"We need to base our decisions on facts, not feelings." This was something that I told some participants of a leadership program that I was helping out in. I thought I would expand a bit on it.
It is human nature to be swayed by our feelings. However, in making our decisions, we need to guard against basing decisions on feelings over facts. Many times, we may think we know something, but those are based on hunches, on bits and pieces of information, hearsay, and facts that we have gathered from various sources to let us arrive at certain deductions. Such deductions are then used to make decisions, even though they may not be true.
This is not to say we should not base our decisions on deductions. It just means that our decisions must be rooted in facts. Either direct facts, or deductions based on facts (and not hearsay, rumors, gossips, blatant misinformation, etc.) Because when we allow our feelings to get the better of us, our feelings will become a filter that colors our deductions, which then further colors our decisions. This becomes a vicious cycle that reinforces the weight of our feelings in decision-making.
We then end up behaving based on how we think the world is like, compared to how the world actually is.
This is not too big an issue if the world is close to what we perceive it to be. But if the actual situation is vastly different from what we think it is, this information/reality gap will directly affect our chances of success in our endeavours. It will cause us to become unable to achieve our objectives because we are not acting based on the actual situation, but on what we (wrongly) think the situation is. In computer terms, garbage in garbage out. In OODA, it is a failure of the OODA loop due to not conducting the "Observe" part properly. This loop failure is self-reinforcing: we act on a flawed decision, which does not achieve the desired result, further warping our sense of reality (our perception of the situation) which then again results in poor decisions and flawed actions.
On a side note, we must also be aware about how our feelings can be used against us, to cloud our decisions. Suspicion and fear do not need to be backed up by facts to be effective. This is because they play on our feelings. An example is the U.S. ban on Huawei. This video seeks to find out the facts behind the ban. But even if there are no facts to support the suspicions and allegations that Huawei is helping the Chinese government, the damage is done--the seeds of suspicion and fear have been planted, and people are acting based on those suspicions and fears rather than real facts. This is how fear-mongering can be harnessed as a tool, how misinformation can be used as a weapon. How feelings can be used to get people to think and act in certain ways, if people do not learn how to base their decisions on facts.
If we want to succeed, and not be led by others, we need to learn how to always base our decisions on facts and not feelings. "Is this a fact? Or is it just how I feel about something?" We need to keep asking ourselves this simple set of questions.
It is human nature to be swayed by our feelings. However, in making our decisions, we need to guard against basing decisions on feelings over facts. Many times, we may think we know something, but those are based on hunches, on bits and pieces of information, hearsay, and facts that we have gathered from various sources to let us arrive at certain deductions. Such deductions are then used to make decisions, even though they may not be true.
This is not to say we should not base our decisions on deductions. It just means that our decisions must be rooted in facts. Either direct facts, or deductions based on facts (and not hearsay, rumors, gossips, blatant misinformation, etc.) Because when we allow our feelings to get the better of us, our feelings will become a filter that colors our deductions, which then further colors our decisions. This becomes a vicious cycle that reinforces the weight of our feelings in decision-making.
We then end up behaving based on how we think the world is like, compared to how the world actually is.
This is not too big an issue if the world is close to what we perceive it to be. But if the actual situation is vastly different from what we think it is, this information/reality gap will directly affect our chances of success in our endeavours. It will cause us to become unable to achieve our objectives because we are not acting based on the actual situation, but on what we (wrongly) think the situation is. In computer terms, garbage in garbage out. In OODA, it is a failure of the OODA loop due to not conducting the "Observe" part properly. This loop failure is self-reinforcing: we act on a flawed decision, which does not achieve the desired result, further warping our sense of reality (our perception of the situation) which then again results in poor decisions and flawed actions.
On a side note, we must also be aware about how our feelings can be used against us, to cloud our decisions. Suspicion and fear do not need to be backed up by facts to be effective. This is because they play on our feelings. An example is the U.S. ban on Huawei. This video seeks to find out the facts behind the ban. But even if there are no facts to support the suspicions and allegations that Huawei is helping the Chinese government, the damage is done--the seeds of suspicion and fear have been planted, and people are acting based on those suspicions and fears rather than real facts. This is how fear-mongering can be harnessed as a tool, how misinformation can be used as a weapon. How feelings can be used to get people to think and act in certain ways, if people do not learn how to base their decisions on facts.
If we want to succeed, and not be led by others, we need to learn how to always base our decisions on facts and not feelings. "Is this a fact? Or is it just how I feel about something?" We need to keep asking ourselves this simple set of questions.
1 comment:
I just saw this article on my Facebook feed. And realised how much in common it has with what I was trying to say in my post about facts and feelings.
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