Charles Darwin and Elon Musk are known for their groundbreaking ideas.
Although these two innovators lived in different eras, they have a common practice in the way they approached their creative process.
Elon Musk (left) and Charles Darwin (right).
A practice to stay open-minded and help their brain see beyond the obvious to explore new theories and ideas.
The problem.
Our brain loves to create "shortcuts" to save energy and time.
A typical "shortcut" is confirmation bias, our tendency to pick and choose the information that confirms our beliefs.
While it's great for survival, it's awful for the creative process.
It blinds us and prevents us from learning and exploring new possibilities.
Why does confirmation bias happen?
When the brain receives a new input, there are two ways it can affect us.
Because your brain wants to save energy, it will always try to choose the path of least resistance and only acknowledge the information that reaffirms your beliefs.
How can we counteract it?
Fighting confirmation bias will always be a challenge because it's hard-wired into our brain.
But, we can adopt the following lessons from Musk and Darwin to train our brain and be more comfortable with internalizing inputs that question our beliefs.
1. Life Principle: Start by assuming you are wrong.
Whenever you build something, read, talk to someone, etc, adopt this approach to listen more closely to others.
2. Daily Practice: When something disagrees with you, write it down.
If you see something that contradicts your beliefs, your brain will try to forget it. Writing it down will help you remember it and meditate over it to better understand why it disagrees with you and what you can learn from it.
The Takeaway:
Beware of your brain.
To think more clearly and expand your perception of reality, assume you are wrong and get in the habit of taking notes of things you disagree with.
Separate your wish to be right from the desire to have been right.
This is a summarized idea from the book The Web of Belief by philosophers Willard V. Quine and J.S. Ullian.
The desire to be right is the thirst for truth, which is good.
But the desire to have been right, on the other hand, is pride. It stands in the way of seeing when we are wrong and therefore blocks the progress of our knowledge.
Questions to always keep in mind:
Why did I believe this?
Did I jump to conclusions based on a quick skim/look?
What did I automatically agree with?
What would it mean if I was wrong?
Which facts would someone use to argue my point of view?
Let’s listen to each other, help each other and see each other.
Let me know what you think. I would love to hear from you.
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Stay open-minded.
María Albert
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