/ Say you have 10 people talking about lessons they’ve learned/advice. Most times that means they’ve experienced something, and that experience informs their lessons learned.
Now, say you think that lesson comes in one of two forms.
The first form is that it feels rather elementary. The lesson feels consensus and well-known.
Two second-order thoughts on this:
- “They are reiterating something simple that is obvious but not emphasized or remembered as often, which makes sense.”
- Conversely, “They are very early in their individual journey, and their advice, unfortunately, isn’t that helpful to me.”
The second form is what if the advice is sort of odd, specifically when it suggests that they made a mistake that reflects something of their past (or current) personality.
- You hear it, and you might say, “You know, that is a good point. I never had that experience. And your lesson is new and interesting.”
- OR you say, “Well, obviously, that is the lesson. I didn’t have that experience, but that is what I would have thought. This takeaway seems amateur and trivial.” You could even ask, “Wait…why are you saying that…what part of your decision-making led you to that point?”
This came up from a recent scenario of an individual talking about their experience after making a decision and they were surprised with the outcome. It felt a bit weird. Here is why.
I am very certain that if I asked 100 people, “If I do X, will my outcome be Y? Or could it be something else?” and in my view, the majority (95%+) of people would agree, “Yes, I agree because I have heard similar anecdotes from friends…or my intuition would suggest X leads to Y…or I have had that experience myself.” So I thought, “Well, that decision to me indicated some naivety or immature desire or decision making without thought,” but then, “It seems very odd to have been surprised by outcome Y after input X since it seems so consensus.”
So my natural reaction was, “Well, obviously, if you decide to drive down an empty dirt road, you aren’t going to be greeted by green grass and daisies.” And then my second-order thought was, “This is such an odd lesson to talk about because the decision that led to said experience and then said lesson is rather questionable, and most people would not make said decision because they have a good idea what the output is.”
Where I could be wrong in my reasoning: I think this consensus connection between X and Y is less commonly known. Or that there is some deep part of us that sort of needs to trip ourselves and fall (which is true), even if it means a questionable input and discouraging output.
This relates to decision-making for me because how else to improve your framework than to hear other people talk about their lessons… and try to imagine what the output was (informing that lesson), the process (informing that output), the input (informing the process), and the initial decision to pursue said option (informing the input).
Note: I’m talking abstractly here because a) I want to try and generalize this example to a broader framework, and b) The details help contextualize this but are difficult to discuss in this format.
