judgement – Brian Gitt

False beliefs about renewable energy are harming the environment. I say this as someone who championed renewable energy for over two decades—first as executive director of a green building non-profit, then as CEO of a consulting firm specializing in clean energy, and most recently as founder of a cleantech startup. I thought my efforts were helping to protect the environment. But I was wrong.

Like many people, I believed the worst harm to the environment came from fossil fuels—and greedy companies exploiting the land, polluting the air, and destroying ecosystems to get them. It took me many years to realize that this viewpoint is distorted and to admit that many of my beliefs about renewable energy were false. And now I’m ready to talk about what we really need to do to save the environment.

The Truth about Energy

The truth is this: every source of energy has costs and benefits that have to be carefully weighed. Wind and solar are no different. Most people are familiar with the benefits of wind and solar: reduced air pollution, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. But not as many recognize the costs of wind and solar or understand how those costs hurt both the environment and people—especially people with lower incomes.

Looking at Life Cycles

To fully evaluate how solar and wind energy hurt people and the environment, we must consider the lifecycle of renewable energy systems. Every artifact has a lifecycle that includes manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, and disposal. Every stage in that lifecycle requires energy and materials, so we need to tally up the energy and materials used at every stage of the cycle to fully understand the environmental impact of an object.

Think of a car. To understand its full impact on the environment, we must consider more than simply how many miles it gets per gallon of gas. Gas consumption measures only the cost of operating the car, but it doesn’t measure all the energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the car. Tally up the costs at each stage of the car’s lifecycle to get a more complete picture of its environmental impact.

The same is true of solar panels. To fully understand the environmental impact of solar panels, we need to consider more than simply how much energy and emissions the panels produce during operation. We also need to tally up the expenditure of energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, installing, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the panels. Once we tally up those costs, we see that solar power leaves a larger ecological footprint than advocates like to admit.

The Environmental Costs of Manufacturing and Installing Solar

Solar advocates often gloss over the solar-panel manufacturing process. They just say, “We turn sand, glass, and metal into solar panels.” This oversimplification masks the real environmental costs of the manufacturing process.

Solar panels are manufactured using minerals, toxic chemicals, and fossil fuels. In fact, solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant.^[1] Quartz, copper, silver, zinc, aluminum, and other rare earth minerals are mined with heavy diesel-powered machinery. In fact, 38% of the world’s industrial energy and 11% of total energy currently go into mining operations.^[2]

Once the materials are mined, the quartz and other materials get melted down in electric-arc furnaces at temperatures over 3,450°F (1,900°C) to make silicon—the key ingredient in solar cells. The furnaces take an enormous amount of energy to operate, and that energy typically comes from fossil fuels.^[3] Nearly 80% of solar cells are manufactured in China, for instance, where weak environmental regulations prevail and lower production costs are fueled by coal.^[4]

There are also environmental costs to installing the panels. Solar panels are primarily installed in two ways: in solar farms and on rooftops. Most U.S. solar farms are sited in the southwestern U.S. where sunshine is abundant. The now-canceled Mormon Mesa project, for instance, was proposed for a site about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. It was slated to cover 14 square miles (the equivalent of 7,000 football fields) with upwards of a million solar panels, each 10-20 feet tall. It would have involved bulldozing plants and wildlife habitat on a massive scale to replace them with concrete and steel. Environmentalists and local community groups opposed the project because it threatened views of the landscape and endangered species like the desert tortoise, and the proposed project was eventually withdrawn.^[5]

Placing massive solar farms far from populated areas presents additional challenges as their remote locations require new power lines to carry energy to people who use it. Environmentalists and local community groups often fiercely oppose the construction of ugly power lines, which also have to get approval from multiple regulatory agencies. Those factors make it almost impossible to build new transmission lines in the U.S.^[6] If approval is granted, installing those lines takes a further toll on the environment.

In addition, the farther the electricity has to travel, the more energy is lost as heat in the transmission process. The cost-effective limit for electricity transmission is roughly 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers.) So you can’t power New York or Chicago from solar energy farms in Arizona.

Limitations to Rooftop Solar

Rooftop solar installations could sidestep some of the problems of solar farms, but they have problems of their own.

First, many buildings are not suitable for rooftop solar panels. Rooftop installations are typically exposed to less direct sunlight due to local weather patterns, shade from surrounding trees, the orientation of a building (which are often not angled toward the sun), or the pitch of the roof.

Second, the average cost to buy and install rooftop solar panels on a home as of July 2021 is $20,474.^[7] This makes rooftop installations cost-prohibitive—especially for lower-income families.

Finally, even if we installed solar panels on all suitable buildings in the U.S. we could generate only 39% of the electricity the country needs according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.^[8]

Solar panels also have a shorter lifespan^[9] than other power sources (about half as long as natural gas^[10] and nuclear plants^[11]), and they’re difficult and expensive to recycle because they’re made with toxic chemicals. When solar panels reach the end of their usable life, their fate will most likely be the same as most of our toxic electronic waste: They will be dumped in poorer nations. It is estimated that global solar panel waste will reach around 78 million metric tons by 2050^[12]–the equivalent of throwing away nearly 60 million Honda Civic cars.^[13]

The Human Costs of Solar

Solar harms more than the environment; it hurts people—especially the economically disadvantaged, who face a hard choice between paying high energy costs or suffering energy poverty.

Consider a family of four in California’s Central Valley. They currently pay one of the highest rates for electricity in the U.S.—80% more than the national average.^[14] They may be forced to choose between paying for daycare or turning off their air conditioner in 100-degree heat. Families like this are not rare. The California Public Utilities Commission says 3.3 million residential customers have past-due utility bills. Taken together they owe $1.2 billion.^[15]

Adding more renewable energy to the grid is not only expensive; it’s dangerous! The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a nonprofit organization that monitors the reliability, resilience, and security of the grid, says that the number-one risk to the electrical grid in America is adding more unreliable renewables.^[16]

The reliability of a power source is measured by capacity factor. The capacity factor of a power plant tracks the time it’s producing maximum power throughout the year. When we compare the capacity factors of power plants, we see that solar is the least reliable energy source: natural gas is twice as reliable as solar, and nuclear energy is three times more reliable.

Recent events in Texas and California highlight the risk of adding more unreliable power sources to the grid. The blackouts were caused by several interconnected factors. The Texas power blackout in February 2021 left 4.5 million homes and businesses without power (some for several days) and killed hundreds of people.^[17] The immediate trigger of the Texas blackout was an extreme winter storm, but that storm had such a massive effect because of factors rooted in poorly designed economic incentives. Texas wind and solar projects collected $22 billion in Federal and State subsidies.^[18] These subsidies distorted the price of power and hence compromised the reliability of the Texas grid. The electricity market is complex. And multiple factors converged to cause the blackout including a failure of government oversight and regulation. But if investments had flowed to natural gas and nuclear power plants instead of unreliable solar and wind, the blackout would likely have lasted minutes instead of days.

Unreliable solar and wind power were also among the three primary factors causing California’s rolling blackouts in August 2020, according to the State of California’s final report on the power outages.^[19]

A year later, in July 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency and authorized the use of diesel generators to overcome energy shortfalls. And in August 2021, the state announced the emergency construction of five new gas-fueled generators to avoid future blackouts.^[20]

Events in California and Texas highlight another unappreciated cost of solar and wind: Compensating for their unreliability requires the use of more reliable sources of power, namely fossil fuels. A study conducted across 26 countries over two decades by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concluded for every 1 megawatt of solar or wind power installed there need to be 1.12 megawatts of fossil fuels (usually natural gas) as backup capacity because solar and wind are unreliable.^[21] Moreover, using backup diesel generators and ramping power plants up and down to meet energy shortfalls are two of the worst ways to use fossil fuels; they’re inefficient and cause unnecessary pollution.

A final point: solar and wind have low power densities. According to a facts guide on nuclear energy from the U.S. Department of Energy, a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear facility in the United States needs a little more than 1 square mile to operate. Solar farms, by contrast, need 75 times more land and wind farms need 360 times more land, to produce the same amount of electricity.^[22]

Even if we could overcome all the practical constraints on storing, transmitting, and distributing solar power, supplying a country the size of the U.S. would require over 22,000 square miles of solar panels^[23]—approximately the size of New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts combined.^[24] And the unreliability of solar power means that even with that many solar panels, we would continue to need most of our existing power plants.

The Costs of Energy Poverty Worldwide

The less-measured costs of promoting renewable energy extend far beyond California and even the United States. Energy is the foundation of civilization. Access to it enables healthcare, education, and economic opportunity. It liberates men from dangerous jobs, women from domestic drudgery, children from forced labor, and animals from backbreaking work.

Energy poverty, by contrast, leads to malnutrition, preventable disease, lack of access to safe drinking water, and contributes to 10 million premature deaths per year.^[25] Over 3 billion people—40% of the Earth’s population—live in energy poverty. Nearly one billion people don’t have access to electricity and use wood or animal dung for cooking and heating their homes.^[26] Another billion only get enough electricity to power a light bulb for a few hours a day.^[27] Women in energy poverty spend more than two hours a day gathering water^[28] for drinking and wood for cooking.^[29] And over 3.8 million people die every year^[30] from breathing wood smoke while cooking—something which could be prevented by using stoves fueled with propane or butane.

You might think that wealthy nations with a commitment to human rights would take steps to alleviate energy poverty. But exactly the opposite is happening: Wealthy nations are pulling up the ladder behind them and subjecting the developing world to energy poverty.

In 2019, the European Investment Bank announced it would stop financing fossil fuel power plants in poor nations by 2021.^[31] And the World Bank (the largest financier of developing nations) is developing a similar policy.^[32] The hypocrisy is mind-boggling: wealthy nations get 80% of their energy from fossil fuels and reap the benefits of unprecedented prosperity due to the low-cost, reliable energy they provide.^[33]

Weighing the Costs and Benefits

Evaluating the environmental impact of solar panels simply in terms of the CO2 emissions of operating solar panels is like evaluating the environmental impact of a car simply in terms of how many miles it can travel on a gallon of gas. It’s an overly simplistic view that fails to account for all the environmental costs of mining, manufacturing, installing, operating, and disposing of the solar panels.

Once we tally up all of solar’s lifecycle costs, it’s no longer obvious that solar is better for the environment than other sources of energy, including highly efficient natural gas. In fact, solar energy might be worse for the environment after we factor in its unreliability. California’s recent energy crisis illustrates that new solar installations need to be coupled with more reliable sources of power–like natural gas plants–to compensate for their unreliability.

