How to keep a cool head when chaos is around

In the continuation of the topic of the previous article, where it was said about the need to train the forces of righteousness (what is needed to convey an opinion about something to the interlocutor), here we will focus on training your own sight (in terms of "the ability to form an opinion about any phenomenon"). In project management, especially in an attempt to achieve flexibility, when everything is incomprehensible and not flexible, the task itself is quite proper.

Here, it would seem, in order to form an opinion about something, it is necessary to approach the process with a “cool head” (“if you do something stupid out of common thinking”).
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However, from the same previous article, you can find out that the brain serves emotions, correctly explaining to us what we have just decided here. And in such a “cold-process”, as the knowledge of reality, everything also happens through emotions, and not at all from the arguments of reason.



We continuously generate a certain context of perception of reality - we wander through a host of possibilities and dangers, while the brain produces millions of value judgments, these judgments having just occurred in the present, after a moment become part of the context being set. Which in turn forms our desires, aspirations, ambitions, goals, finally; and the mind in this process is an add-on, which is included in the decision-making only after the emotion has generated a “long list of options” from the conditionally infinite and having sifted out unnecessary options, provided the brain with the ability to “sort out the short list”.

There is quite a lot of rationality in our current life (that which you cannot measure, you cannot even control). Often this whole “number crunching” overshadows our eyes, where we need adequate feedback from the client (in the sense it should be perceived, it usually is), we feel crisis phenomena are invested in performance reports (more such indicators, more than those ... but if square-breeding ”) - in this case, the entire progressive public has recognized financial indicators (which usually forms the basis of such reports) as indicators of delay, things“ working ahead of the curve ”are usually high-quality, emotional and subtle.

What traps lie in the process of forming an opinion about something, an “adequate picture” of the world, a signal cleared of noise, etc. how not to call it, and how emotions and reason get along in all of this. I will cite only “a few loved ones” on which he himself was tending more than once.

1. Player error (gambler's fallacy), who played necessarily came across. There is a cognitive distortion that statistically unrelated events are still on some kind of invisible tight string, and if for example, on a tape measure, black has fallen, then after that it seems that now the probability of red falling increases, if black falls again, it seems that fate favors red even more, although in reality probability theory does not have this pulling string, trying to balance karma and cold probability is always 50 to 50 (in a real casino it’s not because there is zero, but we’re not talking about that now). Similar trends occur in the business and personal sphere in a manner that “cannot drive all the time and cannot drive all the time” (and I must say that this is true). Then what is the problem? In the emotional, I would even say “karma” pumping the situation. We have not been lucky three times - the fourth “we are already from fate”, we can work on the topic a little worse. We were lucky three times, now we’re just unlucky - we are starting with “thin signals” to generate a self-fulfilling prophecy.

2. “Attribution error” is partly connected with this; in our “picture of the world”, we usually have - external circumstances interfere, others - their internal psychological traits. Therefore, when explaining a situation, when analyzing and formalizing business situations, an ominous psychologism appears (All the bad is inherited by the child from the other parent. The first law of heredity). Undeservedly great attention to the personality traits of the participants, unfairly small attention to the incentive mechanisms of the system (checks and balances, etc.).

3. The problem of hidden evidence (I first met Taleb, it is likely that the author is not him) - an absolutization of some properties, driving tendencies of people and situations. Attempt to submit, some features and themes as a “philosopher's stone” in the pursuit of success. It is very difficult to eradicate, probably all this holds the popular book genre of biographies. In a caricatured sense, Steve Jobs was wearing a black turtleneck sweater, wearing black turtlenecks. The problem is that the black turtlenecks wore black turtlenecks by the millions who did not succeed. There is no magic pill, the only correct psychological trait, or behavior strategy that leads to success. Nothing is good or good, in itself, but depending on the circumstances. What is a background in one situation may be foreground in another (signal and noise change places depending on the circumstances).

4. Another funny aberration of consciousness can be observed right now in the real estate market in Russia. Prices are falling. In the primary market rather quickly (but with the last effort, developers try not to call it a fall in prices, but to disguise with some succession of discounts, etc.). Well, that is, an attempt to disguise a steady trend, although the forces of the trend and developers are unequal (as in the joke of the times of the USSR, distributing empty leaflets about Red Square in Red Square "and what to write when everything is clear"). However, no matter how it is called - the primary housing market reacts and prices here “adequately to external conditions” are falling (and will most likely fall further). However, it is especially funny, the situation looked like when the crisis on the secondary market deepened (and it still looks like). Secondary market, "broken, but not defeated" - until the obvious manifestations of inadequacy. The whole secret in the "magic bubbles", or rather in a deeply personal attitude to things not related to their objective value (the secondary market sells, its housing, as if to "itself" and the whole emotional veil associated with living in an apartment - here is the first time daughter crawled, here the son of the army met, etc.). Well, that is, an emotional approach, undermines the possibility of an objective assessment of the situation.

