3 Biases You Should Be Aware Of

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and I don’t know about you I’m a huge
fan of a guy by the name of James clear
I read almost everything I can find that
he does you might want to look him up on
the web he’s really really smart and he
recently put together a list of five
common biases that we can all suffer
from when we’re looking at what to
believe in what to support what gives us
pause what makes us think what to reject
what to accept what to act on what not
to act on where we want to move with our
journeys and so on we have these these
common biases he did five I want to add
a sixth one because we all want to do
better critical thinking we ought to be
better at what we do how we do it where
we’re going sort of laying out our path
and if you know about these biases they
can really help you with that process of
critical thinking so I’m gonna do three
in this video and then I’m gonna do
three more in the next video but the
first one I want to talk to you about is
something called survivorship bias my
buddy Michael Castro and I are working
on the marketing that is gonna happen
around his audition psychology 101
online course it’s gonna be coming out
later this year and he said this to me
he said I don’t want to do things that
are like the top five things you should
do to avoid this or the top three things
that successful artists do he doesn’t
have a survivorship bias but people who
who do they will read articles like this
or they will write articles like this
about the winners in a particular area
and what they do to the detriment of
people who maybe don’t do those things
and still win or all the people that try
really
hard and don’t quite get to the place
that the winners get to so you tend to
give more importance to those things
that well-known winners in a particular
space might have employed to get where
they are the winners are remembered the
losers are ignored and the the problem
with that the bias there is that you
might not achieve you know Steph Curry’s
position in basketball that doesn’t mean
you can’t do really well and learn from
what he and others do but you can also
learn from the people that don’t get to
his level right so don’t allow that to
creep into your thinking in terms of oh
I only should take lessons from the
people that are super super successful
you can learn something from anybody you
can learn what to do and you can also
learn what not to do so that brings me
to the second of our biases today and
that’s the loss aversion bias so this is
the the tendency to worry about our
losses prefer avoiding those losses over
celebrating enjoying being happy about
our wins and thinking about what life
would be like to be successful we tend
to think more about what life will be
like if we fail now marketers use this
all the time and there’s actually a sort
of a companion phrase that goes with
this when it comes to marketing speak
and also just in general influencing
other people and that’s the the division
between toward language and away from
language so toward language is languages
like you’re gonna be great this is gonna
be fantastic this will help you succeed
this will help you do better this will
be the thing that will solve your
problem that’s toward language away from
languages you don’t want to do this do
this instead if you do that you’re gonna
fail we’ll help you you know it’s that
idea that if you don’t get something or
don’t buy something or don’t use a
particular service you’re going to
suffer a
loss and that is often more powerful and
it’s a bias that we have about thinking
that if we lose something or fail at
something or do or something negative
happens that’s more powerful then if we
get something done if we do something if
we’re successful if we have something
good happen you know how could that
possibly be as awesome as avoiding a
huge problem
well that’s called loss aversion bias
and I’m not saying that that doesn’t
actually happen I mean in life and death
situations you don’t necessarily want to
celebrate the fact that you didn’t die
right and you want to avoid those
negative consequences you want to stay
safe but when it comes to your journey
your career we tend to worry mostly if
we have this bias about the mistakes
that we want to avoid rather than the
successes that we want to achieve so
that’s the second one first one
survivorship by a second one loss
aversion bias third one is kind of weird
it’s it’s something that happens all the
time and I watch people do it and I go
really
okay it’s called the availability yet
this is a little tough one the
availability heuristic bias and
heuristic is spelled HEU R is T I see
now this is the bias where we assume
that the things that come to mind first
that are most available to our memory
that we remember quickest are the most
important so well I thought of that
first it must be important it must be
the right path to take and it isn’t
always in fact it’s often not we over
value and overestimate those things that
pop into our head as an answer as quick
as they do or quicker than others and we
tend to undervalue those things that
don’t come to mind this also applies to
things like the news you know we hear
things in the news we give those things
more importance than the things we don’t
hear about in the news and part of that
is because there’s a bias of you know
well if the media is talking about it
has to be import
or if it’s popular on social media it
has to be important that’s not
necessarily true that’s the bias that
they’re talking about so just because
something pops into your head first and
that that often comes out of like trivia
contest oh I thought of that first that
must be one
so the survivorship bias you know paying
attention only to the winners loss
aversion holding those things that you
avoid in terms of negative consequence
is more important than achieving
positive consequences and the available
availability heuristic bias which is the
things that come to mind easily are more
important than the things that don’t
come to mind easily or don’t come to
mind at all so those are the first three
I’ve got three more for you and we’ve
got more coming up all kinds of cool
things I’m actually getting close to the
time when I’m gonna undergo the
arthroscopic knife for my shoulder so
I’m getting a little nervous about that
I’m doing a lot of research on it I’m
not gonna bore you with videos on the
process maybe the day after I’ll go okay
here’s what happened
cuz I’ll be drugged either they’re
putting a pain pump on me for a day so
it’s crazy
anyway biases those three biases that I
talked about any of those happen for you
every so often yeah any examples you
want to share with us put it in the
comments below if you’re on vo2 go go
comm pop a comment below this video I’d
love to hear from you on how these
things affect you and maybe how they’ve
affected decisions that you’ve made or
not made in the right way if you’d like
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I’m David H Lawrence xvii thank you so
much for watching and I will talk to you
tomorrow.