đ 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.
Itâs a collection of weekly explorations and inquiries into many curiosities, such as business, human nature, society, and lifeâs big questions. My primary goal is to give you some new perspective to think about things.
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Q: What is the most underrated skill and do we develop it?
âNo, Iâm gonna tell you what it isnât,â Harvey retorts. âItâs not one of the 52 cards in a deck. Because you think you are smarter than me, itâs a baseball card, or football card, or itâs the Joker.â
Mike is looking visibly stupid. Harvey continues.
âI told you this before, and Iâm gonna tell you again. I donât play the odds I play the man.â
Even though Suits is so much over the top, I ought to say that Harvey Specter always has a good assessment of the situation heâs in. Heâs in complete control and has thought his way through all possibilities. This is the reason behind his confidence and cockiness.
Harvey Specter has good judgement.
Today, letâs talk about an underrated yet one of the most important aspect of good decision making â having good judgement.
You may not believe it, but having good judgement (of both character and situation) is usually the secret weapon behind someoneâs success. Having good judgement also reduces anxiety and boosts confidence.
Having good judgement not only makes you successful but also keeps you healthy of both body and mind. Whatâs not to love about it!
As Iâve discussed before, hard work in its traditional sense is overrated. In fact, traditional hard work has almost no value in the âmodern economyâ â in the age of leverage.
Whenever something is overrated, something else becomes underrated. And as youâve guessed it, itâs having good judgement.
What is good judgement after all?
Good judgement is having the wisdom to know the long-term consequences of your actions and making the right decisions to capitalise on that.
In the modern economy, one correct decision â choosing the right market, the right problem, the right time, the right cofounder, the right investor â can change everything.
If you can make good judgement calls, you can increase your odds of success significantly.
Building the muscle to have good judgement starts by really really understanding the fundamentals of things. This gives you the arsenal to know how the system works. You can now test your conceptions against reality and see if it fits â and this is the hardest part.
Like every other human being, you have preconceived notions about how things are and how they should be. The is the number one thing that clouds your mind and prevents you from seeing reality. This is your ego.
Your ego is a great motivator. It drives you, pushes you. But at the same time, itâs also a great detractor. It creates a bubble and prevents you from seeing reality.
Itâs impossible to build good judgement if you cannot see reality.
To see reality, to really see it, you donât have to kill your ego (which is impossible), rather you have to make it small.
Your ego was constructed over your lifetime. Your worldview has been shaped by your environment, your upbringing, your friends, and the society you grew up in.
You spend your life trying to fit everything into that worldview, and filter out the rest. You hear things you want to hear, and see things you want to see. You subconsciously try to change the external world to make it more like you would prefer â thatâs your ego at work. Itâs blinding you from the truth.
Once you realise this, you can shake things up.
Start by making your ego small. Keep an open mind. Hear others, listen to things, asses them without bias, and give them the power to change your mind.
Develop the humility to accept that you dunno everything, and some of your preconceived notions might be wrong.
The smaller you make your ego, the less desires you have about the outcome, and the easier it will be to see reality.
Once you see reality, once you really see it, you have the power of change it â and maybe get the outcome you desired in the first place.
If you have a clear mind, you see reality â and can plan accordingly. If you have a big ego, you seen an illusion of reality.
You should let go of control to gain back control. Thatâs the paradox. Clarity of mind gives you control. Clarity of mind is the first step to having good judgement.
This is were using mental models and getting second or third opinions help. A âthird eyeâ can help you see things from a different perspective â especially when powerful emotions such as greed, fear, lust, envy are at play.
A third eye isnât attached to the desired outcome the way you are. The most clichĂ©d example is from relationships. A friend can clearly see that the person you love isnât right for you, and you should leave them â but you cannot â because their mind isnât clouded by emotions.
The more desire you have for something to work out a certain way, the more attached you are to the outcome, and the less likely you are to see the truth. Thatâs the basic premise of Buddhism.
It doesnât have to be a relationship, it can be business, an investment, an experience.