That unreliability is not something that better technology can erase. It’s simply due to the very nature of solar power: the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day, so it’s impossible for solar panels to produce electricity 24 hours a day.

Some people theorize that we will eventually be able to store surplus solar energy in batteries, but the reality is batteries cost about 200 times more than the cost of natural gas to solve energy storage at scale.^[34] In addition, batteries don’t have enough storage capacity to meet our energy needs. Currently, America has 1 gigawatt of large-scale battery storage that can deliver power for up to four hours without a recharge. A gigawatt is enough energy to power 750,000 homes, which is a small fraction of the amount of energy storage we would need for a grid powered mostly by renewables. It is, for instance, less than 1% of the 120 gigawatts of energy storage that would be needed for a grid powered 80% by renewables.^[35]

Manufacturing batteries also takes a serious toll on the environment, as they require lots of mining, hydrocarbons, and electricity. According to analysis completed by the Manhattan Institute, it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to make batteries that can store a single barrel of oil-equivalent energy. And between 50 to 100 pounds of various materials are mined, moved, and processed for one pound of battery produced. Enormous quantities of lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earth elements, and cobalt would need to be mined in China, Russia, Congo, Chile, and Argentina where weak environmental regulations and poor labor conditions prevail.^[36]

The high cost and poor performance of batteries explain why there’s no market for long-duration (eight or more hours) battery storage. Existing battery technology is unlikely to overcome the limits of physics and chemistry in the next decade to come anywhere close to the levels of efficiency we need to store energy at scale.

So adding solar power to the grid will not eliminate the need for natural gas. And when you really examine the harm that solar installations do to the environment, solar begins to look worse for the environment on balance than efficient natural gas plants.

When we add the human costs to the tally, the case for solar looks even worse. Forcing low-income people to pay 80% more for electricity in places like California is ethically dubious and increases wealth inequality. And these are just the costs in developed countries. When we consider the human costs of energy poverty worldwide, using solar to decrease CO2 emissions subjects poor people to unnecessary suffering without substantially reducing climate risk.

Real Benefits of Solar

If you have read this far, you might believe I think solar energy is bad. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think solar is a great technology, but it just doesn’t scale well. When it’s limited to its original applications, it can be a game-changer for many people. Think of African villages that get a lot of sun but are too remote to justify the cost for building new power lines. Equipping a school, community center, or individual homes with solar panels could be a game-changer and lift many people out of energy poverty.

These are the applications for solar that we should be looking into. But it is wrongheaded to see solar as a replacement for more reliable sources of energy in industrialized, power-hungry nations. That’s an illusion.

But that illusion does make people in developed countries feel good about themselves because it makes them feel less guilty about a lifestyle based on excessive energy consumption. They want to drive nice cars, live in big homes, vacation in exotic destinations, and enjoy all the conveniences of modern life–without worrying that they are hurting poor people and or the planet.

I’m not pointing fingers. I put myself in this category. It took me years to see that my reasons for pushing solar and wind power were false. I liked seeing myself as a hero defending the environment against ruthless pillagers, and because I wanted other people to see me this way. My false ideas about fossil fuels and renewables were as bound up with my sense of identity and self-worth as they were with my lifestyle.

But I now understand that I was using those ideas as moral camouflage, and I was able to maintain them only by remaining ignorant about the real costs and benefits of different energy sources. That ignorance prevented me from making a real difference.

I’ve dedicated most of my life to protecting the environment. But for years, I was going about it in the wrong way. I thought I was acting morally and protecting the well-being of people and the planet. But in fact, I was harming both, and I see people making the same mistakes today. Governments, companies, and building owners around the world invested $2.7 trillion on renewable energy between 2010-2019, and they plan on investing an additional $1 trillion by 2030.^[37] We can make better investment decisions to maximize human flourishing and minimize environmental harm.

What We Need To Do

My message probably stands in contrast to most of what you’ve been told about renewable energy. But I’m convinced that the stakes are too high for me to sit back and not to challenge the false beliefs that continue to fuel poor investments and bad policy decisions. It’s time to stop virtue signaling and take off our moral camouflage so we can meet the problems of climate change and energy poverty head-on.

If we’re serious about tackling climate change, protecting the environment, and helping impoverished people around the world, we need to stop chasing fantasies about solar and wind energy. We need to start weighing all the costs and benefits of all energy sources—wind, solar, natural gas, coal, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear.

Here are five steps we can begin to take towards making things better for both people and the planet:

End subsidies and incentives for solar and wind power;
Invest in research and development to advance new energy technologies;
Build new efficient natural gas power plants (and hydro and geothermal where possible);
Reform regulations and build nuclear power plants;
Retire the worst coal power plants (5% of power plants create 73% of carbon emissions from electricity generation)^[38].

Every day we spend chasing fantasies causes unnecessary harm and suffering. Let’s pursue energy solutions that benefit people and also save the environment.

^[1] U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), “Quadrennial Technology Review: An Assessment of Energy Technologies and Research Opportunities” September 2015, page 390 https://www.energy.gov/quadrennial-technology-review-2015

^[2] J.J.S. Guilbaud, “Hybrid Renewable Power Systems for the Mining Industry: System Costs, Reliability Costs, and Portfolio Cost Risks” University College London, 2016, https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1528681/

^[3] Stephen Maldonado, “The Importance of New “Sand-to-Silicon” Processes for the Rapid Future Increase of Photovoltaics” October 2020, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.0c02100

^[4] Kenneth Rapoza, “How China’s Solar Industry Is Set Up To Be The New Green OPEC” Forbes.com, March 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2021/03/14/how-chinas-solar-industry-is-set-up-to-be-the-new-green-opec/?sh=1355297a1446

^[5] AP News, “Plans for largest US solar field north of Vegas scrapped” APnews.com, July 2021

https://apnews.com/article/technology-government-and-politics-environment-and-nature-las-vegas-nevada-9bf3640dfefbc6f7f45a97c6810f5ff7

^[6] Robinson Meyer, “Unfortunately, I Care About Power Lines Now” The Atlantic, July 2021,

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/america-is-bad-at-building-power-lines-lets-fix-that-transmission-climate/619591/

^[7] Jacob Marsh, “The cost of solar panels in 2021: what price for solar can you expect?” EnergySage.com, July 2021, https://news.energysage.com/how-much-does-the-average-solar-panel-installation-cost-in-the-u-s/

^[8] Pieter Gagnon, Robert Margolis, Jennifer Melius, Caleb Phillips, and Ryan Elmore, “Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Technical Potential in the United States: A Detailed Assessment” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, January 2016, https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/65298.pdf

^[9] The Solar Technical Assistance Team (STAT), STAT FAQs Part 2: Lifetime of PV, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), April 2018, https://www.nrel.gov/state-local-tribal/blog/posts/stat-faqs-part2-lifetime-of-pv-panels.html

^[10]S&P Global Market Intelligence, “Average age of US power plant fleet flat for 4th-straight year in 2018” January 2019 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/gfjqeFt8GTPYNK4WX57z9g2

^[11] Energy.gov, Office of Nuclear Energy, “What’s the Lifespan for a Nuclear Reactor? Much Longer Than You Might Think” May 2021 https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/whats-lifespan-nuclear-reactor-much-longer-you-might-think

^[12] International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), “End-of-Life Management Solar Voltaic Panels” 2016 https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2016/IRENA_IEAPVPS_End-of-Life_Solar_PV_Panels_2016.pdf

^[13] “Honda Civic Features And Specs, Weight Information, 2021” CarandDriver.com, https://www.caranddriver.com/honda/civic/specs

^[14]Laurence du Sault, “Here’s why your electricity prices are high and soaring” Calmatters.org, March 2021, https://calmatters.org/california-divide/debt/2021/03/california-high-electricity-prices/

^[15] California Public Utilities Commission, “Energy Customer Arrears 2020 Status Update and New Order Instituting Rulemaking, January 2021 https://www.scribd.com/document/495707616/Residential-Energy-Customer-2020-Arrears-Presentation-for-Voting-Meeting-Update-Jan-2021

^[16] Reliability Issues Steering Committee, North American Electric Reliability Corporation, Ranking of Identified Risks, page 49, January 2021, https://www.nerc.com/comm/RISC/Agenda%20Highlights%20and%20Minutes/RISC_Meeting_Agenda_Package_Jan_28_2021_PUBLIC.pdf#search=reliability%20risk%20ran

^[17]Peter Aldhous, Stephanie M. Lee, Zahra Hirji, “The Texas Winter Storm And Power Outages Killed Hundreds More People Than The State Says” BuzzFeed News, May 2021 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/texas-winter-storm-power-outage-death-toll

^[18] Robert Bryce, “The Texas blackouts were caused by an epic government failure” The Dallas Morning News, August 2021, https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/08/01/the-texas-blackouts-were-caused-by-an-epic-government-failure/

^[19] California ISO, “Final Root Cause Analysis Mid-August 2020 Extreme Heat Wave” January 2021 http://www.caiso.com/Documents/Final-Root-Cause-Analysis-Mid-August-2020-Extreme-Heat-Wave.pdf

^[20] Mark Chediak and Naureen S Malik, “California to Build Temporary Gas Plants to Avoid Blackouts” Bloomberg.com, August 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/california-to-build-temporary-gas-plants-to-avoid-blackouts

^[21] Elena Verdolini, Francesco Vona, and David Popp, “Bridging the Gap: Do Fast Reacting Fossil Technologies Facilitate Renewable Energy Diffusion?” National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016 https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22454/w22454.pdf

^[22] Energy.gov, Office of Nuclear Energy, “The Ultimate Fast Facts Guide To Nuclear Energy” January 2019, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/01/f58/Ultimate%20Fast%20Facts%20Guide-PRINT.pdf

^[23] Energy.gov, Solar Technologies Energy Office, “Solar Energy in the United States” September 2021, https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-energy-united-states

^[24] StateSymbolsUSA.org, “States by Size in Square Miles” https://statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-official-item/national-us/uncategorized/states-size

^[25] World Health Organization (WHO), “Health Topics” https://www.who.int/health-topics

^[26] The World Bank, “Energy Overview” https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/energy/overview

^[27] Todd Moss, “Ending global energy poverty – how can we do better?” World Economic Forum, November 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/energy-poverty-africa-sdg7/

^[28] “UNICEF: Collecting water is often a colossal waste of time for women and girls” Unicef.org, August 2016, https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-collecting-water-often-colossal-waste-time-women-and-girls

^[29]“ ENERGIA, World Bank—Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) and UN

Women, United Nations, Policy Brief #12 Global Progress of SDG 7— Energy and Gender” 2018, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/17489PB12.pdf

^[30] World Health Organization (WHO), “Household Air Pollution” 2021, https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_3

^[31] BBC.com, “European Investment Bank drops fossil fuel funding” November 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50427873

^[32] Bernice von Bronkhorst, “Transitions at the Heart of the Climate Challenge” The World Bank, May 2021, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2021/05/24/transitions-at-the-heart-of-the-climate-challenge

^[33] Robert Rapier, “Fossil Fuels Still Supply 84 Percent Of World Energy — And Other Eye Openers From BP’s Annual Review” Forbes.com, June 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/06/20/bp-review-new-highs-in-global-energy-consumption-and-carbon-emissions-in-2019/?sh=1dbd154666a1

^[34] Mark P. Mills, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking” Manhattan Institute, March 2019, https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible

^[35] National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), “Renewable Electricity Futures Study” 2012, https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re-futures.html

^[36] Mark P. Mills, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking” Manhattan Institute, March 2019, https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible

^[37] United Nations Environment Programme with Frankfurt School & Bloomberg NEF, “Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2020”, Key Findings, 2020, https://www.fs-unep-centre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/GTR_2020.pdf

^[38] Alex Fox, “Just 5 Percent of Power Plants Release 73 Percent of Global Electricity Production Emissions” Smithsonian Magazine, August 2021, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-percent-power-plants-release-73-percent-global-electricity-production-emissions-180978355/

Most of the time we believe what we hear. And too often we hear—and then believe—things that are not true. But imagine how hard it would be to question every fact and underlying assumption you hear or read throughout the day.

