Why Smart People Make Stupid Mistakes
As you know, when other people make stupid mistakes, it is because they are fundamentally incompetent. When you make a stupid mistake, it is due to certain circumstances and / or because someone else is fundamentally incompetent. Adam Robinson, chess master and founder of the Princeton Review, identified seven factors that make smart people act stupid. You will recognize some of them – for example, in a hurry – and learning others will help you avoid even dumber mistakes.
The seven factors, as Robinson said in an interview with The Knowledge Project , are:
- Be outside your circle of expertise
- Stress
- Haste or urgency
- Obsession running out
- Information overload
- Groupthink or concern for social cohesion
- Be in the presence of an “authority” (including yourself)
In an interview, Robinson cites some great examples, such as when four different famous musicians left their million dollar instruments in a taxi or on a train. When you put on your sweater inside out or delete the department’s most important spreadsheet, you’re exactly like Yo-Yo Ma leaving his cello in a taxi.
If you catch yourself making the same mistake several times, it’s not because you’re stupid. This is likely because you have a recurring occurrence of one or more of these seven factors. To prevent the error, you must eliminate the root cause.
For example, the factor that most affects the quality of my post is time management. When I buffer blog posts so that I don’t work on them until the deadline, those posts go from very good to very very good.
Maybe you are addicted to wings because you are on the phone while driving (information overload) or because you leave home too late (urgency). perhaps you are only behind deadlines because you take on too much work, because you don’t want to give up meetings (social cohesion) because you’re worried about getting fired (stress). So the secret to better driving may be to wake up earlier, and the secret to meeting deadlines may be to reinforce your sense of job confidence by talking to your boss about the expectations (or maybe by stealing and blackmailing them, style with 9 to 5 , but maybe not).
This is why Lifehacker is so obsessed with developing good habits. Time management influences not only what is done, but also how well it is done. Meditation directly reduces stress levels, but it also reduces the number of mistakes that cause stress. Single-tasking not only speeds up the task, but also improves your accuracy.
Eliminating all seven causes is not a quick fix. But if you’ve tried quick fixes and they don’t work, check out these seven reasons. You can find more than one. Work on these reasons so that no one will mistake you for one of these really stupid people.
How not to be stupid | Farnam Street