The Surprising Truth About Being Rational.
Edition #129
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
40 Life Lessons I Know at 40 (That I Wish I Knew at 20)
Peter Yang is a Product Lead at Roblox. As he turns 40, he shares some of his learnings and experiences. His life and career insights are worth their weight in gold.
Here are some thoughts he has shared for you to think and reflect on:
Career
To have a fulfilling career, follow your curiosity, push yourself to do hard things, and learn from failures.
Find your unique skill stack that gives you energy and meets market demand.
Health
Go to bed and wake up early.
No food 3 hours before bed, no water 2 hours before, and no screens 1 hour before.
Diet
Losing weight is 90% diet and 10% exercise.
Always read the labels to avoid buying something bad for you.
Exercise
Work out more for your mind than your looks.
Find hacks to save time when working out.
Relationships
Get comfortable with being alone.
Call your parents often.
Spend quality time with your children.
Read the entire article here.
When Should You Trust Your Gut?
In this Y Combinator’s Dalton and Michael Podcast, they have a conversation about an important question you may have asked yourself one time or the other: ‘I have an interesting idea, should I go ahead and do it?’ If you analyse this question, what lies behind that question is another fundamental question - ‘Should I trust my gut or not?’
How do you approach this question when you want to make a decision?
The more you build and work on your expertise, the more you develop the ability to discern, and that’s a good place for you to trust your instincts.
“Would you have bought it?”- By asking a question like this, you are ensuring you are making something you like and convincing yourself that you will use or buy it or if other people like you will buy it. Then trust your gut, especially if, in the past, you have made such decisions and it has worked for others or for a company or a project you worked for.
When should you not trust your gut? When you have not worked on something, or your opinion on the idea or the problem is right in the middle—say, right at the 50th percentile.
“Part of building a startup is building expertise.” This logic also applies to any new initiative that you are asked to lead in the company.
Things start to fail when someone with expertise acts with fear and acts like having no expertise, whereas a person without expertise acts with too much confidence.
You can also listen to the entire episode on:
Magic Of Original Thinking - Rory Sutherland
Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman at Ogilvy UK, author of the best-selling book Alchemy: The Surprising Power Of Ideas That Don't Make Sense, in this talk explores the alchemy behind original thinking and how big problems can often be solved with unexpected solutions.
Here are some thoughts from the talk where he urges you to challenge your thinking and reconsider how you make decisions:
It is important to ask more but better questions as a way to solve problems that have never been solved before.
Rory argues that people building technology products must use more psychology rather than rationally approach it from pure needs and solutions only.
He talks about the psychology of price discrimination and the immense power and value it can bring when you want to price products or services.
He highlights humans tend to fall back on old habits that they are comfortable with and social copying - “When in doubt, do what we have done before, when that does not work, do what everybody else does.”
He makes a very powerful point about how we currently don’t have metrics for what humans really care about - Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness!
You can watch the entire talk by clicking the above link.
The Surprising Truth About Being Rational.
We believe the world around us is rational. Hence, when we work with people, build products, recommend solutions, create workplaces and cultures, etc., we mostly come up with rational recommendations or suggestions. But, many of the outcomes of these recommendations are quite the opposite, or there may be very little or no significant change or impact as expected.
All these point to some important facts. The psychology behind how people make decisions or feel about what is happening around them when they make decisions is quite irrational. Let’s look at some facts that are quite weird:
The wellness market is US $1.5 trillion globally, growing at 5-10% annually. It is built around key pillars: health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness. However, in 2022, 43% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight, and 16% were living with obesity. Worldwide, adult obesity has more than doubled since 1990, and adolescent obesity has quadrupled. You will find similar odd statistics around nutrition, health, sleep, mindfulness, etc.
Let’s take another area, like employee engagement at the workplace. Nobody can debate the fact that workplace practices have improved significantly since the 1990s. However, when you look at the most recent Gallup November 2023 data, just 23% of the global workforce is engaged, and it is pretty surprising to see countries like the US and India have up to 48-50% of the workforce not being engaged. In contrast, companies have increasingly invested in platforms and tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, feedback, and employee recognition. Now compare and contrast all the employee engagement data with the growth of the market size of the employee engagement market- The market size of the employee engagement market is expected to grow globally at 16.2% between 2024-2034 to an annual size of US$ 3,603.9 million by 2034!
Let’s take another data point around working hours per employee. The average working hours have fallen dramatically over the last 150 years. Studies suggest that the work day has continued to trend downward to less than 8 hours a day. Also, the number of days of vacation and holidays increased from 1870 to 2000. However, the average person at the workplace is increasingly overwhelmed and seems to feel busy and overworked!
What does this all mean?
It is vital to understand human psychology is wired very differently from the rationality of how products and solutions are conceived and built. Therefore, behaviours such as emotion, feeling, perception, attention, motivation, experience, etc., which are very qualitative in nature, can’t work with pure metrics alone. People want or look for a feeling of reassurance, certainty, being cared for, being around to help, enjoyment, happiness, lesser stress, etc., which need irrational cues from products and services to make their decisions. If you don’t learn, understand and become an ardent observer of human psychology, chances are you will end up making rational decisions like how you may have always done in the past or how most other people do. You will not be able to see the opportunity that’s hiding on the other side.
When you fuse human psychology into products or ideas, great innovations can emerge.
Some lessons we learnt from this week’s missions:
A fulfilling career means pushing yourself to do hard things, having a lot of curiosity and learning from failures.
The more your expertise, the more you can make decisions from your gut.
Build a higher dose of human psychology rather than rationality in technology products.