Your brain acts like a sponge soaking up conversations with family and friends, daily news reports on TV and radio, information in emails and social media posts. It would impossible to every day test and probe every sentence from every source for complete accuracy. Even getting through one hour—much less a day—would be almost impossible. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

To efficiently navigate life, we learn to trust people and institutions. Your life runs on trust for many things we take for granted. You trust when you flip on the light switch that electricity will be available to power your light bulb. You trust that pipes coming in and out of your home will provide water to flush the toilet. You trust that the ambulance will show up if you dial 911. You trust that the money you deposited in your bank account today will still be there tomorrow.

Trust undergirds our financial system and our justice system and our transportation system and provides the glue to hold our social fabric together. Without trust we would live in a world of paralyzing fear and violence. However, it’s important to recognize when it’s time to switch off your trust autopilot and begin questioning assumptions. If you don’t, you can make painful mistakes and walk blindly into bad decisions.

I spent twenty years of my professional career working on the wrong problem. Blinded by a utopian vision of renewable energy, I didn’t apply critical thinking to test my beliefs. Renewable energy technology has a role to play in providing the power in some situations, but currently it represents 2% of global energy. The laws of physics prevent renewable energy from becoming an efficient and preferred source of energy to power society.

I was not alone in making this mistake. One of our worst decisions in the 20th century was to underfund and overregulate nuclear energy. We let activists, rather than scientists, lead the national conversation on nuclear energy. Unfortunately, we were told many things that were not true—and we believed them.

In the book How Innovation Works, author Matt Ridley shares evidence for nuclear energy being the safest form of energy we produce: “Per unit of power coal kills 2,000 times as many people as nuclear; bioenergy fifty times; gas forty times; hydro fifteen times; solar five times (people falling off roofs installing panels) and wind kills twice as many as nuclear. And these numbers include the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima.”

New nuclear technology in the form of many relatively small reactors has no risk of explosion or meltdown, produces very little radioactive waste, and cannot be used to make nuclear weapons. But our fears of nuclear accidents and nuclear waste have kept us from pursuing this energy solution. Instead of having energy that’s too cheap to meter fueling massive new growth and innovation, for the past fifty years we have been dealing with economic stagnation and unnecessary environmental impacts related to pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change.

Dig down to bedrock

How much of your perceived reality is grounded in truth? What would happen if you took a crowbar and pried under every assumption you have about the world. What would be left? What are your foundational beliefs? I know what I see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. But I have to recognize the limits of my perception. Peering through a microscope or out the window of an airplane enables me to see different perspectives and helps me understand that there are truths I rarely recognize.

Limited perception helps you focus and survive. Imagine if you were not shielded from unlimited awareness. You would likely be so overwhelmed by sensation and experience that you would not be able to function. But perception does not equal reality. Therefore, it’s important to probe and question your beliefs often.

My beliefs today have changed from yesterday. And my beliefs yesterday were different from what I believed last week, last month, last year. If your beliefs are not changing, you may not be learning. Some of my best ideas and beliefs have been wrecked on the sharp rocks of reality. I have learned that it’s useful to question what I believe and to keep a loose grip on my opinions because my perspective changes with new experience and knowledge.

When I dig deep down to bedrock and question my understanding of the world, I see patterns of creative destruction—cycles of growth trying to maintain a balance between chaos and order. But my crowbar could not dislodge the following assumptions.

Dependence. You and I are both dependent. To survive you need oxygen to breathe. Water to drink. Food to eat. All life on earth depends on other organisms for survival. You alone are not self-sustaining.

Struggle. Life requires struggle. I’ve not yet met a human who does not struggle—no matter how much money or power they have achieved. Scratch beneath the surface of anyone’s life, and you will find struggle and pain.

Violence. You cannot escape violence. Life requires it. We are made of it. From the cells in your body fighting viruses to our need to kill plants and animals to acquire the nutrients we need to survive. Life is based on cycles of violence and rebirth. Every living creature on the planet participates in violence. You may choose to wear a veil of ignorance and pretend you are nonviolent. But there is no escape. Even heroes such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. who promoted the principle of nonviolence were violent. Existing in the world requires killing other life to survive.

Pain. Nothing sharpens your mind more than pain. Don’t believe me? Put your hand on a hot stove and your mind will snap into focus instantly. All other thoughts and desires will instantly vacate your head.

Growth. Growth requires violence and pain. Muscles can’t grow without breaking down and rebuilding. New ideas can’t progress if you don’t allow old ideas to die.

Reproduction. From a biological perspective, your purpose is to survive long enough to reproduce. And pass on what you learned to the next generation.

Death. You cannot escape death. As we push the limits of technology, we will extend life and maybe be able to upload our consciousness. But our bodies are going die.

If you don’t routinely strip bare your beliefs, you can end up making poor choices. Dig down to uncover your foundational beliefs. Consider how your beliefs shape your perspective and influence your decisions.

Your emotions influence your decisions. Learning to read and regulate your emotions will help you make better choices and build better relationships.

When I was nineteen, I spent four months traveling in India to learn meditation. Given the opportunity to experiment with dozens of different meditation techniques, I learned how to witness my thoughts and emotions and not react to them. Surprisingly, this is one of the most practical and useful skills I’ve learned, and I use it every day in my interactions with people.

Our emotions evolved to help us survive and reproduce. Fear, anger, sadness, joy, and disgust are names we give to describe different states of our nervous system. Fear is experienced as contraction in your belly or chest. Joy brings a feeling of expansion. Your reactions to these types of physical sensations influence your decisions and behaviors.

Babies express raw unregulated emotion. Discomfort due to hunger or pain causes them to cry. Babies have not yet been taught how to regulate their emotions. Imagine the reaction you would get at work if you started crying because you were hungry. Although I don’t cry when I’m hungry, I do have similar strong emotional reactions to situations that would be just as ridiculous if expressed.

As we mature, we are taught what is an acceptable display of emotion and behavior by the people around us. Breaking these social norms brings consequences. In ancient times, if you were kicked out of the tribe due to your behavior, you would likely not survive. This primal fear persists today, and strongly influences our behavior at work and in our personal lives.

Emotions are powerful but they are short lived unless you continue to feed them. If you are willing to sit in the emotion fully, instead of struggling to ignore or repress it, you will find the emotion is very short and lasts only moments—not minutes. It amazes me how if I’m cut off while driving, I can go from a calm state to full-on rage in less than a second. And then return to a calm state a few minutes later. My brain interpreted the car cutting me off as a threat and reacted. In that moment of rage, I felt capable of physical violence toward the driver who cut me off. Most likely the person did not wish me harm. They probably did not even see my car. If you pay attention to the physical sensations in your body, it’s hard to stay angry for more than a few moments unless you continue to feed the anger with additional mental chatter.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to separate your emotion from your behavior. The better you get at reading, regulating, and expressing your emotions, the better your relationships will be.

People with high emotional intelligence perform better at work. It’s not surprising that surveys of employers showed that 71% of them valued emotional intelligence over IQ in an employee. For managers and leaders this is an essential skill.

Emotional intelligence allows you to stay calm in times of stress, conflict, and challenge. This helps you resolve conflict effectively and quickly. By practicing active listening and taking an interest in understanding other people’s perspectives, you gain empathy, which creates the opportunity to cooperate. All of this allows you to form and develop better relationships with others.

Your ability to manage stress and build better relationships also increases your physical and mental health, preventing the onset and progression of heart problems, anxiety, and depression.

Emotional intelligence can be learned. But just like any skill, it requires consistent practice. You don’t get a healthy body by going to the gym once a week. And you don’t learn a new language by just attending a few classes. Building your emotional intelligence requires consistent practice over a long time-frame. But you can do it in small steps.

Here are a few useful ways to improve your emotional intelligence.

Practice meditation at least 10 minutes every day. Meditation is an effective tool to build self-awareness. I use the Waking Up app by Sam Harris because the instructions Sam provides are useful and the app tracks the time. A common misconception about meditation is that you are detached and not feeling your emotions. The opposite is true. You are not distancing yourself from your emotions. You willingly feel emotions and physical sensations more intensely to fully experience them in your body. But you experience them without judgment. Meditation is practicing being fully aware without reacting. For example, you can’t close your ears and stop sound from entering. But you can listen to sound without it triggering an emotional reaction. Imagine if you are trying to concentrate at work and someone is speaking loudly near you and its distracting. You’ve a choice in how you respond. You may feel anger or frustration but it will not likely serve you to act out of anger in your response.
Ask for feedback. Ask people with diverse perspectives to give you feedback frequently. Be vulnerable and open to receiving what you hear. Monitor your emotions so that you are not defensive. Feedback gives you an opportunity to gain empathy by seeing different points of view, and it shines a bright light on your blind spots. Feedback also helps you correct mistakes quickly and improve your performance.
Be curious about your emotions. Practice curiosity by becoming interested in the patterns of energy in your body in different situations. Approach this exercise as an experiment. Notice when you’re angry or frustrated. Are there certain people or situations that trigger these responses? Look for patterns.

Your emotions are a natural part of being human, but you can learn to regulate them in order to be happier, healthier, and more productive.

