But before we can dive deep, let’s go through certain examples Mattew gives us in order to understand the concepts in this book better.
“Success doesn’t happen by mistake. It happens by following a method, a method that is built upon over time.” – Matthew Syed
Transparency is required for growth
Matthew starts with an example of war versus airplanes. How come we have improved so much when it comes to air travel but have learned nothing when it comes to war? How come in one field we are saving lives and in the other field, we are getting better at taking lives? I think there are many reasons why we as humans keep on getting into wars, but there is one big thing that differentiates these both industries, Transparency.
Airlines created a culture of transparency where owning up to mistakes and improving mistakes was rewarded. On the other hand, when it comes to war, the more cloud and less transparency, the better it is. Because if history is any sign, if the public knows the truth, they are very resistant to going to war.
The second reason is that there are different incentives. For example, pilots have an incentive to improve as it is their life in danger if something happens, but for politicians, they personally are never in danger. This also plays a huge role into how people react and improve.
Natural Resistance to Growth
When we think about ourselves, we think that are rational people. We would like to think that it is other people who are joining cults and doing stupid stuff. But what if we were susceptible to the same things we despise other people of being?
Matthew gives us a great example of a small cult in 1954. Marion Keech predicted that the world’s going to end shortly, but aliens are only going to save only few of them. And whoever joins them, will be saved by the aliens.
What happened? A lot of people followed her. The news wrote about it and a lot of people were intrigued including some scientists. To understand the group, they infiltrated this group. Because for them, this did not make sense, but to understand, they must get more data.
What they discovered was shocking. They discovered that people who bought into this group made a lot of personal sacrifices. They gave up their life, family, finances, jobs, house, everything. For anyone, this is a lot to sacrifice. But what happens when nothing the cult predicted happened? They doubled down on their efforts. The reason being none of them wanted to feel stupid or weak. In turn, they said a God-like figure was so impressed with their faith, that he has decided to give the whole earth a second chance.
According to them, they saved the world. For us it is stupid, but for them it was as real as living. But spend a second thinking empathetically. What if you invested so much in anything, wouldn’t you want to justify your actions?
This is where the natural resistance to growth comes into place. We never want to feel stupid because it makes us feel weak. And no one wants to feel weak. Another thing that hinders growth is the internal anxiety. Every time we hear counter information, the internal anxiety meter goes through the roof. This is a natural process as counter information brings in uncertainty and we as humans do not like uncertainty.
Also, beauty is in the mind of the beholder. The way we look at evidence has a lot to do with what we already believe. Our filters twists and turns the information the way we already think and know. We often will amplify the evidence that helps us believe what we believe and discount the evidence that goes counter to what we believe.
Think of this as if you believe in something, you are going to multiply the validity of that evidence by X. The X represents the amount of vesting you have done in that said belief. At the same time, you see counter information, you will divide the validity by X.
Failing our way to success
There is a huge difference in doing something and reading about it. I have read a lot about things, but when the real-world hits, the anxiety and emotions can take over. This is something I learned the hard way, and I am glad I did.
“If you want to be great at something first you have to be bad at it“
Matthew Syed
It is important to get your hands dirty and start doing stuff. But one important thing we should do is actually measure and improve what we do. There is a great example Matthew gives in his book. He asks his readers, would you improve if you played golf in dark or if you played golf in daylight to see where your balls were going? For me, it is going to be in daylight as I want to know where they are going so I can readjust.
The small improvements over time accumulate to compound improvements. The more we are honest about our mistakes, the more we can get better in our personal lives.
The Counter Human Method
You and me both would like to tell each other that we are rational people. In a way we are, but we all have blind spots that are hard to overcome. No matter how much you read or how much you get better at it, you are going to have blind spots that are hard to see.
This is why it is important to employ something we humans have discovered in the last 2 centuries that has changed our lives dramatically. Scientific method is something that changes our lives dramatically. It employs other people to cover our biases based on data. Data that everyone can see and challenge. This might hurt initially, but overtime, this can help us greatly.
Scientific method is counter to what we humans want. As we always want to be right, someone telling us we are wrong can hurt but at the same time, if you have the right mindset, you can overcome that pain for the truth.
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