The title of this post is from author, and entrepreneur: James Clear. In PGP (personal growth plan, for anyone reading this that aren’t my teachers) we’ve spent the majority of the year studying Clear’s values, and discoveries. A couple days ago I came upon an article on his website with the title: “5 Common Mental Errors That Sway You From Making Good Decisions”. 

This title caught my eye right away. The term “mental errors” is something that I really connect with, and I believe a lot of others do as well, so I decided to read it. Here are a couple of my discoveries. 

In the frenzy of a pandemic, most are unsure where to look for instruction, and that can be very dangerous. Now days we have so many sources for information, a combination of reliable, non-reliable, scientific, or twisted.

This subject connects to the: “The Availability Heuristic” in Clear’s post. This “mental error” works along the lines of tricking your brain into valuing the information you see most often more than what you see less of. 

As an example, during this outbreak there have been daily news casts, and articles presenting the amount of cases, deaths, and steps being taken. In BC, and most of Canada, we are doing really well, there fore many of the restrictions are beginning to loosen. But because I live in North America, I see mostly Canadian and American news, therefore while I see only positives where I live,  I am oblivious to the situation in, for example, Italy, or Taiwan.

Not only does this “mental error” happen with large topics like COVID-19, it happens all the time. Lets say your friends are talking about how bad a certain movie is, every time it comes up in conversation all you hear is: “so overrated”, or “I can’t believe I paid money to watch that”. Then when it comes time to make up your own mind on the movie, all you have is this cloud of other peoples opinions hovering over your head, not leaving space for an authentic opinion of your own. 

Another common theme during these times, is grocery stores. How they function, how many people can enter, and stock.

Which connects to another “mental error” in Clear’s article called: “Anchoring”. This error is also extremely common in everyday life, and messes with your decision making by heightening the average in order to influence your choices, or opinions.

For example, lets say you’re going to the grocery store to pick up some ground beef for burgers. On your grocery list you have only “one package of ground beef” written down, because thats all you need for your meal. But then, as you approach the deli section, you see a sign that reads: “due to high demand, only 3 packages of ground beef per customer”. So from there, you think to yourself: “well I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get three”, and you end up getting twice the amount of food that you need.

Not only does this “mental error” happen in the grocery store, but at work, school, shopping, extra curricular activities, e.t.c. Either you approach with a plan, or approach looking for one, and you are automatically influenced by the quantity, size, or decisions of others around you.

Reading Clear’s article has helped me understand how common these errors really are, and that humans aren’t perfect, and definitely don’t always make rational decisions. Especially when experiencing things out of the ordinary, such as a worldwide pandemic. Its also important to remember that “mental errors” aren’t something that you need to completely obliterate, in fact, you can’t. We just need to be aware that they may be influencing our everyday decision making, and once you are aware of them,  you can refocus your thinking, and use your “brain shortcuts” or “mental errors” in situations where they can help you.