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“The truth is, other people hold no real power over you unless you give it to them. Here’s why this works: When you stop trying to control things that aren’t yours to control, you stop wasting your energy. You reclaim your time, your peace of mind, and your focus. You realize that your happiness is tied to your actions, not someone else’s behavior, opinions, or mood.” (Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory)
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A framework for thinking about problems in society
I recently read What’s Our Problem by Tim Urban. This great book begins with a framework that describes how people think in today’s society.
This post breaks down the framework and explains how we can use it to help make decisions about societal and political issues.
Two types of thinking
There are two types of thinking: Higher-Mind and Primitive-Mind. Higher-Mind thinking seeks truth based on evidence, while Primitive-Mind thinking leans on experience and emotions. Each of us engages in both types of thinking based on the topic.
Idea Spectrum
The Idea Spectrum can be considered a graph. The horizontal axis describes what you think, and the vertical axis describes how you think.
For example, take the statement “Billionaires are evil.” On the horizontal axis (I’ll explain the vertical axis more below), the far left represents “Yes,” while the far right represents “No.” However, this isn’t simply a true or false statement, as nuance exists in how people arrive at those views and, we can be somewhere in the middle.
The Ladder
The vertical axis of the Idea Spectrum can be broken down further into what Tim calls “The Ladder.”
This “Ladder” has four rungs. Each rung represents a different type of thinking:
- The Scientist questions everything and seeks the truth.
- The Sports Fan accepts the rules of the game but wants their team to win.
- The Attorney strives to prove their point is the truth, even when its not.
- The Zealot refuses everything that contradicts their opinions and beliefs.
We all think on various rungs of the ladder about different things at different times. We don’t strictly function as a “Scientist” or always as a “Zealot.” Reality isn’t that simple. Our past knowledge and experience play a big part in how we think about a particular topic. How much a topic impacts you personally, based on your experience, may also influence your thinking.
The more emotions become involved, the more likely we think on the lower rungs of the ladder, while detachment may allow us to think more like a Scientist and find the facts.
Thinking in Groups
Since society is made up of people on various sides of the horizontal axis of the Idea Spectrum, as well as on the vertical axis of The Ladder (described above), group dynamics become quite fascinating—and often messy.
When high and mid-rung thinkers gather, they generally seek the truth (or at least compromise) while showing respect for people they disagree with. Tim calls this group an “Idea Lab.”
When low and mid-rung thinkers gather, they form what is commonly called an “Echo Chamber.” They treat their opinions as facts and do not respect people who state otherwise. Emotions take over, and the lower they are on “The Ladder”, the more blind to different ideas they become.
Emerging from these Echo Chambers, Tim talks about a “golem” who tend to take on a life of their own. They define ideas blindly, frequently can’t even explain what they’re fighting for.
Applying the framework
How can we use this framework to make better, more informed opinions?
We can easily get caught up in our emotions when dealing with societal issues. These emotional reactions tell us a lot about ourselves. After all, we wouldn’t have an emotional reaction to something if we didn’t have some skin in the game.
At the same time, awareness of how we think and react can go a long way. We can take a step back to see which rung of “The Ladder” we’re on.
We can also ask ourselves questions like, “Is this coming from someone acting as a golem?”, “Where are the facts?”, “Am I seeking truth or confirmation of my beliefs?”, and “Can I even explain to someone why I think this?”
Don’t get too caught up in all of this
The last point I want to make is for myself as much as anyone. Don’t let this consume us! While it’s valuable to understand society and politics, obsessing over it can wear us down—especially when we’re stuck in social media or legacy media loops. Those Echo Chambers don’t help. Instead, limit our consumption, read books on topics we’re interested in, and keep learning. But realize, we can’t control it all!
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“Like planting a seed in nutrient-rich soil, and feeding it the water and sunlight it needs in order to grow, today’s productivity is about creating the conditions within your mind to have valuable thoughts. Being productive today isn’t about time management, it’s about mind management.” (David Kadavy, Mind Management, Not Time Management)
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“The first approach is to eliminate complexity by making code simpler and more obvious.” (John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design)
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“Embrace the parts of you that others call weird. Don’t hide what makes you different. Allow those parts to float to the top and be seen by all. Your uniqueness is what makes your creations original, effective, and memorable.” (Joey Cofone, The Laws of Creativity)
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Finished reading: The Product is Docs by Christopher Gales 📚 I skimmed through this one. Probably a good read for Technical Writers. I didn’t get much out of it.
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“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. —Bishop Desmond Tutu” (Peter Attia MD, Outlive)
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“And if the robots don’t rise up, if our creations don’t come to life and take the power we have used so badly for so long away from us, who will? What we fear isn’t that AI will destroy us—we fear it won’t. We fear we will continue to degrade life on this planet until we destroy ourselves.” (Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea)
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“Ultimately, that is all ChatGPT does technically—act as a very elaborate autocomplete like you have on your phone. You give it some initial text, and it keeps writing text based on what it statistically calculates as the most likely next token in the sequence. If you type “Finish this sentence: I think, therefore I . . . ,” the AI will predict the next word will be am every time, because it is incredibly probable that this is the case.” (Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence)
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“In the space between stimulus and response, one of two things can happen. You can consciously pause and apply reason to the situation. Or you can cede control and execute a default behavior.” (Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking)
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“Externalizing your thoughts through writing will both challenge and reinforce your beliefs.” (Bob Doto, A System for Writing)
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“Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket. That is to say: think of your backlog not as a container that gradually fills up, and that it’s your job to empty, but as a stream that flows past you, from which you get to pick a few choice items, here and there, without feeling guilty for letting all the others float by.” (Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals)
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“You shouldn’t just envy the craftsman mindset, you should emulate it. In other words, I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you. That is, regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer.” (Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You)
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“I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and-if you’re not careful-those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book.” (Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker)
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“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” (Peter Voogd, 6 Months to 6 Figures)
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Uptime, by Laura Mae Martin
Finished reading: Uptime by Laura Mae Martin 📚
A well-written productivity book that’s full of actionable advice. However, as someone who is a productivity nerd, I didn’t get too much from the book. I would recommend it for anyone who is new to the productivity space.
The book covers Top 3 priorities, saying no, creating lists, deep work, zero-based calendaring, finding your “power hours”, time reviews, procrastination, downtime (rest), using your environment, setting boundaries, creating plans, make the most out of meetings, mastering email, creating routines, meditation, and mindfulness.
The book is focused on what Laura calls the “5 C’s of Productivity”, which include Capture, Consolidate, Close, Calm, and Create.
Urgent once, take care of it, Urgent seventeen times … something is wrong with the system.
You can think of to-do lists like a funnel: start with the highest level of everything you could possibly do, or want to do, and narrow it down into what you actually will do hour by hour, based on time, energy, and priorities.
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“Loading everyone to 100% of capacity has the same effect as loading a highway to 100% of capacity: No one can make any progress.” (Mike Cohn, Agile Estimating and Planning)
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“Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, the principle states, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”” (James Clear, Atomic Habits)
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“The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because they are reductions of what they represent. If a map were to represent the territory with perfect fidelity, it would no longer be a reduction and thus would no longer be useful to us.” (Shane Parrish, Rhiannon Beaubien, The Great Mental Models)
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“Life is the sum of what you focus on. Living the focused life is not about constant happiness, but about being mindful of what you allow in your mind, akin to tending a private garden. Your experience of the world is shaped by what you pay attention to.” (Deep Questions with Cal Newport, Ep. 311: Finding Focus in Distracting Times)