Nothing is more important or more valuable than thinking and communicating clearly. Thinking before acting helps you minimize expensive and painful mistakes. Clear thinking allows you to prioritize effectively, produce more, and make better decisions. Good communication starts with good ideas. So, your ability to deconstruct ideas and think critically enables you to communicate effectively. Expressing your ideas effectively empowers you to influence people and have an impact on their thoughts and actions.

The best way I’ve found to improve my thinking is learning how to write. Writing helps you formulate and organize your ideas into a clear and persuasive form before you act on them. You can write down more facts, ideas, and stray thoughts than you can remember at any one time. Putting your ideas in writing allows you to organize and edit them. Writing also exposes gaps in your knowledge while allowing you to see the interactive effects of ideas.

Writing instead of meeting

Replacing work meetings with long-form memos is one way you can practice writing to help you think and communicate more clearly while also saving time. Most meetings are an inefficient waste of time and resources. When I walk into a meeting, the first thing that comes to mind is how much it costs to have all these people sitting in one room instead of getting work done. Communication based on long-form writing forces an exchange based on complete thoughts and ideas whereas meetings encourage participants to react in the moment and shoot from the hip.

Communicating through comprehensive written memos also frees you from the constraint of aligning schedules and allows people who could not be in the room to understand the issues, assumptions, and decisions. I’m not suggesting you do away with meetings altogether because there can be value in getting people together to discuss ideas. However, meetings should be a last resort and not the first option.

Writing to gain leverage

Writing also gives you leverage and the ability to scale your ideas. Sharing your written ideas offers opportunities to find peers, collaborators, and business opportunities. Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combinator, wrote online essays to share his ideas and lessons about how to build a start-up. This strategy attracted start-up founders from around the world and has contributed to Y Combinator’s massive impact and success.

Writing to learn

Writing also helps you learn faster as it forces you to internalize learning at a deeper level. My mind is terrible at retaining what I read. I bet I only retain 10% to 15% of a book’s content. However, when I write an essay that synthesizes ideas I have been reading, the act of writing helps me internalize knowledge and remember it.

Useful tips to improve your writing

I’m always looking for ways to improve my writing. Here are some tips I’ve found useful.

Write like you talk. This is one of the most helpful tips I have learned. Spoken language is easier to understand, so read your writing out loud and fix anything that does not sound like a conversation.
Use simple, clear language. Imagine you are writing to an eight-year-old, and don’t allow your sentences to become flabby and swollen. Write tighter, stronger, and more precise. Avoid complex sentences, fancy words, jargon, acronyms, and filler phrases. Don’t use unfamiliar words to sound smart or important.
Choose your words with care. Each sentence should include one thought—and only one. Don’t make one sentence do too much work. After each sentence ask yourself, “what does the reader want to know next?”
Shorter is better. Remove every element not doing useful work. Use the fewest words possible. Imagine someone paying you $1,000 for each word you remove. Rewrite to remove ragged edges and extra parts. Sharpen, tighten, cut.
Simple style results from hard work and hard thinking. A muddled writing style reflects a muddled thinker. If what you write is ornate, pompous, or fuzzy, readers will perceive you as ornate, pompous, or fuzzy.

Use writing as a tool to help you think and communicate more clearly. Invest time to improve your writing to achieve your potential.

The best way to develop ideas for new services or products is to consider your own problems. What do you find tedious, annoying, or inconvenient? How could you solve that problem or minimize the irritation?

Solving your own problem will ensure the problem actually exists. It’s much harder to create a solution for a problem you don’t have. If you don’t experience the pain yourself, you will have to depend on customer feedback to determine if you have solved the problem.

Even worse: You may find a great solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist or that doesn’t cause a lot of pain. Many new businesses fail because they start with a made-up idea.

I’ve made this mistake myself. I started a software company that calculated estimates for electricity, natural gas, and water bills based on property data, local utility rates, and climate data. Because utility costs are 20%-40% of housing expenses in most of the U.S., we expected that homebuyers would be eager to have such information. We contracted with Zillow and other real estate websites to give buyers a good picture of the total cost of ownership before they made a purchase. Contractors could also use our data to show potential customers how much they could save by installing solar or upgrading their air conditioner or heater.

Unfortunately, this service did not create enough value to justify the cost. I was too far away from the problem to accurately assess the value of our solution. And my desire to help reduce energy use in homes contributed to my blindness. You can avoid this type of mistake by identifying a painful problem that frustrates you personally. It’s likely you are not the only person dealing with that problem, so focus on solving your problem or looking for ways to ease your frustrations.

Is there a missing element that could fix your problem? Often, the best solutions fill gaps between existing products or services rather than creating a completely new way of doing things. Seek out ideas that are unsexy but make weekly tasks easier.

And make sure your idea passes the dog food test: Will the dog eat the dog food? In this case, you are the dog. How much would you be willing to pay for a product to solve the problem? If you would not be inclined to pay to solve this problem, then why would anyone else?

Cultivating ideas to solve your own problem at least ensures you are creating something you want. And if you want it, it’s likely some other people will too.

Create constraints

If I gave you a blank piece of paper and told you to start writing, you might have a hard time knowing where to start. But if I gave you a blank piece of paper and asked you to list your favorite foods, you likely would have no trouble. When thinking about new business ideas, don’t get paralyzed or overwhelmed by the abundance of choices. Instead, create constraints to help you narrow your focus.

Zoom in. Focus on problems you can solve with minimal outside help and support. Your goals and the constraints you set will determine what types of ideas you pursue. I’m currently in the process of creating a new online business, and I imposed the following constraints on my ideas:

No investors
No employees
Must be able to work from anywhere in the world with only a computer and internet connection.

My constraints limit the type of ideas I can pursue.

Consider your own constraints. Do you want to create a lifestyle business that optimizes freedom, flexibility, and time for your family and interests? Do you want to build a company that requires investors and employees? Maybe you should constrain ideas to a specific industry or product type.

Here’s an idea I decided not to pursue. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks. Often, I hear an idea I want to capture, but I’m doing the dishes or driving and can’t stop and take out my phone and record a note. Even though I’m experiencing this problem myself, solving it would not align with my constraints. A solution to this problem would likely require building a new software application, raising money from investors, and hiring a development team. But please let me know if you build a frictionless, hands-free solution for taking audio notes from Audible and podcasts that integrates into Notion (my preferred note taking app.) I’ll happily pay you a $10/month subscription fee.

Practice noticing problems

Notice friction throughout your day. Look for it. The friction will often lead you to good ideas hiding in plain sight. Think about the last time you purchased a car. If you’re like me, after you narrow down your choices to a specific make and model, you start seeing the model everywhere as you drive around town. You spot the car because you are now tuned to look for it. When you pay attention, you will notice a lot of friction as you go about your day.

Identify what you don’t want

Often it’s easier to identify what you don’t want than what you do. Imagine you and I are going to dinner, and I ask you what you want to eat. Your brain thinks through all the potential options of food you like, and you find it hard to narrow down your choices. However, if I ask what type of food you don’t like, it’s likely you would give me a quick answer.

So, make a list of things you don’t want to do. Maybe you don’t want to travel for work, talk on the phone, or manage people. Then screen out new business ideas that would require you to invest a lot of time in these activities.

Find your niche

Don’t chase the latest hot trends. Avoid competition. What are you good at? What have you done that gives you a unique perspective? Where can you build a personal monopoly because of your specific knowledge? Start with the smallest niche possible and expand out only after you gain traction. Even the biggest successful companies started by focusing on a niche. Amazon started with books. Facebook targeted students at Harvard. Airbnb rented out blow-up mattresses for conference attendees who could not find hotel rooms. Try to find the smallest viable audience that shares your painful problem.

Build your idea muscle

Become an idea machine. After you have identified a problem, then start generating creative ideas for solutions. Build your creativity muscle. Muscles get weak and flabby unless you put them to work. Exercise your creativity muscle to generate more and better ideas. Creativity requires practice.

Create an idea habit. Invest 10 minutes a day generating new ideas. Hat tip to James Altucher for sharing his daily practice of writing down 10 new ideas every day. Yes, I said 10. Make your brain sweat. Let your imagination run wild and write down all of your ideas. Don’t worry if most of the ideas are terrible, and don’t limit yourself to business-related ideas. This daily practice will help strengthen your idea muscle. You may be surprised to discover how creative you become when you stop limiting yourself to only good ideas.

Describe your idea in 50 characters or fewer

Complex ideas are a sign of muddled thinking or a made-up problem. Ideas need to be clear to spread. Use clear and concise language to describe your idea. Entrepreneurs who think and communicate clearly have a big advantage because your idea must be clearly defined in order to sell, recruit, and raise money. Creating a 50-character limit forces you to distill your idea down to its simplest form.

Examples

Product Hunt: the best new products in tech
Stripe: online payments
Dropbox: access your files anywhere

Surround yourself with optimistic people

New ideas are fragile. And good ideas usually don’t sound good in the beginning. Ideas need to be nurtured, so don’t keep them secret. It’s rare for anyone to steal your idea. And 99% of the work is in the execution, not the idea.

Surround yourself with smart, creative people and share your ideas freely. Explain your projects to help you refine them and get feedback to improve them. Don’t waste your time hanging around people who make you feel stupid for sharing bad or silly ideas.

Combining ideas creates innovation.

In biology, male and female genes combine to form the embryo. The re-combination principle also applies to ideas and technology. Every new idea is a combination of other ideas, and new technology is a combination of other technologies. Apple did not invent silicon chips, the touchscreen, batteries, GPS, or any of the dozens of other technologies that combine to create the iPhone. It just combined existing technologies in a new and novel way.

Mix and match ideas and experiment with new combinations. Be playful with this exercise. Some of the combinations may not make sense. But you may be surprised when you create a combination you had not previously envisioned.

Size matters

If you can’t identify the immediate next step to test your idea, then it may be too big or too far out of your circle of competence. Try to break the idea down into smaller pieces.

Sell before you build

Talk to potential customers about your idea. Don’t build a minimum viable product (MVP) or invest significant time in an idea without trying to sell the value to your target customer. Start by crafting your message. The exact language you choose to describe your product and the value of your offer will help you and your customer understand what you are selling. Test your idea by trying to sell it to a customer before you write a line of code or build anything.

Be creative. Create a landing page with your offer and try to sell the product. You don’t need to fulfill the order. Put customers who click the call-to-action button on a waiting list. Call customers or meet them in-person and speak with them one on one. Beware—they will lie to you unless you are presenting a specific offer and price. If they bite, get a letter of intent to purchase your product when it’s ready.

