Catch yourself getting LOST in wasteful thinking

Typical human condition is described as being “lost in thought”. Majority of these thoughts are wasteful. i.e. they don’t serve any useful purpose. Is there a way to know if your current thought is wasteful? Perhaps there is no exact formula. However, I found the checklist characterized by L-O-S-T (L – Label, O – Ownership, S – Story, T – Time) useful. It doesn’t mean that every thought involving a label or a story is wasteful. However, it is a good candidate for a quick check - “Is this thought serving a useful purpose?” This article presents this checklist using illustrations from famous movies.

L (Label): Be it a movie or our life, we are in the habit of labelling people and situations. “Good-bad” and “Right-wrong” are the two most commonly used labels. When we label someone or a situation as bad, perhaps we are pointing to some characteristics or behaviour which may be inappropriate. For example, Nobel Laureate John Nash discovered that calling names to Government serves no useful purpose. And he stopped feeding those thoughts.

Social psychology tells us that most of our behaviour is influenced by the context and the culture. “Context is king” as they say. The responses to a contextual situation, such as “someone shouting at us” is almost always automatic and reflexive – deeply embedded in the neural synapses. When labelling becomes an obsession – i.e. you derive your sense of self-worth by labelling someone repetitively, say “wrong” – it serves no useful purpose. Check it out for yourself.

O (Ownership): In this famous dialogue in the Bollywood film Deewar, Shashi Kapoor is telling Amitabh Bachchan “Mere paas Maa hai” meaning – “I have mother”. “You may have a big house and a car but I am richer than you”. The popularity of this dialogue points to a deeply held belief in the culture that relationships are more precious that material stuff. Perhaps it is true, but the habit of doing account balance of what I own and comparing it with what you own doesn’t serve any useful purpose whether it is a relationship or a car. Test it. (image: ndtv.com)

S (Story):  We all love stories. When it is a rags-to-riches story like “Slumdog millionaire”, nothing like it. In fact, we are all spinning stories in our head all the time. Many times the story has a general theme of “complaining” – and it also has a victim that is – yourself. The story is telling how the world or a specific person is unfair to you and you are asking, “How can he say or do something like that to me?” etc. Sometimes the story is about “justification”. It is telling how I did the right thing in that situation even though some people may feel otherwise. Sometimes the story has a general theme of “worrying”. The mind is spinning out several future scenarios where something is going wrong. If used judiciously, it points to useful actions. But then the spinning wheel takes over and action is left far behind. It is good to check if the current thought pattern is spinning a story without any action. (image: slumdogmillionairemovie.co.uk)

T (Time): How we wish we could go back in time Like Marty McFly in “Back to the future” and change something we did in the past. Unfortunately, we haven’t figured out a way to do it so far. That doesn’t mean we live mostly in the present. In fact, we end up time traveling all the time. When we are worrying, we travel to a future moment. When we are in the guilt mode, we go back in time.  Sometimes we are leaning-forward, i.e. we are only a few seconds ahead, for example, when we are opening a door, we are already in the next room. Opening the door is just a means to an end. Sometimes, we are years ahead, visualizing the good times after graduation, or after retirement etc.  Whenever the current thought is about past or future, it is a good candidate to test for usefulness. (image: Cineplex.com)

In short, L-O-S-T (Label, Ownership, Story, Time) provide a quick checklist to test whether your current thought is useful or wasteful. Hope you find checklist useful.

Source:

The checklist is derived from Eckhart Tolle’s “9 ways of losing oneself in egoic thought patterns”, Nov 8, 2014

Rewarding innovation: process vs outcome

Tata Nano is one of the several stories that figure in our book “8 steps to innovation”. Nano received various innovation awards including the prestigious Edison award in 2010. Unfortunately, it hasn’t seen the market success yet. Does it mean that the decision to give innovation awards to Nano was poor or incorrect? Let’s explore this question in this article using Daniel Kahneman's lecture titled "The science of decision" delivered to the Pentagon (see the video above). 

