Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results

So our first step in improving our outcomes is to train ourselves to identify the moments when judgment is called for in the first place, and pause to create space to think clearly. This training takes a lot of time and effort, because it involves counterbalancing our hardwired biological defaults evolved over many centuries. But mastery over the ordinary moments that make the future easier or harder is not only possible, it’s the critical ingredient to success and achieving your long-term goals.

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Here’s how each essentially functions: The emotion default: we tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts. The ego default: we tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy. The social default: we tend to conform to the norms of our larger social group. The inertia default: we’re habit forming and comfort seeking. We tend to resist change, and to prefer ideas, processes, and environments that are familiar.

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In order to get the results we desire, we must do two things. We must first create the space to reason in our thoughts, feelings, and actions; and second, we must deliberately use that space to think clearly. Once you have mastered this skill, you will find you have an unstoppable advantage. Decisions made through clear thinking will put you in increasingly better positions, and success will only compound from there.

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Doing something different means you might underperform, but it also means you might change the game entirely. If you do what everyone else does, you’ll get the same results that everyone else gets.fn2 Best practices aren’t always the best. By definition, they’re average. If you don’t know enough about what you’re doing to make your own decisions, you probably should do what everyone is doing. If you want better-than-average results, though, you’ll have to think clearly. And thinking clearly is thinking independently. Sometimes you have to break free of the social default and do something differently from those around you. Fair warning: it’s going to get uncomfortable.

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In the space between stimulus and response, one of two things can happen. You can consciously pause and apply reason to the situation. Or you can cede control and execute a default behavior. The problem is, our default behavior often makes things worse.

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We’re taught to focus on the big decisions, rather than the moments where we don’t even realize we’re making a choice. Yet these ordinary moments often matter more to our success than the big decisions. This can be difficult to appreciate.

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While the rest of us are chasing victory, the best in the world know they must avoid losing before they can win. It turns out this is a surprisingly effective strategy.

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Our ego tempts us into thinking we’re more than we are. Left unchecked, it can turn confidence into overconfidence or even arrogance. We get a bit of knowledge on the internet and suddenly we are full of hubris. Everything seems easy. As a result, we take risks that we may not understand we’re taking. We must resist this kind of unearned confidence, though, if we are to get the results we desire.

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The ego default urges us to feel right at the expense of being right. Few things feel better than being right—so much so that we will unconsciously rearrange the world into arbitrary hierarchies to maintain our beliefs and feel better about ourselves. My first memory of doing so dates back to my days of working in a grocery store at age sixteen. One particular customer would always treat the staff poorly. He’d drive up in his fancy car, park it illegally outside, and run in to get something. When there was a line, he’d rudely comment and raise his voice telling everyone to hurry up. We called him Mr. Rolex. One day when he was waiting in my line, he told me to “hurry the f**k up because this Rolex doesn’t pay for itself.” I’ll leave my reply out but let’s just say that it cost me a job. It was worth it, though, because the experience made me realize that some people organize their unconscious hierarchy by money and status. Those were the ways Mr. Rolex had of keeping the score to always come out on top. I remember walking home that night thinking that while I might not have a job, at least I wasn’t like him. And at that moment I rearranged the world in such a way that I, the newly unemployed high school student without a car or a lavish wristwatch, came out on top. I had unconsciously organized the world in a way where I could be above him and feel better about myself. Both of us reverted to the ego default that day.

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Inertia also prevents us from doing hard things. The longer we avoid the hard thing we know we should do, the harder it becomes to do. Avoiding conflict is comfortable and easy. The longer we avoid the conflict, however, the more necessary it becomes to continue avoiding it. What starts out as avoiding a small but difficult conversation quickly grows into avoiding a large and seemingly impossible one. The weight of what we avoid eventually affects our relationship. Groups

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