The Problem With Too Much Conviction

Or, why you don’t always need to be sure about what you are doing

👋 Hey there! My name is Abhishek. Welcome to a new edition of The Sunday Wisdom! This is the best way to learn new things with the least amount of effort.

The Sunday Wisdom is a collection of weekly essays on a variety of topics, such as psychology, health, science, philosophy, economics, business, and more — all varied enough to turn you into a polymath. 🧠

The latest two editions are always free, the rest are available to paid subscribers. Now… time for the mandatory plug!

Let’s begin with some positive thought.

I recently read a story about a man whose wife had committed suicide after suffering from postpartum depression. Here’s a man who not only has a newborn but must also process the devastation of his wife’s death. He could easily, and no one would fault him for it, spiral into a “why me” of self-pity and anger at how his life turned out.

But instead, he took the pain he felt and held his hand out to help other women who suffer from postpartum depression. He opened a hospital treatment centre, which has helped over 6,000 mothers till date.

Why does he do it?

“It’s my therapy.”

😊

Now, on to this week’s essay!

Note: If you find this issue valuable, can you do me a favour and click the little grey heart below my name (above)? It helps get the word out about this budding newsletter. 😍

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Q: Should you always stand by your opinions?

Today, let’s talk about justification. More precisely, the strong (social) need to justify your decisions to others.

As we’ll soon learn, it’s okay to be a little bit unsure sometimes. You don’t always need to have strong conviction about everything. It’s okay to follow your gut, especially when you don’t have a lot of information.

I’m a Product Manager. Part of my job is to make product and business decisions. Every month I come up with a gameplan, a list of things we should do. I present them to my team and explain the rationale behind them.

Over the years I’ve faced many a situations where I don’t have a very strong reason behind doing something that I’m recommending. This is a big problem. Here’s why: if I simply say, “Even though I’m suggesting this, I don’t have a strong reason,” others will hear, “Basically, what I’m trying to say is I don’t know what I’m doing.” Needless to say, this won’t help my career.

I also don’t have the option to not come up with a plan, especially when I don’t have any good ideas. A business has to work, a startup has to grow, engineers have to build, and a product needs release. “What do you mean you don’t have a plan?! Planing is your bread and butter.”

Even though I’m giving a work example, I’m sure you can relate to this in umpteen trivial scenarios as well. Why do I like certain YouTubers and dislike others? Why am I watching a particular movie? Why did I decide to cook dinner instead of going out on a weekend?

There’s usually no strong reason behind every tiny decision we make everyday. When someone asks why about something, we try to think of the most plausible-sounding answer that doesn’t raise eyebrows.

I try to do something similar at meetings as well. I come up with a plan and think of plausible-sounding reasons to justify why I think this will work. Even if there isn’t a tonne of logic in coming up with an idea (it might be just “gut feeling” or “hunch” or “intuition”), we need logic to discuss ideas with other human beings. That’s why post-idea rationalisation is important.

I felt like a fraud for a long time. Am I duping my teammates who trust me to make the right decisions? Am I not good enough at my job? I see all these confident faces who know what they are doing and here I am, concocting reasons to justify something I don’t even believe in. Turns out, it isn’t really like that.

You have a lot of conviction when you are either personally attached to something or you have a lot of experience to know what you should be doing. But this isn’t always possible.

There are times when you may not know for sure if this is the right decision. There are times when you don’t know anything about something, and you’re still asked to do something about it. These kinds of situations are in fact more common than others.

What do you do? You do the best you can. You don’t need surety. You don’t need confidence. You don’t need conviction. You need a plan. Not a good plan. Just a plan. Something to work with.

Your plan might break in the face of arguments and that’s okay. It’ll get the ball rolling, and that’s important. If it’s broken, it can be fixed. If it has flaws, it can be improved. Having an okay plan can help you come up with a better plan.

If you think about it, it’s in fact better not to have too much conviction. Otherwise you would be married to your idea and turn a blind eye to all counter arguments. Lack of strong conviction opens you up to others’ points of views instead.

Bottom line is this: it’s important to know what to do, confident or not. It’s important to act, conviction or not. What kills you at the end is rarely action but lack of it. Have a bias towards action. Always! Get started. You’ll figure out the rest on the way.

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Interesting Finds

Stop trying to be the best at one skill. You’re setting yourself up for some serious disappointment. Instead, ask yourself: In what niche do I want to stand out? What combination of skills do I need to be unique in that niche? Trying to be the best at one thing isn’t the smartest path to success. Instead, you should put your effort into mastering a combination of skills. The solution is skill stacking

RELATED: I always advise young people to become good public speakers. Anyone can do it with practice. If you add that talent to any other, suddenly you’re the boss of the people who have only one skill. Or get a degree in business on top of your engineering degree, law degree, medical degree, science degree, or whatever. Suddenly you’re in charge, or maybe you’re starting your own company using your combined knowledge.

Fiction conjures not just empathy but empathetic sadism. It is the emotional and intellectual enjoyment that most people feel in situations of altruistic punishment — for example, when the hero kills, captures, or humiliates the villain. Empathetic sadism can spill over tragically from fiction to reality.

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Timeless Insight

One of the major causes of stress is high expectation from yourself. This puts you under immense pressure. On top of that, if you have deep seated needs to live up to the high expectations of others, you become a stress factory.

— What Made Maya Angelou Feel Like a Fraud

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What I’m Reading

“We’re not born to be selfish. And the economics of living in community make it clear that short-term hustle rarely benefits anyone. But when you’re flailing and looking for something (anything) to stand on, there’s pressure to choose the selfish path. To a drowning man, everyone else is a stepping-stone to safety.”

— Seth Godin, The Practice

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Tiny Thought

The more what you say makes you feel good about yourself, the less likely it is to persuade others.

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Before You Go…

Send me tips, ideas, questions: abhishek@coffeeandjunk.com. Read all the essays I’ve written so far: coffeeandjunk.com.

Until next Sunday,
Abhishek 👋