Let’s begin with what Kahneman calls the key feature of decision making under uncertainty. “The key feature”, Kahneman says, “is that there is no perfect correlation between the quality of decisions and quality of outcomes. You could make a good decision and fail and you could make a bad decision and succeed.” (12:18) But then why are we so outcome obsessed?

Well, because we can’t help seeing it that way (15:15). We intuitively feel that if something ended well, it was done well. And if something ended badly, somebody must have goofed. The fundamental bias in operation here is called “hindsight bias”. Once the outcome appears e.g. that Tata Nano hasn’t had a success in the market, our model of the world changes. It starts looking obvious that the “cheap car” publicity was doomed to fail. We tend to evaluate the decision such as the Tata Motors’ decision to invest in Nano based on our current model of the world. And we find it extremely hard to evaluate the decision with the model of the world that existed before the decision.

Hindsight bias leads to another bias called “outcome bias” (19:30). This means we judge a decision on whether the outcome was a success or failure. This has significant implications. When we give innovation awards, we may be promoting daredevil gamblers rather than smart decision makers. More importantly, we may be losing good people because we may be punishing them for the failed outcomes in spite of their good decisions. So what should we do?

Kahneman suggests that we should focus on the process and not on the outcome when we judge a decision (13:28). Was the right process followed at the time of the decision? For example, was the investment decision based on a robust set of questions like Real-Win-Worth-it. An idea which comes out as the most promising idea through the scrutiny of such a process may eventually fail for factors not known at the time of the decision. That shouldn’t change the quality of the decision.

Kahneman also suggests that a good process of making decisions should ideally involve de-biasing steps, sort of corrective steps. For example, we can look at cost or time overruns for a similar project in estimating cost or duration (30:20). Or we could perform a project pre-mortem and bring out various reasons why this idea may not work etc (31:45).

Some companies recognize this and give rewards for smart failures. For example, P&G has in the past given “President’s fail-forward award” and Tata Group gives “Dare to try” award for smart failures from which significant learning has come out.

So, was the decision to award Tata Nano poor? Not necessarily. It depends whether the award was given after evaluating the process of making key decisions in developing Tata Nano. Not on whether Tata Nano succeeds in the market or not.

An idea presentation template based on a 2 minute pitch by The Wand Company founders

A lot of people talk about “Elevator pitch”. But can I really present my idea in 2 minutes? If so, how? Is there a template we can use for such a pitch? In this article I would like to present a template with the help of a 2 minute pitch given by Richard and Chris, The Wand Company founders to investors in the TV show Dragons Den. This template is an extension of an earlier template based on Steve Jobs’ iPod launch speech in 2001.

The pitch by Richard and Chris has all the three elements from the iPod-speech-template - viz. Why-What-How - Why magic market? What is real magic wand? How does it work? However, the pitch has two unique characteristics. One, it gets over in less than 2 minutes (1 minute and 40 seconds). And two, the presentation includes a fourth element – the Ask viz. How much investment do we need from you? Both, the timing and the ask, I feel, are very important aspects of an idea pitch. Here is how it looks.

Let’s briefly look at the four elements:

1.      Why magical products? This has two parts – First, why magic market? How big is it? Etc. They say, “Magic market, fantasy market is huge - Hundreds of millions of people spending billions of pounds each year.” The second part is: Why should we play in this market? They say, “We thought with our combined experience of over forty years of design, development, electronics development we will make some really magical products.” This part took 35 seconds.

2.      What is the product? This is the shortest of the four elements and takes only 15 seconds. They say, “Our first product is a real magic wand. And this is it (shows the wand). It looks pretty much as you expect for a wizard’s wand. And the real magic wand should actually do something. And so with this wand, I can…” And the demo starts.

3.      How does it work? (demo) This part is the longest – 35 seconds – where they demo the product. How it works on a music player, a TV and on a light.

4.      How much investment do we need? In this part they mention when they started the company, how many units have been sold and with the help of the investors how much revenue they can achieve in three years. The exact amount of investment they are looking for is something they mention upfront at the beginning of the presentation itself. Together this part might be around 20 seconds.