Test lots of ideas

Experiment a lot. Don’t be attached to the outcome. Most of your ideas will fail, so you need to develop the correct mindset to learn fast and move on. Edison tested 6,000 plant materials to find the right type of bamboo for the filament of a light bulb. Mozart was a prolific composer and wrote over 600 compositions across multiple genres, but only a select few of those compositions are known by most people today.

Let ideas evolve slowly

Let ideas simmer. Don’t rush to create a company. If you get good feedback from customers on an idea, consider turning it into a project, but keep expectations low. Iterate on your idea and build momentum. Work on the project as long as possible before turning it into a company. The moment you create a company, expectations change and financial commitment increases.

Now it’s your turn

Notice friction throughout your day. If you approach this task in the right mindset, it can be addictive and fun. Flex your idea muscle to generate lots of creative solutions. Combine ideas and identify ways to test them quickly with minimal time investment. Start with language to sell the value and gauge interest. Enjoy the creative process and, most importantly, have fun.

Questions guide your attention toward a destination. Imagine you could look at a map depicting every important decision you’ve made. You would see that at every fork in the road you had faced a question. Your answer to that question determined your next step, which determined your path forward.

Questions are tools for self-reflection that can shift your mindset and reframe your thinking. Just as Michelangelo carved his masterpiece David from a single block of stone, cutting away pieces of marble to reveal an awe-inspiring image, use questions to chip away your assumptions and motivations to reveal your fears and desires.

Make a list of important questions, but don’t try to answer them right away. Let them stew in the back of your mind as you gather new experiences and additional information. Every time you learn something new, take note of that new knowledge and test to see whether it applies to any of your questions.

Here are some questions I added into in my note tacking app. Whenever I learn something that applies to a question, I add a quick note so I don’t forget it.

What piques your curiosity?
What have you learned that surprised you?
How much money do you want to earn?
Who do you want to spend more time with?
Where do you want to live?
What behavior can you stop doing that would improve your life?
What do you want to accomplish in the next three years?
What deeply held belief do you hold that may be wrong?
How do you want to spend your time?
What scares you?
What fulfills you?

The question effect

Can asking a question really be that powerful in shaping your life? Let’s explore this one: “How much money do you want to earn?” Have you thought deeply about this question? Do you want $100K, $500K, $1M, $10M, or $50M? Before you say, “the more the better,” invest the time to think through the benefits and tradeoffs of your choice.

There’s not a right or wrong answer, but your response will impact where you live, how much free time you have, the quality of your relationships with friends and family, your health, what type of house you buy, and who you marry. Your answer maps to your aspirations, abilities, values, and interests. And your answer will likely change and evolve over time.

There are many perks and benefits to earning lots of money. But earning more money also comes with tradeoffs. Before you set your sights on earning $50M, recognize that your primary relationship will be your career. You will need to work many nights and weekends, and 12- to 14-hour work days will be standard. You will shoulder immense responsibility and stress.

You won’t likely have the time to watch your kids play sports, perform in a play, or teach them how to ride a bike. You won’t have free time to pursue hobbies or spend much quality time with your partner. Envy and expectations may strain relationships with friends and family. It may be harder to make new friends because in the back of your mind you will be wondering whether someone wants to be your friend just because of your money.

Your family may face security threats. Criminals target wealthy people for robbery, kidnapping, extortion. Criminals buy airline flight manifests and target wealthy people when they travel, which explains why many of them will use a different name when traveling out of the U.S.

Earning more money may bring increased status but only marginal utility after you have acquired enough to be comfortable and take care of your family. The entertainment you consume, trips you take, health care you receive, food you eat, or technology you use will not be significantly better at $50M compared to $1M.

Your answer to the question of how much money you want ripples throughout your life. Important life decisions start with good questions. Make a list of important questions. Let them burn slowly in the back of your mind, and beware of your initial answers.

Use questions as a tool to guide your decisions and ensure you are heading toward your desired destination.

Our interpretations of the world can often be wrong due to bias, optimism, pessimism, or bad information. Yet most of us think we are right and other people are wrong. This can cause us to overlook or dismiss crucial information and lead to bad decisions.

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis proposed doctors wash their hands before delivering babies in obstetric clinics to reduce the spread of “childbed fever,” a common and often fatal disease in hospitals in the mid-19th century. A doctor and a scientist, Semmelweis had noticed that two clinics had a significant difference in mortality rates for women giving birth. The two facilities used similar techniques, but one clinic taught medical students, who also performed autopsies, and those students did not wash their hands before going to the maternity ward to help a woman give birth.

The second clinic taught midwives and did not engage in autopsies, so the students had no contact with corpses. The clinic educating doctors had a mortality rate of 10%, and the clinic educating midwives had a mortality rate of 4%. Women begged to give birth in the clinic with the midwives and would even give birth in the streets to avoid the clinic with the student doctors.

Although Semmelweis published results showing that the mortality rate for mothers dropped below 1% when medical staff engaged in proper handwashing, his observations conflicted with what the scientific and medical establishment believed at the time. Doctors were offended by the idea that they should wash their hands and mocked him. Semmelweis ended up having a nervous breakdown because no one would accept his findings. He was committed to a mental asylum and died 14 days later, at the age of 47. Cause of death was gangrene from a wound he received when he was beaten by the guards.

The blind certainty of the doctors in Semmelweis’s day caused people to die. It took us 150,000 years to figure out that washing our hands prevents the spread of disease. In evolutionary timescale, this is the equivalent of yesterday, and a lot of lives were needlessly lost in those years.

Our veil of ignorance prevents us from seeing reality accurately. I’ve noticed that the top experts in a field often admit that there is a lot they don’t know or understand. The more you know about something, the more likely you are to see how much you don’t know. We don’t even understand consciousness or how our own brains work, and we have barely begun exploring the oceans or outer space. To say we have blind spots is a big understatement.

Fooling Ourselves

The easiest person to fool is yourself. As you get older, you realize how wrong you were in the past. Most of the beliefs I held most deeply in my twenties and thirties were wrong. In fact, it would be an easier exercise to identify what I was right about than to try to count all the ways I was wrong. I see the error of my past ways more clearly now because I’ve learned more, seen more, and thought more. Exposing yourself to different viewpoints and engaging in a little bit of self-reflection can reveal how easy it is to trick yourself.

It’s very difficult to convince yourself of a new idea when a contradictory idea is already anchored in your thinking. When you understand that this blind spot is our normal state, you can design decision-making processes to overcome it — which can help you avoid painful mistakes and give you an unfair advantage. But this effort takes humility and can be difficult.

Here are a few ways I’ve found to improve my judgment and be wrong less often.

Invest time to learn principles and mental models. A mental model is an idea that helps you better understand the reality of the world around you. They teach us how to think better and provide shortcuts to higher-level thinking by forcing your brain to think about a problem or decision from different perspectives. Examples include thinking gray, inversion, Eisenhower decision matrix, and thinking from first principles.
Surround yourself with people who have diverse viewpoints and think differently from you. This will help you see problems from different angles and develop creative solutions. Most of us don’t do this because we are more comfortable being around people who think like we do.
Ask for feedback often from customers, advisors, and employees. Feedback helps you better see the reality of the world around you. It allows you to correct mistakes and learn faster. Feedback gives you an opportunity to gain empathy by seeing different perspectives, and it shines a bright light on your blind spots, improving your decision-making ability.

Don’t fool yourself. Apply these ideas to see reality more clearly, improve your judgement, and be wrong less often.

Dwight Eisenhower was a productive person who is best remembered today as a military leader and two-term U.S. president. In World War II, Eisenhower served as a five-star general in the U.S. Army and supervised the invasion of Normandy as the commander of the Allied Expeditionary force in Europe.

After the war, Eisenhower served as president of Columbia University and as the first Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (which may be better known as NATO) before running for president in 1952. He was elected twice in landslide votes (with the help of his famous “I Like Ike” slogan), serving as president from 1953 till 1961.

As president, Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, championed the interstate highway system, and authorized the creation of the space program while containing the spread of Communism across the world. He still found time to golf frequently during his presidency, even having his golf balls painted black so he could play when there was snow on the ground. He also found oil painting relaxing, creating about 260 paintings in the final 20 years of his life.

Eisenhower Decision Matrix

Success in so many endeavors required Eisenhower to be a master of prioritizing tasks and making decisions. To optimize productivity, he employed a simple decision-making tool that has become known as the Eisenhower Decision Matrix. The tool helps you discern between urgent and important tasks and is built on the idea that what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

The two-by-two matrix helps prioritize your actions into four possibilities. Start by drawing a four-square grid and label the quadrants according to the following categories.

Urgent and Important. In this square, list the tasks you will do immediately. These are time sensitive and important tasks that help achieve your goals. Examples include meeting a customer deadline, resolving a key employee issue, or fixing a web server problem.
Important But Not Urgent. Aim to invest most of your time working on tasks that fall into this quadrant. These tasks are important but do not need immediate attention. Examples include developing a strategic plan, creating a budget, building relationships, or solving an important engineering problem.
Urgent But Not Important. Here, you should list the tasks you will try to outsource or delegate to someone else. The items in this quadrant will be issues that make you feel like you need to react immediately, but they likely don’t have long-term consequences. This list may include responses to last minute meeting requests, most events, text messages, emails, or a timely news story.
Neither Urgent Nor Important. These are the tasks to avoid. This is the most important category. The best and most underutilized productivity tool is saying, “No,” and removing a task from your list. Ask yourself, “Do I really need to do this?” Examples include attending most conferences and most things that distract from focus on customers and product.

Effective Productivity Tool

Don’t waste time and mental energy keeping your tasks in your head or spread across emails, meeting notes, and pieces of paper. I use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix every day to prioritize my “to-do” list. When I arrive at my desk, the first thing I do is spend five to ten minutes slotting my tasks for the day into these four categories. I use a free version of a note-taking app called Notion and organize my to-do list under these four headings. I can then access my list on my mobile phone or computer whenever I need it.

I find it useful to identify my top priority for the day and then order my tasks to follow. This practice better organizes my day, prevents unnecessary task switching, and allows me to stay focused on my number-one priority. After completing a task, I don’t need to think about what to do next, conserving mental energy and reducing distraction.

Don’t risk getting jerked like a puppet by the conditions around you. Use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix to focus the majority of your time on important non urgent tasks.

Have you ever had the experience of walking down the street and found yourself smiling at a stranger who smiled at you first? You were practicing mirrored reciprocity, a universal social norm. For the last 20,000 years of recorded human history, mirrored reciprocity has been foundational in human relationships, culture, and economic exchange. By choosing to go first, you can employ this ancient and powerful principle to build stronger relationships and gain an unfair advantage in business and in life.

