You’re Not Special

We did it: we’ve come to the last installment in my blog series all about cognitive bias and how the very wiring of our brains affects our ability to get organized! I’m ending with a doozy, just in case you haven’t seen yourself in Parts 1, 2, 3,4 or 5.

Because, you see, you may think these biases don’t apply to you. I’m a smart, evolved human being, you think to yourself. I can recognize when I’m behaving irrationally and course correct. And you may think you can. But the evidence shows that in fact, you cannot, and neither can anyone else, because cognitive biases have been hardwired into our brains over millenia.

This is the bias blind spot.

Specifically, the bias blind spot is the name given to the finding that people easily (and correctly!) identify biases in others while believing that they themselves are driven by facts and logic. No one is immune to this, including the very economists and psychologists who study cognitive biases.

Did you catch yourself nodding along as you were reading earlier posts in this series? Could you immediately think of other people (probably your spouse, kids, or parents if we’re being honest) who are making decisions due to those biases that aren’t ultimately in their best interests? Did you judge them a little bit, and get a little frustrated that they can’t see their own biases and work around them?

And did you notice that I framed my presentation of each bias to you?

I did that for a reason.

Here’s the deal. We have to get our own houses in order first before we can expect to influence others. We have to get our own stuff organized before we can expect our spouse to take a look at theirs. We have to build our own tidying habits before we can expect our kids to clean their rooms. We have to declutter our own sentimental items before we can possibly expect our parents to do any Swedish death cleaning.

This means we need to understand ourselves first. Stop worrying about why your spouse leaves dirty laundry everywhere, and figure out how to manage your own laundry. To do that, you might need to think about how the cognitive biases I’ve talked about are leading you to own too much clothing, most of which you don’t wear, which creates an endless backlog of laundry.

Once you accept that you have been operating within the bias blind spot, you can turn your focus on your own biases and behaviors and look for the gaps between what you’re doing and the space you really want to create for yourself.

That’s why I titled this post “you’re not special.” When it comes to cognitive biases, none of us are. We’re all here, in the bias blind spot, together. And once we recognize that, powerful change is possible!

LMW