

This is kind of a funny thing for me to be pushing back on, since I so often write and speak about the virtues of trying to change your own mind. Shouldn’t you always be approaching arguments with open-minded curiosity, motivated by a desire to learn?” The most common objection I got was this: “You didn’t mention the motivation of changing your own mind. Don’t Settle: live with Passion.Yesterday I tweeted about some of the reasons I engage in online arguments with people, even if there’s no real hope of swaying them: But there’s nothing inherent to the tools that makes you a scout.Īll the best in your quest to get better. Or you can use them to defend a particular viewpoint, if you’re motivated to do that instead. You can use those tools to help you see the world clearly, if that’s what you’re motivated to do. Intelligence and knowledge are just tools. “Hope is a good breakfast, but a bad supper.” – Francis BaconīEING SMART AND KNOWLEDGEABLE DOESN’T MAKE YOU A SCOUT In other words, we’re impatient, and we get more impatient as the potential rewards grow closer. In scout mindset, our thinking is guided by the question “Is it true?” We use it to help us see things clearly for the sake of our judgment, so that we can fix problems, notice opportunities, figure out which risks are worth taking, decide how we want to spend our lives, and, sometimes, better understand the world we live in for the sake of sheer curiosity.Ī feature of our intuitive decision-making in which we care too much about short-term consequences and too little about long-term consequences. We use soldier mindset to help us maintain beliefs that boost our self-esteem, give us comfort, preserve our morale, persuade other people, cultivate an attractive image, and help us fit in to our social groups. Our thinking is guided by the question “Can I believe it?” about things we want to accept, and “Must I believe it?” about things we want to reject.

Finding out you’re wrong means suffering a defeat.Decide what to believe by asking either “Can I believe this?” or “Must I believe this?” depending on your motives.”.When we don’t want something to be true, we instead ask ourselves, “Must I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to reject it. When we want something to be true, he said, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to accept it.

If you’re a doctor, that means considering alternate diagnoses before settling on your initial guess. Whether you’re proposing a new product feature or a military maneuver, asking yourself, “What are the most likely ways this could fail?” allows you to strengthen your plan against those possibilities in advance. Scout mindset is what prompts us to question our assumptions and stress-test our plans. Scout mindset is what keeps you from fooling yourself on tough questions that people tend to rationalize about, such as: Do I need to get tested for that medical condition? Is it time to cut my losses or would that be giving up too early? Is this relationship ever going to get better? How likely is it that my partner will change their mind about wanting children? “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself-and you are the easiest person to fool.” – physicist Richard Feynman It’s what prompts you to honestly ask yourself questions like “Was I at fault in that argument?” or “Is this risk worth it?” or “How would I react if someone from the other political party did the same thing? Scout mindset is what allows you to recognize when you are wrong, to seek out your blind spots, to test your assumptions and change course. The motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.
