Breaking the Chains of Misinformed Beliefs: 4 Best Practices for Clear Thinking

Big Picture

The world has grown so complicated such that even experts are often wrong on important issues. It is also an inconvenient realisation that some of your long-held "truths" are misinformed and hold you back.

Why does it matter?

The things you hold as self-evident-truths often drive your actions. You should not waste time on inaccurate or wrong "self-evident truths" which reduce your results.

Case in point:

In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. This was premised on expert opinion that a surge would overwhelm our precarious healthcare system.

The surge did not materialise. Hospitals were never full, but the impact on the economy and the poor was significant.

We are often held prisoner by flawed views of experts and you often pay a "high tax" for your wrong beliefs. You can reduce the stranglehold experts have on you and own flawed beliefs, by following these best practices.

4 Best Practices to Be a Clear Thinker

1) Learn to question experts: It is often very difficult to question experts on a subject you are a novice. However, you can check how their ideas compare to other experts. For example, if your doctor recommends surgery, you can go to another doctor to get second opinion.

2) Question your own truths and beliefs: You need to be on the lookout for the falseness of the things you believe are self-evident. For example, you can strongly believe that if you work hard enough on something you will be successful. Can you research on people who were in your situation who worked hard but were unsuccessful?

3) Fully Consider opposing views: You don't have to agree with an opinion, but respect that opposing view enough to fully understand it. For instance, if your colleague thinks a website is a waste of time, when you think the organisation ought to have one. Do you fully understand why your colleague has that opinion? Is there some truth in that opinion?

4) Be open to changing your views: This is often harder than you think. However, a useful mindset to have is to categorise your views into "unchangeable", "strongly held" and "weakly held". You will then be able to review an opinion like, "I will never be able to enjoy my profession" to "It is difficult but not impossible to enjoy my profession".

Bottom line

The world is very complicated so you need to have a system which helps you evaluate long held beliefs which affect your results. What important beliefs do you hold about your profession? Beliefs about how what are the main changes likely to impact it in the next 10 years.