Be a skeptic

You live in a society that worships speed. Your smartphone optimizes your driving route. Your news feed pushes crash diets or quick meal ideas. You manage a myriad of deadlines at work and in your personal life. You are conditioned to live as fast and efficiently as possible.

The universal obsession with speed incentivizes individuals and organizations to sell you a quick fix, a shortcut, that one weird secret. It would be wonderful to drop 25 pounds this week or win that multi-million dollar lottery. Hope, desire, and belief are important parts of a healthy psyche, but physics doesn’t care about your feelings.

Relying on shortcuts, experts, and beliefs is a natural human behavior. It is also a hurdle in personal and professional success.

Consider the following:

“The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” -Voltaire

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” - Albert Einstein

Belief and Hypothesis

That last quote from Einstein about belief and truth warrants further discussion. Einstein is evoking truth as “in accordance with fact or reality,” as opposed to, “a fact or belief that is accepted as true.” The distinction is vital because people throughout history (including you) have believed things to be true based on personal belief or societal acceptance.

Before Galileo invented the telescope and proved the heliocentric theory his peers accepted as truth that the earth was the center of the universe. Like other great scientists, Galileo did not allow the dogma of accepted truth and peer pressure to prevent experimentation. He charted the paths of Jupiter’s moons and elevated our understanding of the solar system. Embracing rational skepticism has preceded every scientific achievement.

What is rational skepticism? When you or others present something as a truth, be skeptical. Look for supporting evidence. Without supporting empirical evidence you are discussing theories or hypotheses. These hypotheses are often untested based on belief or experience. They are neither wrong nor right until tested. Rational skepticism is not expressing certainty until you are certain.

Don’t take the shortcut of relying on accepted truth. Let yourself be skeptical of thoughts and opinions. Take the time to ask for or do your own research.

Relying on Experts

It is common to rely on experts. They are most effective when they consult on existing patterns and practices or provide a commodity.

For example, an expert can help you transition from one email provider to another or fix a leaky faucet. They can present and educate on industry standards and patterns based on their research and experience. The best experts educate with facts and evidence. If your expert doesn’t present evidence, remember to be skeptical.

Avoid consulting external experts to tell you What to do or Why you should do it. Consultants are incentivized to please their clients rather than present facts and evidence. Those What’s and Why’s make your company great today and better tomorrow. It’s worth the effort to hire (or grow) an expert rather than rent one.

Often expertise is used as a proxy for authority and objective truth. Experts wield experience and secret knowledge as a weapon to quiet dissent and shortcut to the desired result. This dangerous behavior embraces personal bias rather than relying on evidence or even accepted truth.

Personal Shortcuts

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Skepticism starts with you. It should change your priorities and how you approach problems. It is apparent in the way you communicate.

I wonder if… I hypothesize that… We should test…

You may be worried that using uncertainty in your language will make others perceive you as weak or timid. Projecting confidence for its own sake can help you bluff your way into a position, but it’s inherently dishonest and as with all dishonesty you will spend more effort covering for your bravado than getting results.

As you grow in knowledge and experience you will be tempted to trust your intuition and evoke your expert status. Take the time to think through those gut reactions. You may need to defer a meeting or a decision to give yourself this time to reflect. Don’t skip this step. Your instincts are a wealth of hypotheses, philosophies, and objective truth. This reflection will make you a better decision-maker and communicator.

Truth and Impermanence

In the 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton’s presented his theory of gravity. He explained how the relationship between mass and distance established a gravitation field that attracted two bodies. In 1915 Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity which re-imagined gravity as the relationship between mass, distance, and time. Rather than describing gravity as a field, Einstein proposed that mass was compressing space around it at a certain rate. For over 200 years Newton’s theory was both the objective and accepted truth. If something as fundamental as gravity can be reframed, extended, or refined, anything can be.

When you notice an outlier or unexpected outcome something fundamental may have changed. The past interpretation of data may have been flawed. The circumstances and motivations of your customers are different. Avoid embracing dogma. Hypothesize, test, and discover the new truths the universe is trying to show you.