Long-lasting, healthy relationships in your professional and personal life make a huge impact on your happiness and success. However, we often hesitate to cultivate those relationships. We don’t reach out and share our true thoughts and feelings with people around us because we fear rejection or judgment. Learning how mirrored reciprocity works and choosing to go first can radically change your life and relationships.

Mirrored reciprocity is imbedded in the blueprint of life. The evidence is overwhelming and all around us. In physics, Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This has been true for over 13.5 billion years — since the beginning of our universe. The pattern of mirrored reciprocity has also been evident in almost all biological life on earth for the last 3.5 billion years.

You don’t have to be a scientist to observe mirrored reciprocity. Aggression is usually met with aggression, whereas playfulness or affection is met in kind. You can witness reciprocity even in the simplest of human interactions. If you walk into an elevator and smile and say good morning, the people in the elevator will almost always return your positive greeting.

However, mirrored reciprocity works for both positive and negative behaviors, so think carefully about your attitude and actions. If you display aggressiveness or treat other people badly, expect that other people will treat you poorly. I’ve watched calm, normal people escalate into full-on road rage in less than a second after a rude or aggressive driver cut them off in traffic. I bet you have seen that happen, too. Or maybe you’ve been that driver!

If you strive to be trustworthy, courageous, competent, and kind, you will attract people into your life with similar aspirations.

Choosing to go first, bringing authenticity, and engaging people will yield a positive result the vast majority of the time. Of course, there is always a small chance you will be rejected or judged. But the rewards and benefits far outweigh the risks.

Don’t wait for other people to reach out or take the first step. Default to action and go first. Apply this principle to important relationships in your life. Don’t worry if people do not initially invest an equivalent amount of time or energy in the relationship. Hold a long-term mindset. Over time, you will benefit from your investment in these relationships.

Bring your “go-first” mindset to your work. Express your ideas. Start a blog or podcast to connect with people who share your interests. Initiate conversations with people you don’t know. Everyone you meet has something to teach you. You never know what opportunities are around the corner. Go first and you will build stronger relationships and gain an unfair advantage in business and in life.

To build something new requires you get good at solving problems, and you need every advantage to solve them. Clearly defining the problem is always the first step in the process. Tease apart the problem and break it down into smaller pieces to recognize the type of problem you are facing. We frequently do not recognize exactly what problem we are trying to solve until we dig deeper.

Breaking a complex problem down to its foundation and generating original solutions from the ground up is called thinking from “first principles.” Write down your assumptions, then ask “why?” and keep asking “why” until you have exhausted your ability to answer. There you will find the root cause of your problem.

Often our assumptions, biases, and blind spots hold us back from identifying the best solution. To overcome those hurdles, use first principles thinking to reveal the underlying truth.

Here’s an example. I worked on a business that sold leads for home improvement projects to the best contractors in San Diego CA. But we were struggling to get ahold of contractors even though we were generating quality leads.

Why are the highest rated contractors not responding to our calls and emails?

They are in the field working and too busy to reply.

Why?

Most contractors are small businesses and don’t have administrative support.

Why?

They are doing the work themselves and not able to scale their businesses to hire more employees to support them.

Why?

Most small contractors enjoy working with their hands more than the administrative office work. Also they struggle to find employees to do the quality work in the field without their constant direct supervision.

Why?

Most of their business is from referrals from homeowners who were happy with the quality of their work.

Why?

The contractors did most of the work themselves to ensure a high quality job. Therefore the best contractors had too much work and were not interested in buying new leads.

You can see once you break down the problem and tease it apart, the problem becomes clearer. Use this same approach to solve problems at work or to learn a new skill. Once the problem is clearly defined, you can develop an effective strategy to solve it. Next time you are wrestling with a problem, break it down to find the root cause and develop the solution from the ground up.

I want to share one of my favorite mental models called inversion. Mental models provide shortcuts to higher-level thinking, forcing your brain to think about a problem or decision from different perspectives. Inversion helps you flip a problem around and approach it from the opposite end of the natural starting point. Instead of starting at the beginning and thinking forward, start at the end and think backward.

It’s a lot easier to identity something that is likely to fail versus something that will likely succeed. Therefore removing an obstacle is often easier than creating a new solution. To see this process in action, try doing a pre-mortem with key members of your work team at the beginning of your next important project. Imagine the end of the project and think backward to identify all of the ways the project could fail.

This exercise is opposite of the way most teams begin a project. Normally, you discuss goals, roles and responsibilities, tasks, and the timeline, but you rarely spend time identifying potential problems. Inversion helps you identify obstacles and develop strategies to avoid or overcome those obstacles.

Inversion also works to help you achieve goals. Instead of focusing on what actions or processes to add, focus on what should be removed. For example, I’ve wanted to invest more time writing on the weekends, so I set a weekly goal and allotted a specific time to write. Even so, I continued to struggle to meet my goal.

I decided to run an experiment. I cut out drinking alcohol. Removing this one behavior made a huge difference. Not consuming alcohol allowed me to sleep better, think more clearly, and increased my energy and motivation. I ended up doubling the amount of time spent writing. What’s the number one behavior you can cut to help you achieve your goals. Experiment with removing it and see what happens.

Next time you are facing a tough problem, try thinking about it forward and backward. You may find that it will be easier to reduce errors or remove obstacles than to create new solutions.

Black-and-white thinking distorts your ability to see reality objectively. Jumping to conclusions too quickly when making important decisions does not serve you well. The stakes are high because your decisions will play a large part in determining whether you succeed or fail.

The world is complex. To efficiently navigate life, we make instant judgments. We categorize information as true or false. We label people as friends or enemies. Making quick decisions had its evolutionary advantages in helping us avoid predators and poisonous snakes. However, relying on quick judgments is not the most effective way to make important decisions at work and in your personal life.

We make instant judgments and quick decisions because uncertainty is both uncomfortable and mentally demanding. Our brains use lots of energy to process conflicting information, which is what we get when we engage in nuanced thinking or look at a problem from multiple points of view.

We want to resolve conflicts as quickly as possible to restore our physical and mental comfort. Think back to the last time you had a disagreement with a friend or co-worker. If you are like me, you wanted to either avoid the issue or resolve it as soon as possible. That’s how our brain feels when it’s conflicted.

Thinking gray is a mental model that forces you to delay forming an opinion until you have reviewed all the important facts and heard from all key stakeholders. This technique forces you to be patient. Thinking gray helps us overcome confirmation bias, which is our tendency to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and desired outcomes.

Important questions rarely have black-and-white answers, and important decisions require self-reflection and input from others. In business, you make dozens of decisions every day.

Who do you hire?
What products do you build?
How do you know when to throw in the towel and kill a project that’s not working?
Should you raise more money to grow your business faster?
Do you fire an underperforming employee or invest more time helping them be successful?

Can you think of anything that will have a bigger impact on your success than the decisions you make? Luck may play a part, but your decisions can overcome bad luck or squander good luck.

Here are a few ways you can apply thinking gray to improve your judgement.

Have fewer opinions. We are not experts on most things, so why do we need to have an opinion on so many issues?
Hold your opinions loosely. Be open to new information and seek out diverse points of view.
Change your vocabulary and learn to say, “I don’t know.”
When you are in conflict with others, invest the time to understand other sides of an argument better than you understand your own.
Write down and apply decision-making criteria to think through a problem.
Create scenarios and use probability weighting. Are you 50%, 70% or 90% certain your decision is correct?

The best way to improve your thinking and the quality of your decisions is to refine your decision-making process. Not all decisions are important enough to require a process. But employing a process to avoid bias and blind spots when you are making an important decision will give you the best chance to be successful. Next time you’re making an important decision, avoid black-and-white thinking and remember to think in shades of gray to improve your judgement.

Two young fish are contentedly swimming along when they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way. He nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit, until one of them looks at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”

Like a fish in water, we are swimming in our cognitive biases, which are errors in thinking caused by our brain distorting reality. Our biases are pervasive, highly resistant to feedback, and can cause us to overlook or dismiss crucial information.

Biases and blind spots

To save time, our brain creates shortcuts called judgment heuristics, which allow us to think faster and to conserve energy. These mental shortcuts are usually helpful, but can also create blind spots when you are trying to make important decisions.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
—Richard Feynman (Nobel-prize-winning physicist)

Self-deception and ignorance can harm you. Not seeing reality accurately can often lead to unnecessary painful mistakes. Too often, we make decisions without recognizing our own biases.

Here are examples of common biases that can get in the way.

Availability bias. This leads you to believe that what you see is all there is. It can cause you to give priority to info and events that immediately come to mind, usually because they were recent, memorable, or personal.

Example. Most people overestimate the number of people killed by terrorism and underestimate risks associated with driving a car. More people die in car crashes every six days than die from global terrorist attacks in a year.[1] Yet, people are often more worried about terrorism than driving.

Representative bias. When two things look or seem similar, you may assume the two things will be the same or will lead to the same outcome. Representative bias is at the heart of stereotyping.

Example. Imagine you have a friend who grew up playing chess and video games. She was president of the computer science club in high school and loved to build things. You might predict, based on her interests and activities, that she would be likely to major in engineering at college. However, numbers show she is more likely to major in business as there are almost four times more business degrees given annually than engineering degrees.[2]

Confirmation bias. We tend to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms our preexisting beliefs and desired outcomes rather than viewing information with objectivity.

Example. Confirmation bias is prevalent in politics and can be seen when people consider emotionally charged issues such as immigration and abortion. Deeply held beliefs can cause people from varying political viewpoints not only to see the same event in radically different ways, but also to reject alternative explanations.

Affect bias. Beware of making decisions based on a strong positive or negative emotional state—a “gut” feeling—without consulting all the evidence.

Example. Attitudes toward nuclear power and climate change are commonly influenced by affect bias. I’ve been guilty of this bias. I worked for twenty years promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. Due to my strong beliefs, I did not fully consider the benefits of nuclear power and fossil fuels. I was wrong.

Here’s a more extensive list of cognitive biases.

To avoid fooling yourself, stress test your ideas by trying to disprove your assumptions, get feedback from people with different perspectives, hold your opinions loosely, and follow a structured decision-making process. It’s unlikely you can eliminate bias but you can be wrong less often.

[1] According to a report created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in 2017 18,753 people were killed globally by terrorists. According to Safer America, every year, roughly 1.3 million people die in car accidents worldwide—an average of 3,287 deaths per day.

[2] According to a report by the National Center for Educational Statistics, in the academic year 2014–15, 364,000 degrees in business and 98,000 engineering degrees were awarded.

“To sin” means “to miss the mark.” And you have missed it.

