Cognitive Biases, Mental Models and Imposter Syndrome
On an average day, most of the conversations we have, decisions we make, choices we are presented with have been lived over and over across centuries. Sure, how we react day to day to those situations is ever so slightly nuanced - but very rarely we find ourselves in a truly unique position.
One of the benefits of human race is the ability to document our learnings that our future generations can benefit from. If we combine the premise that most of our situations are not uniquely unique and that somewhere someone has documented their learnings on something about their life - then it’s only reasonable to expect someone has ‘codified’ some principles when it comes to some situations. That’s where mental models come from. Here is Farnam Street’s defintion of mental models:
Mental models are how we understand the world. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason.
A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks.
It is absolutely critical that we remember these mental models since this will save us a lot of trouble when it comes to day to day decision making. You can head over to fs.blog to read about mental models in different domains. These mental models are a good set of tools and sometimes excellent shortcuts to navigate a complex world. However, applying them blindly and not being sufficiently aware of the context in which to apply them will lead to disasters.
On the topic of shortcuts, you know who loves shortcuts? Our brain. Again, on an average day, our brain processes so many sensory inputs from the outside world and imagined/perceived input that itself generates. In order to be efficient, humans have evolved super-sophisticated simplifying strategies (SSSS). In Thinking Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman talks about the 2 systems that our brain employs - System One is fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. System Two is slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. Unfortunately, most of the times, we resort to system 1 even when system 2 is needed - because our SSSS.
Why is this related to mental models? Since mental models are a deliberate shortcut strategy and unless we spend enough time recognizing the heurisitcs and biases our own brain employs, we might get trigger happy in applying the wrong mental model.
Here is a real world example: You are trying to convince a senior leader of a Fortune 500 Firm of something you believe is the right thing to do. However you realize that this person has been successful by any definition of the word and you sense there might be some survivorship bias in the person’s narrative. Knowing this will allow you to effectively come up with a narrative that forces them to employ their system 2 processes. But if you cannot notice your own confirmation bias or have not ruled out the availability heurisitc in your argument, you are less likely to succeed.
What has imposter syndrome have to do with all this? As someone who is struggling to keep the imposter at bay in every day conversations, understanding all this often results in overthinking. An imposter challenges their own expertise and confidence at every possible opportunity and the chasm of overcoming cognitive biases has by far the most challenging I have ever seen - is it our or the other person’s system 1 thinking that is at the root of a challenge? Are we sure we accounted for every bias we harbour and sufficiently accounted for relevant mental models for the situation at hand and are we sure we won’t mess up something and will look phenomenally bad especially after all the mumbo jumbo crap?
There are a few ‘models’ we can apply to get out of this deer in the headlight situation: 1. Anchor - on your past experiences and how applying this had helped/didn’t help. Learn from those. 2. Aspire - to get better every day. The answer to the question of “Can I do better?” is always yes. If you’re thinking, “should I?” the answer to that is also yes. 3. Action - have a bias for action, no matter how small the action is. Write the first word,
As for tricks, what works for me is having a pre-game ritual before getting into such conversations/situations/days. Listen to your favorite pump up music, the one that gets you physically moving, gets your hair to stand up - run it loop a few times till you feel it in your bones. Then all that’s left to do is act.