Which parts are tricky in this?  First, I think idea presenters need to watch out for the balance between “What” and “How”. They tend to spend more time explaining what the product is about instead of product doing the talking through a demo. Second, idea presenters don’t come prepared with “the Ask” – an important aspect of the last element “How much”.

If you plan a longer presentation, you can include your answer to the first question – What technology does it use? in the “What” part (part-2). This is what Steve Jobs does in the iPod launch speech.

Hope you find it useful.

Metaphors from "Thought as a system"

Metaphors from thought as a system from vpdabholkar

I am a fan of David Bohm’s book “Thought as a system” and I am also convinced of the power of metaphors in communicating abstract ideas. In this presentation I have tried to bring the metaphors from the book “Thought as a system” to the foreground in explaining the key concepts.

Concepts like consciousness, God, incoherence are highly abstract. Could metaphors help in understanding them? Personally, I have found them useful. Perhaps you may find them useful too. Happy to hear from you.

If you find this presentation useful, you may also like a related presentation: “The Matrix as a system vs Thought as a system” which compares “Thought as a system” to the sci-fi movie “The Matrix”

Learning mindfulness through “Penn and Teller: Fool us” magic show

I was introduced to the popular magic show “Penn and Teller: Fool us” by our son Kabir. In this TV show, the young and the old magicians perform their best tricks in Las Vegas and try to fool the mighty magic duo Penn and Teller. In case you have not seen already, I urge you to check out the video clip above in which Shawn Farquhar, a world champion in card magic, fools Penn and Teller. In this article, I would like to explore how this magic show can help us understand a seemingly unrelated area – mindfulness.

Let’s bucket the audience of this show (including those watching it on TV) into three categories. First, “This-is-real” category: These guys – perhaps mostly kids – might confuse the magic act as if it were happening for real. If a man gets cut into two, they might get frightened. My wife remembers carrying Kabir out of the theatre while watching Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone because he started crying. My parents tell similar stories about me. That’s This-is-real category.

Second, “Fooled-but-aware” category: These guys are enjoying the show and they have no clue how they are getting fooled. However, they carry awareness that they are getting fooled while the drama is unfolding. For example, they don’t cry when Penn acts as though a knife has entered his chest.

Third, “Not-fooled” category: Penn and Teller and many other magicians around the world also enjoy the drama but most of the time they know exactly when the sleight of hand is doing the trick. If they get fooled, as in this case of Shawn Farquhar, they are more aware what they don’t know. Just to summarize, the three categories are: This-is-real, Fooled-but-aware and Not-fooled.

Now let’s imagine another magic show called “Perception and Thought: Fool us” which is run by two fictional characters called Perception and Thought (P&T). Between the two Thought is the real magician. Perception is more of an orator and showman. Thought is working mostly behind the scene. Sometimes he turns a rope into a snake and adds a scary music in the background. Sometimes he turns a person from another religious community into an enemy and plays villain-is-coming type jingle. While working backstage Thought has access to a vast amount of memory most of which nobody else can see. There are times when Thought is not doing much though and Perception is just showing things as they are – the table, the chair, the mountain, the trees etc. I guess you get the idea.

Now most of us when we are not mindful we belong to the first category - This-is-real. We treat the drama put up by the duo Perception and Thought (P&T) as real. For example, when the boss shouts, we get upset, when kids throw tantrums we get irritated, when we read about war, corruption and rape we get angry-sad etc. We follow what Daniel Kahneman calls WYSIATI rule – What You See Is All There Is.

When we are mindful, we are more like the Fooled-but-aware category. When boss looks angry or upset, we consider the possibility that it could be just our imagination – as Thought might have fooled us. Or when boss shouts at us, we consider the possibility that he might have had a bad day and not because he is a bad person or because I am incompetent. Since a mindful person carries awareness that Thought may be fooling him, he doesn’t hold onto an opinion too strongly. He carries an openness to change the opinion if such evidence shows up.

