1.6. Default to Clarity
Many of the algorithms youâre running have been programmed into you by evolution, culture, ritual, your parents, and your community. Some of these algorithms help move you closer to what you want; others move you further away.
You unconsciously adopt the habits of the people you spend time with, and those people make it easier or harder for you to achieve progress toward what you want to achieve. The more time you spend with people, the more likely you start to think and act as they do.
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We could spend weeks, months, even years laboring with the Personality Ethic trying to change our attitudes and behaviors and not even begin to approach the phenomenon of change that occurs spontaneously when we see things differently. It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms. In the words of Thoreau, âFor every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.â We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get
to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.
But as I got deeper into this research, observing the vast differences across the people in this study and how they flourished at their best when life lined up with their encodings and what fed their inner fire, I gradually began to change. Subtly at first, I began to shift away from trying to change people into what I wanted them to be. Simultaneously, I shifted toward finding or creating the best possible match between their encodings and their responsibilities. It didnât happen overnight, it was more of a managerial form of simplex stepping. Iâd sense something about a personâs encodings, and then Iâd make a shift in their responsibilities to fir those encodings. Then I might observe something else about their encodings, discovering something wonderful about them when they thrived in a task, and Iâd make another shift in responsibilities. Together, we essentially simplex stepped toward them coming into frame in a seat on the bus.
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.
1.4. The Social Default
Doing something different means you might underperform, but it also means you might change the game entirely. If you do what everyone else does, youâll get the same result that everyone else gets. Best practices arenât always the best. By definition theyâre average.
If you donât know enough about what youâre doing to make your own decisions, you probably should do what everyone is doing. If you want better-than-average results, though, youâll 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: itâs going to get uncomfortable.
The people with the best defaults are typically the ones with the best environment. Sometimes itâs part of a deliberate strategy, and sometimes itâs just plain luck. Either way, itâs easier to align yourself with the right behaviour when everyone just is already doing it.
The way to improve your defaults isnât by willpower but by creating an intentional environment where your desired behaviour becomes the default behaviour.