Things would rarely go according to plan. You have to have a little bit of faith in yourself to wing it when things get out of hand.
It may not be the outcome you desire, but it would be a favourable outcome if you make good judgement calls. But if you are too attached to your âpreferredâ outcome and keep pushing for it endlessly, you are setting yourself up for failure.
This is something all startup founders inherently understand. When the business idea isnât working out (the preferred outcome isnât matching reality) itâs time to pivot.
You have to be flexible enough, both in your expectations about the outcome, and also about how you think about your identity.
You are the sum of your habits. Habits youâve accumulated throughout your lifetime â some knowingly, others unknowingly. This amalgamation of habits gives you your âidentityâ â something you are heavily attached to. âThis is me. This is the way I am.â
The funny thing is, you never assessed if any of those habits are actually providing value or not.
This does give you an identity for others to recognise (this is important) but this also makes you rigid in thought and action.
While itâs important to have an identity of your own, itâs equally important to be able to uncondition yourself from your habits.
You should be able to take your habits apart and say, âOkay, this is a habit I picked up when I was bullied at school. Iâve reinforced it all these years and now it has become part of my identity. But does it still serve me? Does it help me accomplish whatever Iâve set out to accomplish?â
Due to my upbringing and people I used to hangout with, I used to identify myself as a liberal. This âlabelâ meant that I should identify with every liberal idea and oppose all conservative ideas â but this created a lot of problems.
As I read and learnt more, I started seeing a lot of liberals ideas I didnât agree with and a lot of conservative ideas that sat right by me. This created a dissonance in my mind â who am I really? What is my identity? Which team do I belong?
To break free from this mental chain, itâs important to keep your identity small â and most importantly, try not to label yourself.
Maybe you are a salesman in your 50s selling milkshake mixers, and you arenât doing very well for yourself, like Ray Kroc. You have to accept being a salesman is not your entire identity, and maybe you can forge a new identity as a founder.
When you keep your ego small and you donât label yourself, you can have a fruitful discussion about any topic. Since you are not trying to prove anything, or fit the story to your narrative, or convince others to agree with you, you might even learn a thing or two.
Thatâs why itâs impossible to have an open discussion about religion or politics â thereâs just too much baggage and no open mind.
People cannot think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity. The best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible â keeping your identity small.
What I say, keep your identity small, itâs not just about being tolerant of opposing views. It goes beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y. Itâs more about not even considering yourself an x.
The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
If you really, really want to label yourself, call yourself Satyanweshi or a truth seeker â this label frees your up instead of binding you in.
Keeping your ego and identity small, not getting attached to outcomes, and keeping an open mind to counter opinions â these arenât easy feats. Itâs gonna take time to inculcate these habits. Even if the speed is slow, the direction youâre heading in matters more. Choose wisely.
But if you do this right, eventually youâll be sitting on a gold mine of knowledge, wisdom, and judgement. Knowledge gives you power. Wisdom gives you leverage. And judgement increases your odds of getting a favourable outcome.
Timeless Insight
The quality of our thinking is proportional to the models in our head.
Think of your brain as a toolbox, and a Mental Model as a tool. The bigger is your toolbox, and the more likely you are to see reality.
Supply and Demand is a mental model that helps you understand how the economy works. Opportunity Costs is a mental model that helps you understand how choices work. Entropy is a mental model that helps you understand how disorder and decay work.
What Iâm Reading
We spend too much time trying to be âgoodâ when good is often merely average. To be great we must be different. And that doesnât come from trying to follow societyâs vision of what is best, because society doesnât always know what it needs. More often being the best means just being the best version of you.
â Eric Barker, Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Tiny Thought
Donât focus on role models â people you want to become (but will alwasy fall short). What is much more effective is focussing on âantimodelsâ â people you donât want to resemble when you grow up. You would be much more happy this way.
Before You GoâŠ
Thanks so much for reading! Send me ideas, questions, your favourite Netflix series. You can write to abhishek@coffeeandjunk.com, reply to this email, or use the comments.
Until next Sunday,
Abhishek đ