Ever noticed that sometimes your mind just seems primed for certain things? If you’re thinking of changing your car, you keep seeing that model everywhere. Or your friend gets a job at a new company you’ve never heard of before, then you see their products in stores.
This is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or the frequency illusion. It’s a type of cognitive bias likely driven by our need to be selective in what we pay attention to and looking for confirmation bias to support our ideas.
This week, I experienced it with an idea.
After getting a new Kindle Paperwhite to stop me from wasting my evenings mindlessly scrolling, I started reading a couple of books from Amazon.
- Predictably Irrational by the behavioural economist Dan Airely. It’s packed full experiments about why we don’t always make decisions based on rational thought.
- Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Titled by the average human lifespan, it looks at our relationship with time and how to make the most of our finite existence. A tough love wake up call.
I’m taking notes at the end of each chapter for my own reference so I’ll publish them as articles on my website when I’m done reading them.
Even though both books are coming at human thought from different angles, there is one key takeaway I’ve already taken from both.
Opportunity cost
I’m sure you’re aware of the phase:
“When you say ‘Yes’ to one thing, you’re saying ‘No’ to something else.”
If you’re like me, you might consider this when deciding what to commit to. But I hadn’t really thought of this in terms of decisions I’m not actively making.
Whether you’re sitting on the sofa watching Netflix and scrolling on your phone or staying in a job that’s not exciting but it’s ok and pays the bills – you think you’re just continuing with the status quo and not making any decisions. But that’s not the case.
By doing the usual, you’re actually choosing not to do something else. There is still opportunity cost there, it’s just less obvious than when you’re presented with two options and need to decide between them.
Choosing to spend your evening watching tv rather than working on your side hustle, will conserve energy give you a short term reward. But the cost is that you miss out on the long term rewards of doing something more aligned with your goals.
Predictably Irrational example
Have you ever really thought about where your habits come from?
I couldn’t tell you when watching tv after work and mindlessly scrolling become normal for me. I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision to choose to do it.
I suppose the first time it was just easier than thinking of something else to do when I’m tried. And so, I repeated it day after day until it became a habit, then it’s just normal and doing it doesn’t feel like a choice at all.
Dann Airely calls this ‘self-herding’ behaviour. Where you follow your previous actions over and over even if they weren’t formed on the basis of a rational, considered decision in the first place. Usually because they are the easiest option that requires less effort.
But if you want to make changes in your life, self-herding won’t help you.
The fix
- Pay attention to your habits. What do you do everyday without thinking?
- Question yourself. Why do you do this? What else could you be doing instead? Could something else save you time and money or move you closer to your goals?
- Question your decisions every time rather than it just being something that you always do. Maybe don’t always walk your dog on the same route, try taking your own healthier lunch into work and get a kindle to read on the sofa after work instead of watching tv.
Four Thousand Weeks example
Say you have a couple of hours free at work. That time will likely get taken up by responding to other people’s priorities – emails, phone calls, or DMs.
But, if you had already decided to work towards a promotion at your company, then you could use that time to create a presentation of suggested process improvements to your department lead instead.
You’ll still reply to the messages you need to, but they will have a lower priority, because you have decided what is important to you.
Just as we can procrastinate on writing a report, we procrastinate on making big decisions with our lives. This leads us to not deciding what we want to do with our time and instead having our time dictated by other people.
Not deciding what you want to spend time on is still a decision. It’s just living by default.
Living by default is often not rewarding and leads to regret because it’s not aligned with what truly matters to us.
Key takeaways
Pay attention to your default behaviours and question if they are actually aligned with what you want.
Life is short. Decide what you want to do with your time or it will be decided for you.
I’ve read around three chapters of each book so far, but I’m enjoying both a lot. Check them out at Amazon:
- Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
- Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman