Defeating Stupidity, Where I Disappeared To, New Newsletter Rules, and More
Bring Ambition Newsletter - January 27, 2022
Hi folks and welcome aboard new subscribers!
The Bring Ambition Newsletter is like having a personal executive coach in your inbox every other Thursday. You’ll receive 3-5 quick bulletpoints (<3 min. read) related to professional development, peak performance psychology, productivity, and much more.
As always, if you enjoy the newsletter please share with a friend!
1.) Defeating stupidity
Believe it or not, there's a huge difference between being stupid and dumb. At least that's the argument made in a fascinating new article from Psyche, "Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid."
There's nothing wrong with being dumb. "Dumbness" is a lack of mental horsepower, more a product of genetics than choice.
Stupidity is "very different and much more dangerous." The author describes stupidity as "conceptual obsolescence" — it's when you fail to bring the appropriate mental tools to a situation, or you force an outdated or unhelpful conceptual framework on a problem.
Stupidity is especially dangerous because A.) even smart people can sometimes be incredibly stupid, B.) it's challenge to "fix," and C.) because it "dovetails with other vices" like, for example, stubbornness.
To some extent, stupidity results from thinking in absolute terms and then exacerbating the issue by misapplying your trusted heuristics and constructs. The author brings up a great example of World War I commanders: in the beginning of the war, old-guard leaders applied outdated strategies, like cavalry raids and "linear tactics," to this 'new' war. They failed to account for how fundamentally useless these approaches were in the face of innovative technology like tanks, chemical weapons, and machine guns. And even worse, rather than admit they were wrong and pivot to new tactics, they dug in their heels and wasted thousands of lives in the process.
So how do you mitigate the impact of your own potential stupidity? The author leaves this topic alone, but I have a few hypotheses:
Adopt a "less wrong" mentality, like we explored here. Make a habit of asking for feedback. Raise your self-awareness by trying to find and fix blind spots and areas where you have a less than perfect understanding. If need be, leverage a manager, mentor, trusted colleague, friend, or coach for their perspective. Identify and challenge assumptions, which leads to the next point...
Work to maintain your objectivity by educating yourself on common unconscious biases and logical fallacies. Identify where they might have an impact in your day-to-day, and work to intentionally mitigate them.
Acquire wisdom, abandon ideology, and study the "big ideas" and mental models from various fields of expertise. Understand these frameworks well enough to know when and how to apply them. This is the opposite of allowing yourself to be “stupid,” and it’s a common recommendation from people like Charlie Munger (for example, in this commencement speech).
I’d love to hear from you - Do you agree with these points? What did I miss?
2.) The wisdom of A.E. Housman
“The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.”
— Alfred Edward Housman, More Poems
From Wikipedia: "Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet... Housman was one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars who ever lived." Check out more of his poetry here.
3.) Where did I disappear to?
I took a little break from the newsletter to focus on other priorities - for example, achieving my biggest, scariest life goal to date: buying a house!
So now, sitting in my own dream-come-true office with Larry at my feet, I’m ready to pick the newsletter back up and make it better than ever.
Fortunately, we’ve gained quite a few subscribers despite my absence, so a warm welcome to new members of the tribe!
I’m setting some go-forward newsletter “rules” for myself that I hope you appreciate:
I am trimming the newsletter read time down to about 3 minutes (excluding intro/outro). That lands us somewhere around 600 words, typically divided between 3-5 bullets. I know you’re busy!
I’ll continually strive to make the newsletter as practical as possible. That means getting to the heart of “what’s in it for you” and “what do you do with this” quickly, and providing tactical, actionable exercises and strategies to make you better at your job or in your business.
Politics and covid talk will be kept to an absolute minimum (was already a rule, but still). I’m sure you’re exposed to more than enough of both already! I’ll only occasionally share resources to help you deal with the craziness, languishing, and overwhelm that these topics can cause, like we explored here.
Finally, for the foreseeable future, I’m not going to actively advertise or promote the newsletter. I’m going to focus on writing the most badass professional development newsletter possible in hopes that if you, dear reader, find it valuable, you will share it with friends and colleagues.
That’s it for this week! I’d love to hear your feedback — What did you enjoy? What stunk and needs to be fixed ASAP? You can reply here or reach me via any of the links below.
Have a great weekend!
Jon D'Alessandro
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