Over the last few years, I have read several books on “Thinking.” Shane Parrish was a nice addition to that group.

If you are not familiar with Parrish’s work, you should change that by checking out his blog – Farnam Street.

Parrish is a former “spy” and has spent years studying the minds of some of the greatest thinkers in history and modern times.

POWER POINTS

Key Takeaways:

There are four “enemies of clear thinking”… default ways of thinking:

1. The Emotion Default: we tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts.
2. The Ego Default: we tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy.
3. The Social Default: we tend to conform to the norms of our larger social group.
4. The Inertia Default: we are habit forming and comfort seeking. We tend to resist change, and to prefer ideas, processes, and environments that are familiar.
   • If you read this book, definitely explore, “The zone of average” on page 32.

Parrish discusses strategies to overcome these defaults. The most memorable for me was the idea of setting standards, developing a “personal board of directors” and then “consulting them” in the decision making process.

• “We unconciously become what we’re near. […] If all you see are average people, you will end up with average standards. But average standards aren’t going to get you where you want to go. Standards become habits, and habits become outcomes.”
• Choose the right exemplars (examples). “It is possible for you to choose the people whose behavior you emulate – your exemplars – rather than merely hope you end up working with one of them.”
• “When you choose the right exemplars – people with standards higher than yours – you can transcend the standards you’ve inherited from parents, friends, and acquaintances.”
• Develop a “Personal Board of Directors.” These can be people you know, people who are alive but who you do not know, and it can even include dead people! When making a decision, run it past your “Board of Directors.” Ask “What would they do if they were in this situation?”

In an effort to avoid poor thinking… to protect ourselves from ourselves, Parrish discusses safeguards (“tools for protecting ourselves from ourselves – from weaknesses that we don’t have the strength to overcome.”) Three of my favorite safeguards are:

1. Prevention: Preventing problems before they happen. He references the safeguard used by Alcoholics Anonymous: HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired). Many bad decisions are made because we are one of those four! Address the issue and, often, you will make a better decision.
2. Automatic Rules for Success: “Nothing forces you to accept the ingrained behaviors and rules from your upbringing and life circumstances. You can decide to eliminate them at any time, and replace them with better ones.”
   • “In a quirk of psychology, people typically don’t argue with your personal rules. They just accept them as features of who you are. People question decisions, but they respect rules.”
3. Creating Friction: “…increase the amount of effort it takes to do things that are contrary to your goals.”

He spends four excellent chapters on “The Decision Making Process”. These four chapters are worth the book.

When making decisions, consider the “Margin of safety” – a buffer between what you expect to happen and what could happen!

• My biggest and most expensive mistakes happened because of overly optimistic thinking that led me to discount the “margin of safety.”
• Parrish writes, “If the worst-case scenario never comes to pass, the margin of safety will appear like a waste. The minute you convince yourself you could have done better without a margin of safety is exactly when you need it most.“

Parrish’s guidance to “learn from your decisions” is sagely!

• “When you evaluate a decision, focus on the process you used to make the decision and not the outcome.”
• “Evaluating decisions based on the outcomes (or how we feel about the outcome) fails to distinguish luck from skill and control.” Sometimes good decisions end up badly and bad decisions stumble into lucky endings. The wise one will consider the process over the outcome.
• “Luck isn’t a repeatable process that secures good results over the long term. Luck isn’t something you can learn, and it isn’t something you can get better at. Luck won’t give you an edge.”

As he wraps up his book, Parrish discusses the value of making decisions about life in light of death.

It’s an ancient principle made popular, again, by Stephen Covey in his book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

Parrish’s thoughts on wisdom ended up on my Instagram page!

• “Wisdom is turning your future hindsight into your current foresight. What seems to matter in the moment rarely matters in life, yet what matters in life always matters in the moment.”
• “Sometimes the cost of being wise is that other people treat you like a fool.”

This book was a slow roll at points, but it was filled with practical takeaways, good stories, and memorable phrases. I will return to this book as I make some big decisions in this coming year.