A mindfulness Master is more like Penn and Teller. He is also entertained by the show like others but differs from the first two categories in following ways. First, he is extremely alert while watching the show. Second, he knows exactly when Thought is playing the tricks most of the time. Third, he carries deep appreciation and marvel at what is possible in the drama of life. And fourth, he is willing to share his knowledge of the Thought-tricks with those interested.

Now, how can we use this metaphor for learning mindfulness? First, we can learn from Fooled-but-aware category of audience. As most of our attention is consumed by the drama, perhaps we can keep some attention for the awareness that  Thought may be fooling us. When it comes to defending a belief, perhaps we can consider the fact that part of the belief may be Thought created. That may help us keep the door a little open while listening to others.

Second, like how magicians are learning from Penn and Teller, we can learn from spiritual masters as they explain the places where Thought plays the tricks. For example, in this skype call, when Nick asks Eckhart Tolle, “If I don’t worry about things, how will I pay my bills?” Eckhart suggests him that the question itself might contain an error. That means Thought has played some trick even before you create the question, perhaps introduced an incorrect assumption of necessity i.e. worry is absolutely necessary. The challenge here is to figure out who is an authentic spiritual master and who is not. And wisdom of crowd is not always trustworthy.

Third, you can use the technique that magicians are using in today’s YouTube-world to learn. In the video clip above, Penn points out that it wasn’t difficult for them to spot the deck-switch. Well, we can do the same by running the video in slow motion and see when the card deck gets switched. For example, replay the video between 2:35 and 2:40 and see how Shawn might have brought out a brand new deck from the pocket. Of course, Penn admits they have no clue how Shawn got Penn’s card in the new deck.

Similarly, as David Bohm points out in “Thought as a system”, we can do the same by pressing the button when we are relatively undisturbed i.e. bringing out the thought ourselves that creates negative emotions in us. For example, we can think about boss while he is not in front of us and watch the chain reaction in our body-mind. Watching the Perception & Thought show while a negative emotion is arising is like watching Shawn between 2:35 and 2:40. We can press the button again and again and see how the whole process functions especially in slow motion.

In short, we can use “Penn and Teller: Fool us” metaphor to learn mindfulness by being Fooled-but-aware, by learning thought-tricks from spiritual masters and by pressing the button that springs negative emotions and watching the show in slow motion.

Related articles:

“3 powerful illusions created by thought” June 18, 2015

“Mindfulness on the go: A short intro to a 2-day workshop” A YouTube video 

Kahneman’s “associative coherence” vs David Bohm’s “sustained incoherence”

Daniel Kahneman and David Bohm are two of my favourite experts on human thinking process. Kahneman, in his bestseller “Thinking, fast and slow”, tells us that one of the key characteristics of our (fast) thinking is “associative coherence”. On the other hand, David Bohm, in his “Thought as a system”, tells us that the most important characteristic of our thought process is “sustained incoherence”. Coherence vs incoherence - Are they talking about the same thing? Or different things? That’s what I would like to explore in this article.

Associative coherence: When the news of Aarushi Talwar’s murder in Noida broke out on TV in 2008, my parents were visiting us in Bangalore. I remember watching the news on Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, the high profile doctors in Delhi, a possible affair between their daughter Aarushi and their servant Hemraj and a possibility of “honour killing” etc. My mother who was watching the TV with me, declared within minutes of seeing the news that the parents have committed the murder. I don’t remember what was more shocking to me – the news or my mother’s confidence in her verdict. This is a classic case of how we (including I) form most of our judgments. What matters is whether the pieces of information available to us fit together as a story – i.e. does the story make sense? Do these pieces cohere associatively (together)? What gets ignored is the quantity (adequacy) and quality (correctness) of information. This is what Kahneman calls “associative coherence”. The fast thinking machinery is habituated to jump to conclusions based on the coherence of the story – like a “mental shotgun”. Kahneman calls this “confidence by coherence”.