Weak-willed. Timid. Malleable. You are mediocre.

How did you let this happen? Why do you continue to let this happen?

Your dreams of greatness lie wet and soggy, like a loaf of bread left out in the rain.

You can’t stay on course. Your plans are uprooted like a sapling pushed over by a weak gust of wind.

You live as if you have no power to resist. No will. No agency. No strength. Your moments of resolve break like the weakest link in a chain.

You feel sorry for yourself because you think you deserve better. Have you earned it? Do you deserve more when you are so easily distracted?

A few drops of water extinguish your burning desire to achieve. You recoil at the slightest pain. You’re always seeking comfort. Greatness cannot be found there.

You must push through your weakness of will. Pick up and shoulder the weight of responsibility and do not drop it.

Your weakness is rooted in fear. Afraid of judgement, you contort yourself like a circus performer. Your lack of courage is repulsive.

Fear wraps around you like boa constrictor—squeezing your voice and crushing your creativity. You even fear the judgment of strangers walking near you on the street or sitting next to you in a restaurant. Why? Why do you care more about their opinions than your own?

Why are you so afraid? How long will you allow your fear to rule your decisions?

Was it fear that allowed mediocre people to sculpt your beliefs? You failed to question, probe, and puncture the assumptions and instead accepted and believed out of laziness. Is it really a surprise you were so wrong?

Like a sponge, you soaked up the ideas in your environment without caution or thoughtful consideration. Distorting, bending, and forcing reality to fit your limited ability has disfigured your mind.

Errors of overconfidence and misplaced certainty litter your life with failure. How many times do you need to fail before you learn?

Beliefs were not all you sponged up from the people around you. Constantly seeking affirmation, you began to model their vices: drowning your sense of purpose in alcohol. Desiring, wanting, consuming. Never satisfied. Never content.

The fat on your body testifies to bad decisions. Fuzzy black mold rots your brain as you scroll through useless information, hour after hour.

You don’t have time to waste. You don’t have to live this way; get up and get going.

The antidote to sin.

Don’t act like a victim. Victim mentality will rob you of your agency and power. Take action to improve your situation and be grateful you’re not rotting in the ground.

Embrace responsibility. Own your strengths, weaknesses, and position in life. Take responsibility for your actions and own the outcomes.

Follow your interests. Build specific knowledge around your interests and find something you love to do. You will gain unfair competitive advantage because your passion will push you to work harder than other people and spur you to be creative and innovative in your field.

Create meaning. Find meaning by shouldering as much responsibility as you can manage, building competence, and contributing value.

Aim with purpose. Identify what you want in the long term and aim for that.

Update your identity. The most important step in building the life you want is to embrace the identity of who you want to become. Identity is shaped by your beliefs, behavior, and worldview. Self-development requires continually learning and upgrading your identity. The stories you tell yourself about your experiences shape your identity and mental state. Your mental state is your reality.

Build daily habits. You need goals to know where you are going and daily habits to help you get there. Get a little better every day. Consistency develops ability. Few things impact the quality of your life more than daily habits. Good habits help you become the person you want to be, whereas bad habits lead to pain, suffering, and self-loathing.

Upgrade your friends. Don’t underestimate the power of the people around you to influence your behavior. The social norms of your group shape your behavior. Surround yourself with people who push you to be better and give you feedback. Direct, honest feedback is hard to find because very few people are willing to tell you the truth. Most people want to avoid conflict, and they don’t want to jeopardize their relationship with you.

Nobody’s going to do the work for you. You can do better. Dare to be great. Define your future. Take aim, shoot, calibrate, and repeat until you hit the mark. The worst sin of all is to quit trying.

Following a process helps you improve the quality of your decisions. Too often we let thoughts bang around in our heads and never apply a process to structure our thinking.

I created the acronym DO IT (Define Observe Imagine Test) to help me remember the steps. With a little practice, applying this process becomes automatic and you can use it daily for different type of decisions.

Not all decisions are important enough to require all four steps, but I recommend engaging in at least the first two steps for most decisions. Use no more steps or complexity than needed. Calibrate your time investment to the importance of the decision and how urgently it needs to be made. An effective process requires thinking deeply and writing down answers to each step.

Consider these four steps when you are in the process of making a decision.

DO IT (Define, Observe, Imagine, Test)

Step 1. Define

Define the problem or opportunity. Recognize the type of decision you are facing. You may think you do this now, but I bet you don’t. Following your fuzzy intuition without consciously thinking about the nature of the decision does not count. Write down the problem or opportunity using clear and precise language. Clarify the importance. What’s the magnitude? Is it reversible? How much time do you have to make the decision? Do other people need to be involved? Who are they? If you are the only decision-maker, then it’s easier, but multiple parties may need to be involved for a complex decision.

In addition to defining the problem, you also need to define who is responsible for the outcome. Every decision needs an owner who is held accountable and bears the consequences (good or bad) of the decision. No two people are alike in their knowledge, values, and experience. Therefore it makes sense to have different levels and kinds of decision rights. Decision rights should not be based on the rank of the person in the company hierarchy but should be given to the person closest to the problem who demonstrates good judgment and a comparable advantage to make the decision.

This first process step can be accomplished in a few minutes of focused thinking, but you must slow down enough to determine what you are facing before you move on. The time invested in this step depends on the complexity of the decision. Straightforward decisions may take only a few minutes while more important and more complicated decisions will require more time.

Step 2. Observe

After you’ve clearly defined the problem or opportunity, pause again and consider this question: Why do you need or want to solve this problem? Is making a decision about this issue the most important thing you can do now? What are your motivations? How does this decision or opportunity map to your goals? Make sure you are solving the right problem. Before you start digging in to seek solutions, ask yourself, “Am I focused on the right problem? Is this problem even worth solving?” Your time and attention are valuable, and you could be working on many problems.

To determine if this problem deserves your attention now, quickly review your list of priorities. Pausing and asking why forces you to prioritize your time before you blindly stumble into action. This only takes a few moments, but we rarely do it. Practice this process after you complete each task during the day and are preparing to move to the next item on your to-do list.

When you determine a problem is worth your time investment, start breaking down the problem into smaller pieces. Tease it apart. We frequently do not recognize exactly what problem we are trying to solve until we dig deeper. Breaking a complex problem down to its foundation and generating original solutions is a way of thinking from “first principles.” Write down your assumptions, then ask “why?” and keep asking “why” until you have exhausted your ability to answer. There you will find the root cause of your problem.

Step 3. Imagine

Engage in mental time travel and create multiple scenarios of the future. Scenario analysis helps you evaluate your choices. Don’t be lazy. Invest the time and energy to think through and evaluate your options. Before you write a line of code or change a single piece of hardware, make sure you have probed and punctured your best ideas from every angle. Nothing saves time and money more effectively than a well-run evaluation process to vet scenarios. Not every decision needs scenario analysis, but all important decisions do.

Step 4. Test

Test your ideas by getting feedback from customers, partners, or other appropriate stakeholders. Try to disprove each scenario. Without feedback, we are blind and stupid, and we will make the same mistakes repeatedly. Feedback helps you better see the reality of the world and allows you to correct mistakes and learn faster. Feedback provides an opportunity to gain empathy by seeing different perspectives, and it shines a bright light on your blind spots, which can improve your decision-making ability.

Direct, honest feedback is hard to find because very few people are willing to tell you the truth. Most people want to avoid conflict and are reluctant to jeopardize relationships. Thus, you will need to actively seek feedback from people with diverse perspectives and experience. Seek out people who have truly different skills, experiences, and worldviews to expose your blind spots. Challenge yourself to accept feedback from someone you dislike. I admit this is hard to do, but we can learn from everyone.

Make the decision

After you engage in the four DO IT steps, then do it—make the decision. For important decisions, think slowly. Be less impulsive and more deliberate. Your first reaction is usually not the best one. Take time for careful and considered reasoning. Take a break. Set aside time to review and think about scenarios. Grapple with tradeoffs, uncertainties, and risk. Sleep on it to allow your mind to consider your options. Your subconscious mind does more thinking than you realize. Frequently, a better solution will occur to you the next morning.

Don’t let thoughts bang around in your head. Apply the DO IT steps to structure your thinking and improve the quality of your decisions.

Career decisions determine where you invest the majority of your time. These important life decisions have a huge impact on your well-being and quality of life—and your risk of being replaced by a robot.

In the industrialized economy of the 20th century, most people learned a skill and then worked the majority of their careers at one or two companies. That industrialized economy required scale and specialization, so large companies were organized around manufacturing and office jobs. Hierarchies were created to manage large groups of people while creating incentives for advancement.

The information economy of the 21st century is decentralized and global. Widespread access to personal computers and the internet has democratized knowledge so that anyone in the world with an internet connection and a desire to learn can build skills and contribute value to the global economy. The advancement of new technology will require workers to continuously learn new skills. Working as an independent contractor and / or working for many different employers is becoming the norm.

Skills needed in the job market are changing rapidly. Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is accelerating and will replace most jobs that are repetitive or don’t require creativity. Many doctors, lawyers, investment advisors, taxi and truck drivers, accountants, cashiers and most service workers will be replaced by robots and software. Any job that is not creative or complicated is at risk.

However, I’m not yet convinced that our main problem will be robots and software taking jobs from humans. Historically, we do a poor job of imagining the jobs of the future because we are blind to the new industries, technologies, and services that will be created. In a very short period of time, we have seen personal computers, the internet, cable tv, mobile phones, and cloud computing go from science projects to mainstream, essential infrastructure. The largest tech companies in the world, including Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Alibaba, did not even exist when I was born. And I’m not that old!

Our main problem is that our educational system was not designed for a global information economy, and our broken system is not equipped to handle the massive retraining effort needed. Most colleges today don’t prepare graduates with the necessary skills for our current economy. As highlighted in this article in The Atlantic, companies have been complaining for years about the lack of skilled workers, even though millions of people are unemployed or looking for full-time work in the U.S. New models of education are needed.

Although our current system is not yet designed to address the scale of the problem, access to knowledge and training has never been more available to anyone who is self-motivated enough to pursue it. Also, low-cost computing power and the internet provide a path to go around the traditional gatekeepers in many industries, such as media, music, art, publishing, and technology. Here are a few ways to build wealth while pursuing the career you want and ensuring robots will never replace you.

Constructing Your Future

Pursue highly technical or creative work. Creative work equals job security. Anything not creative can be replicated and replaced by AI. Specific technical knowledge cannot easily be duplicated.

Invest in continuous learning. Technology advancement will impact every industry. If you are not constantly learning, you will be left behind. Seek out roles and opportunities that accelerate learning. Gain an advantage by building a personalized learning system that keeps you on the cutting edge of knowledge in your field.