5. Another trap, the temptation to fall into which is extremely high. It arises when planning, in principle, at any level - whether you are building a global strategy or just trying to assess the likelihood of completing a project at one time or another (the young lady’s sex differs from the sex of the peasant only by the quality of the sheets). Let's take a simple example: you calculated in the project the period for the customer to receive the project product, which if “not pure truth, then at least it is not a shame to believe” (it is in the guaranteed probability interval, not less than 85%, respectively You, as "piece of iron"). If suddenly this story does not happen, there are "insurmountable temptations" to reconsider the approach (and indiscriminately, despite the fact that your scenario was fair 25% to lose, but your consciousness stubbornly repeats, and without trying to really understand that all the problems are wrong 85%). This is good when it comes to simple one-stage things, such as the duration of the project: missed, “reclocked the next time,” etc. When it comes to strategy, with respect to something that is well thought out (some backward pass, has intermediate points, correlated with the capabilities of the system, calculated not only by winning buns, but also by the inevitable "costs of victory"). When it is implemented, it will inevitably be tempted to reconsider it (the actions of competitors, randomness, etc.), against the background of the above mechanism (retrospective distortion). That is, it is very difficult, retrospectively examining the situation, to convince yourself to take the same position in the past (to assess the odds of 85 by 25), knowing about future changes (especially when there is no fart). Keeping order and understand what “percent” (85 or 25) you have just arrived from is a very correct task.

Let us try to draw a couple of conclusions on the topic that even in such a rational, to the core, process, as making an opinion about something, there are quite a lot of emotions, as though it might seem to someone.

A person who wants to think “that he holds a controlling stake in his destiny in his hands” is very peculiar to the search for universally successful moves, axioms, psychological traits. The idea that one and the same action can be effective or not effective depending on the circumstances, exactly the same psychological trait, being a resource in a situation, and in another problem, is very painful to us.

In order to steadily improve our abilities in the field of making opinions about something (any prognostic), we will have to face the unquenchable emotional background of our rationality, to feel and correct the nature of the distortions and interpretations of the signals received. Make friends objective and subjective reality. Self-discipline (or willpower, how you like) allows you to put your unconscious in the service of yourself and make decisions based on your own interests, rather than popping up to the surface, fears and distortions. It can be trained, well, like some virtual muscle (and just like any muscle, without trying to lift “weight greater than the peak maximum” and change overnight becoming hard, like chancre flint, breaking complex tasks into small conscious steps, achieving small increments, not cardinal record rises). Well, in a word, who ever trained any muscle, he knows. Well, for example, there is less than one donut a day, well, or not to deviate from the strategy for the sake of short-term gain (we decided that we were playing in superior quality, and then we had a chance to save the angle, no, we patiently invest in the planned key success factor). Investing immediately in everything: speed, quality, assortment, price, is more likely to miss or overwhelm, well, or achieve the desired and get lost in the assembly of other "medium options" (generally in "one" and a little bit more important is consistency, not perfection in each course).

We live in the information age (so at least they say, I heard - who owns information, owns the world and all that), it is very dangerous to fall in the direction of "information, information, more information is good and different." I would have separated one from the other a little deeper, without pretending to be an academic interpretation: the data is all that falls from everywhere; information is that which has theoretical value from this; knowledge (what we really need) is some truth related to the goal, a signal separated from noise. For example, when evaluating some positions, it is very important to immediately determine the actual risks from the entire host of existing ones (since the “theoretical weakness” of our position, which under current conditions will be difficult for the enemy to use against us, can be considered a weakness for clarity) . Accordingly, the cost of finding information about this "story" is likely to a priori exceed the value from it. To solve complex problems, consciously it is necessary to limit the scale of a disaster - in order to have a chance at all to solve them. Here it is important to understand “what are you looking at” than to have an image in “HD format”.

Apparently the development of civilization, this is a one-way road - and it will not be easier, in the sense that with each passing day, the amount of the incomprehensible will increase, and the level of uncertainty around will increase. Someone from the "patriarchs" (for some reason I want to think that it was Peters) said that the one who structures the chaos better than others will win. The strategy is becoming less and less a destination (it is clear that if strictly according to Ichishny, as we like, it never was, the destination is the target architecture, and the strategy is to ensure how to get there, “work is not a wolf , the wolf is a walk ”), and more and more a set of principles that, when executed, increase the likelihood of hitting this cherished item (“ Tactics are knowing what to do when you have something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when nothing to do. "Tartakower).

And a little paradoxical at last (in line with the prevailing management by obgectives approach): the number of situations in which we act with the prevalence of noise in the data in them will most likely increase over time. The only solution in such a situation is sometimes to focus on the process (with maintaining strategic, informational, emotional hygiene in it ... whatever that means), and not on the result ("we have so many drugs that not all of them are illnesses" the idea is that there will be such a good medicine for which the disease will definitely appear). Outlining a small “platform” in the future (several leads and reference points), start moving towards it, essentially planning by acting (detailing your picture of the world as it moves - which goes well with the Taleb bar strategy, when the benefits are relatively high, and the risks of failure relatively "digestible"). It can shake well, but stick to the stern, analytical paralysis and procrastination.

What around this can be read:

- Nate Silver "Signal and noise."
- Daniel Kahneman. Think slowly ... decide quickly.
- Duncan Watts. Common sense is lying. Why not listen to your inner voice.
- Nasim Taleb. Anti-fragility.