Sustained incoherence: I returned to the Aarushi case when I read the book Aarushi by Avirook Sen a few months back and also saw the movie Irrfan Khan starrer Talvar a couple of weeks back. I liked the way Avirook Sen has presented various threads of the case – how sloppily the evidence was collected immediately after the murders, how CBI handled the case and how the verdict was arrived at by the Judge Shyam Lal in CBI’s fast-track court in Gaziabad. It looked like a good case material to study cognitive biases in action. Let’s take Judge Shyam Lal whom Avirook visited three months after the verdict. During the discussion, Avirook came to know that the report writing had begun a month before the judgment pronouncement date – Nov 25, 2013. The interesting thing is that the final arguments of the counsel for the defence (Tanveer Ahmed Mir) began on Oct 24, 2013 and went on for two weeks. In these two weeks Tanveer would argue on a total of 24 circumstances that he felt should lead to acquittal. However, looks like the Judge had already made up his mind and perhaps the evidence didn’t matter.

Once you believe in something (e.g. Talwars are guilty) then your thinking process automatically supresses the the evidence which might prove it otherwise. We sustain the potentially incorrect information or incoherence in order to maintain our belief. David Bohm calls this “sustained incoherence”. Note that we do correct misinformation in many places. For example, when you come to know that your friend’s email or phone number is changed, you update the entry in your contact list. Bohm calls this "simple incoherence". However, we don’t seem to correct the misinformation in many other cases including the cases where our self-image is at stake.

Are the two concepts – “associative coherence” and “sustained incoherence” inconsistent? Not really. In fact, Kahneman calls “sustained incoherence” cognitive illusion – where thought creates and sustains a gap between perception and reality. In part III (chapters 19 to 24) of “Thinking, fast and slow” Kahneman presents various cognitive illusions including illusion of validity, illusion of understanding, illusion of skill etc.  He says that cognitive illusions can be more stubborn than visual (optical) illusions and they lead to overconfidence.

After our recommendation, my parents saw the movie Talvar last week. I asked my mom what she thought about the case now. She said she is confused. That shows that beliefs are hard to change but not impossible to shake up.

In summary, Kahneman's "associative coherence" and Bohm's "sustained incoherence" are consistent. “Associative coherence” – how well the connected pieces of information make sense, is the basis on which we form opinions. And once we form an opinion, we suppress the evidence that proves it wrong – thus we sustain the potentially incorrect information – called “sustained incoherence”. This creates overconfidence.

Related articles:

“Thought as a system” by David Bohm: A book review, Nov 14, 2014

“The Matrix as a system vs thought as a system”, July 23, 2015

“3 powerful illusions created by thought” July 18, 2015

How Master Shifu follows a bright spot to train Kung Fu Panda

Among the various approaches to problem solving, “Following a bright spot” is an important one. One my favourite examples that illustrates the bright spot approach is from the animated film “Kung Fu Panda”. Here is how it goes:

Everybody including the panda named Po is in a state of disbelief when Grand Master Oogway selects Po as the Dragon Warrior.

Fat panda can’t even see his toes, let alone touching them.

Master Shifu tries to train him the hard way. He figures that the panda would get frustrated and leave. But panda persists. The master also realizes that the traditional approach would not work for panda. And then one day…

Master Shifu finds Po with a full split several feet above the ground. “How did you get up there?” asks Master Shifu.

“I don’t know...I am just getting a cookie,” says Panda. That’s when the Master discovers the bright spot. A situation where things are working well – Panda can do anything to get the food. Master Shifu applies it everywhere:

“I say you are free to eat,” Master Shifu tells Po but never letting him actually get hold of the food. Thus begins a new training regime.

This is the “bright spot” approach. It can be applied to any problem. Ask yourself, “Is there any corner where things are working well (or the problem is not as severe)?” If so, can you replicate the situation? Note that the approach focuses on the situation and not on the personality traits. The assumption is that the situation is more powerful than the personality traits in triggering specific behaviour. The bright spot approach also assumes that the seed of the solution is always lurking within the problem area. If you have not seen it yet, then it is because you have not looked hard enough.

Image source: Multiple YouTube clips