Get equity to ensure financial freedom. You will not gain wealth by getting a paycheck. Start your own business or get stock options or restrictive stock units in the company you join.

Move to a hub where your industry is centered. Leverage network effects by building relationships and living in a location where your industry ecosystem is strongest. For example, if you are in tech, move to San Francisco. New York is the best place if you’re interested in fashion or finance. If you want to pursue acting or music, go to Los Angeles.

Seek leverage and compounding value. The information economy has dropped the cost of entry to almost zero. Software and the internet provide a multitude of opportunities to help you make money while you sleep. Find ways to contribute value to the world that do not require you to work by the hour.

Work for people who will help you grow. You work for a person not a company, and your boss will likely determine your growth and satisfaction. Don’t work for people who are not invested in helping you grow, even if the company is great.

Create a decision-making process. Career decisions require identifying and weighting decision criteria. List up to five criteria to evaluate and test potential scenarios. Weight the decision criteria based on importance. For example, if I were evaluating new job opportunities, I would use the following five criteria.

Interest level. What is my interest in the mission and the problem the business is solving?
Impact. What would my potential impact be in this company?
Learning opportunity. How much will I learn in my role at this company?
Location. How far will I need to commute to work?
Financial return. What will be my total compensation including base salary, benefits, and stock options?

After writing down your decision criteria, assign weights to each criteria on a 0–100 scale based on importance. Maybe the most important is interest level and you assign 30 points, while the least important is location that gets 10. The sum total of the weights should equal 100. After establishing your weighted decision-making criteria, apply a score between -10 to 10 to each criteria for each job. For example, if one job opportunity had a short 20-minute commute I would give it a score of 8. Compared to another job that a one hour commute I would give a score of -9. This process will help you determine a total score for each job, but don’t get caught up in being too precise. Remember, it’s a tool to help you grapple with tradeoffs and think better.

We live in an unprecedented time of opportunity and prosperity. However, you need to work hard and make smart decisions if you want to participate in this abundance. No one is going to look out for your interests or care about your future more than you do. Find something you love to do that is creative or highly technical and then invest lots of time learning to be the best in the field. Prioritize learning over short term financial gain and find ways to create leverage and compounding value over time. Use criteria and a structured decision-making process for important career decisions to ensure you are on the path to financial freedom. Build specific knowledge in highly technical or creative work and you will not be replaced by a robot.

We are not experts on most things, so why does everyone need to have an opinion on so many issues? It’s very difficult to convince yourself of a new idea if a contradictory idea is already anchored in your thinking. We are too frequently blinded by our own opinions, but we can design decision-making processes to overcome this bias. Such a process can help you avoid painful mistakes and gain an advantage, but this effort takes humility and can be difficult.

As you get older, you realize how much you got wrong in the past. Most of the beliefs and opinions I held most deeply in my twenties and thirties were wrong. In fact, it would be an easier exercise to identify what I was right about than to try to count all the ways I was wrong. I see the error of my past ways more clearly now because I’ve learned more, seen more, and thought more. Exposing yourself to different viewpoints and engaging in a little bit of self-reflection can reveal how easy it is to trick yourself.

Cultivate nuance

It’s highly unlikely you’ve studied most issues or problems enough to have an informed opinion, but jumping to conclusions too quickly can be the path of least resistance. We make instant judgments and quick decisions because uncertainty is both uncomfortable and mentally demanding. Our brains use lots of energy to process conflicting information, which is what we get when we engage in nuanced thinking or look at a problem from multiple points of view.

To efficiently navigate life, we like to make instant judgments. We categorize information as true or false. We label people as friends or enemies. Making quick decisions had evolutionary advantages in helping humans avoid predators and poisonous snakes. However, relying on quick judgments and opinions is not the most effective way to make important decisions. Delay forming an opinion until you have reviewed all the important facts and heard from all key stakeholders. This process forces you to be patient. Important questions rarely have black-and-white answers, and important decisions require self-reflection and input from others.

Here are a few ways to stop yourself from being too rigid in your thinking.

Hold your opinions loosely.
Be open to new information and seek out diverse points of view.
Change your vocabulary and learn to say, “I don’t know.”
When you are in conflict with others, invest the time to understand other sides of an argument better than you understand your own.

Good ideas survive deep skepticism and intense competition. Stress-testing ideas exposes their weaknesses and highlights their strengths. You gain confidence in the truth of an idea by trying to disprove it.

Be humble, expose yourself to diverse viewpoints, and have fewer opinions.

The more complex the situation, the less you should trust your intuition, which is your brain’s attempt to make decisions based on patterns it recognizes from a lifetime of experiences. Unfortunately, our brains can’t process the level of complexity around us, and our intuition can be dangerous when detached from data and analysis.

In data we trust

Use computers and data to support decision-making and evaluate scenarios. Collect and analyze as much relevant data as possible. Beware of small sample sizes and extreme results as the data may not be representative of the situation.

It’s easy to misinterpret data and see patterns that don’t exist. In statistics this is called “regression to the mean,” a common statistical phenomenon that can mislead us. The nature of the problem will direct you to the appropriate type of data and the best collection method. Fortunately, a computer can evaluate a massive data set in seconds.

Bias, optimism, pessimism, or bad information can skew our interpretations of events or the world. Our veil of ignorance prevents us from seeing reality accurately, but most of us are convinced we are right and other people are wrong. Our preconceptions can cause us to trust bad intuitions, overlook or dismiss crucial information, and make bad decisions.

I’ve noticed that the top experts in a field often admit there is a lot they don’t know or understand. That’s because the more you know about something, the more likely you see how much you don’t know. We don’t even understand consciousness or how our own brains work, and we have barely begun exploring the oceans or outer space. To say we have blind spots is a massive understatement.

But don’t ignore your instincts either

Intuition does have a role in decision-making, although you do not want to trust it blindly. Don’t ignore your instincts but do assume they are wrong and try to disprove them. Pay attention to your intuition because your brain is sending you a useful signal that something is important here, which will open a path for further questioning and discovery.

How to follow

Use data to inform decision-making.
Pay attention to your instincts and try to disprove them

Ignore this rule when facing ethical decisions on how to behave properly. Your gut usually knows right from wrong in those cases.

Use data and analysis to help you make better decisions. Don’t trust your gut.

Good ideas survive deep skepticism and intense competition. Stress-testing ideas exposes their weaknesses and highlights their strengths. Innovation happens when people are encouraged to put forward their best thinking, no matter their status, power, or tenure.

I heard Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and chairman, speak at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He attributed a lot of Google’s success to the company’s practice of letting the best ideas win. Google embodies this ethos and approach to innovation in X Development, its semisecret innovation lab that works on moonshot technology, such as Google’s self-driving cars. The lab celebrates failure and gives bonuses to teams that successfully kill their own projects by disproving their hypotheses.

Easy to understand, difficult to implement

Most of us enjoy seeing our ideas adopted and don’t like watching them be criticized. When you combine this self-protective tendency with the hierarchies that develop in organizations, you can unintentionally protect bad ideas. You have likely witnessed a situation where no one wants to criticize an idea because it’s a pet project of someone who holds power in the organization.

Surrounding yourself with people who think like you blinds you to flaws in your thinking. The search for truth, knowledge, and innovation requires a free and open exchange of ideas. Seek out people with diverse viewpoints and invite criticism. Allow the best ideas to grow and let the bad ones die. Natural selection has been implementing this principle since life on earth began.

Learn to embrace failure and argue constructively

Innovation requires failure. British inventor Sir James Dyson spent 15 years creating 5,126 versions of his dual cyclone vacuum cleaner before he found the right design. Criticize ideas—not people. The competition of ideas only works if people share their best thinking, and people won’t speak up if there is a chance they will be attacked or disrespected. Not all ideas are going to be good. However, people need to feel safe and supported so they will share their ideas. Find believable people who disagree with you. Understand all ideas should be considered but consider the presenter’s track record and experience. If you don’t have direct experience with a topic, then don’t offer strong opinions. Consider a person’s believability when evaluating the worth of their opinions.

Here are a few practical ways to let the best ideas win.

Criticize ideas, not people. Argue constructively.
Don’t allow status to interfere with ideas.
Seek out people with diverse viewpoints.
Invite criticism.
Stress test your ideas.
Embrace failure in order to learn.

There’s usually an exception to every rule. Ignore this rule if there is not enough time to implement an idea before the company dies.

Good ideas survive intense scrutiny. Encourage everyone on your team to put their best ideas forward. And let the best ideas win.

Always seek out the truth even if it contradicts the beliefs you hold. Self-deceit and ignorance can harm you.

In the science fiction movie The Matrix, Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) offers Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) a blue pill and a red pill and the opportunity to understand the true nature of reality.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

As Neo reaches out to pick, Morpheus says,

“Remember, all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more.”^[1]

If we don’t allow ourselves to see reality, we will make poor choices.

Ray Dalio swallowed the red pill and offers them to his employees. Ray founded Bridgewater Associates over 45 years ago. One of the top investment management firms in the world, Bridgewater manages over $160 billion in assets. Ray credits Bridgewater’s success to building the company culture on radical truth and radical transparency. They believe learning compounds when you get feedback and hear what everyone else is thinking. All 1,500 employees are expected to speak their mind. They prefer not to live in the fog of not knowing what people think. No matter what their status in the organization, employees are expected to speak up and share harsh truths.

A good example of taking the red pill comes from an email sent to Ray from an employee named Jim Haskel. The email highlights the direct honest communication expected at Bridgewater. Remember, Ray is the founder and CEO of one of the most successful companies in the world.

Ray,

You deserve a “D-” for your performance today in the meeting . . . you did not prepare at all because there is no way you could have and been that disorganized. In the future, I/we would ask you to take some time and prepare and maybe even I should come up and start talking to you to get you warmed up or something but we can’t let this happen again. If you in any way think my view is wrong, please ask the others or we can talk about it.^[2]

Jim

Here are a few practical ways to take the red pill.

Ask hard questions.
Seek the truth. Especially when it contradicts your beliefs.
Ask, what’s true?
Don’t lie. Be trustworthy. Act with integrity.
Don’t shy away from conflict.
Speak up. Don’t filter.
Be open. Be vulnerable.

There’s usually an exception to every rule. Consider alternatives if pursuing truth results in breaking the law or physical violence. To improve your judgement and be wrong less often. Always take the red pill and seek out the truth.

[1] The Matrix, produced by Joel Silver, written by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, production company Warner Bros, 1999.

[2] Ray Dalio, TED Conference 2017, “How to build a company where the best ideas win.”

Tag: judgement

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