The Most Important Task, MIT

This is the last text for this year. I will be back in the second week next year.

The Most Important task is not an important mental model, but it helps you to simplify your life. As you can see from the title, the Most Important Task is in a singular form, not plural. Zero is the simplest number, but you have to think the next simplest figure, one. One way to separate yourself from others is to have a perfect focus on the most important task. To say ”yes” to this task, you have to say ”no” to tens of others. This task has to be your top priority. The most important task can have different timescales. Your daily choices can be done for achieving your most important long-term task or goal.

Whatever you think is your Most Important Task, you need define it some way. And you need to understand why you have to do it. No task can be the most important without the reason. The reason can be something like, ”Without doing a task x, nothing else gets done” or ”By doing a task y everything else will be easier or unnecessary” Sometimes this task has to be put into separate tasks. Then, you have to define the priorities of these smaller tasks. You have your most productive hours of the day. Different people have different hours. Normally, these hours are from two to four hours after you wake up. You need some time to recover from your sleep in order to be productive. My most productive hours are somewhere from three to five hours after I wake up. You can do small experiments to figure out your own.

Be ruthless in focusing on the most important task. Do not let anything or anyone interfere with doing it. Close your e-mail notifications, put your smartphone on silent mode and educate everyone around you to leave you alone during this task. This is probably easier said than done. And it will take some time. Showing the improved results of your working days is maybe the only smart way to do it. Forget everything else until you get this task done. I recommend to put a deadline to it, because you cannot be productive the whole day every day for a long time. Other hours you can use for less important things like governance. You can define the most important task for a longer time frame than one day. If you do this, add these moments into your calendar. Future is hard to forecast. Therefore, I don´t recommend this. Timeframe have to specific in order to get things done.

To get the most important task done, you have to define the first physical microtask. It is harder to begin without defining it. For example, you have a toothache that makes your life miserable. Then, the most important task for you is to reserve an appointment with a dentist. The first physical task is to find a phone number for the dentist or find a good dentist from the internet. The definition of the right result is filling the cavity and the getting rid off the toothache. You can also define all the other physical and mental microtasks if you think it is necessary. You can also create a system or systems for getting this task done.

If you have originally thought something different for the most important task, change it when something else changes your priorities. In an ideal situation, the most important task is the same task every day. For example, most often, the most important task for me is to learn new things about the most useful mental models. It can be hard to believe, because I write and publish texts once a week. My priority is to understand the models and how to build a latticework around them. Writing more is not important now. Priorities can change in the future.

I want to wish everybody happy holidays! Remember to take some time to recover!

-TT

Confirmation bias

Last week I wrote about one type of excessive self regard, loss aversion. This week I continue with a different theme related to excessive self-regard, confirmation bias. When you start looking for information that matches your former beliefs and reject the information that doesn´t confirm it, you can suffer from confirmation bias. This happens, when this leads you to a wrong conclusion. For example, you can start looking for evidence against climate change, instead of looking for evidence for it. The more ego, time or effort you have invested in your prior beliefs, the more likely you will suffer from confirmation bias. It doesn´t mean you are always wrong, but the likelihood will increase.

Ideology is the worst source of confirmation bias

Ideology is the worst source of confirmation bias. It creates the worst kind of mistakes. Any ”ism” is bad for you with large doses. It doesn´t matter whether you have a blind faith in capitalism, socialism, environmentalism, or any other ism, you probably suffer from confirmation bias. When you suffer from ideology, you create a self-reinforcing feedback loop in which all the information you seek, all the people you meet, and all the decisions you take, strengthen your beliefs. After this goes for a while, you have created a bubble for yourself where you cannot see any good in anything that is against your beliefs. After this feedback loop has worked for years, you become delusional. If this goes too far, it happens to anyone. No matter what you believe in.

Track records, and trying to destroy your best ideas are best antidotes

Lets face it. Any track record that is long enough is a better way to see how things are than any belief you can have about your skills and abilities. For example, if you are a bad investor and have a track record of losses in the last ten years, you shouldn´t believe you are a great in investing. Also 90 per cent of Swedish drives believed that they were better than average drivers. It is easy to understand that some of them are wrong. Instead of believing it, they should focus on how many accidents or near misses they have had. Poor performance leaves clues. No matter whether they are losses in financial markets or accidents while driving, long term results are the best predictor of future success. Do not believe in short term results. They don´t tell enough to you.

Peer reviews are used in many scientific disciplines to evaluate the quality of research. However, it creates possibilities of confirmation biases effecting on the results. Reviewers are people who are likely to suffer the confirmation bias of their own if they are wrong. They have probably done the same research in a bit different way and are getting the same results. If peer reviews do not align with track records of reality, believing in the latter option is the best option. For example, efficient market theory has affected on financial market research for decades. But mathematical results of the reality of the markets do not confirm it. Still, many business schools teach students efficient market theory for their students. Without going into details, the probabilities that efficient market theory gives to extreme daily fluctuations of the markets are much smaller than what has happened in the markets.

Try to create a habit for destroying your best and most important ideas. It helps you to focus on the right ideas. For you to do this, search for the smartest possible people who don´t believe you are right. This is quite easy in modern world. Then figure out why they believe in their own conclusions. You can also stay close to people who are willing to give you contrarian opinions, when they think you are wrong. People who are more willing to get to the truth than being right. You can also share your best and most important ideas to your enemies. When they are willing to explain what you did wrong or why they disagree, you can understand your ideas much better. Today, it is easy to tell the public what you think. I recommend you to do that.

This is all for now. Until next week,

-TT