Heuristics - for what?

Let’s talk heuristics for a minute. Now, I’ve spent my entire career anticipating crisis before they arrive, enabling response with less effort and time lag. A celebrated discipline of the ancient stoics, it wasn’t intentional learning on my behalf, just a product of early experience, curiosity, trial and effort and underlying risk aversion.

A stint as an international tour leader, reinforced how critical ongoing risk analysis is. But you can’t foresee the crazy things the world throws at you. For a couple of years I was driving trucks and leading overland tours across Europe, Asia, Middle East, South-East Asia and Australia.

Growing up in Australia I was subject to fairly consistent, repeatable patterns of behaviour and environmental conditions. I knew roughly the weather, the cultural norms dictating the actions of most people around me, the laws governing society, the fact that if I studied hard I could pass the test and the road rules.

These consistencies create mental models called ‘heuristics’. Heuristics enable us to off-load cognitive effort by being able to predict reliable events. By example, we can relax driving 100kph down a road at night with two lights approaching in the opposite direction separated only by white marks on the road. It’s crazy really.

Driving in the middle-east, Pakistan and India, that relaxed mental model could get you in a serious collision multiple times every day as a driver. In these countries, it’s a different logic, different understanding of the road traffic movement.

My first experience driving in the middle-east, forced me to re-learn quickly, taking mental effort, and fast. At the end of a day driving I was exhausted. The mental fatigue of processing the new rules of the road, different obstacles, signs, behaviours… all different to the mental models I’d embedded, relied on.

When you’re constantly vigilant toward threats in business and in life, you improve your chances of survival. It’s the exact characteristic we’ve capitalised on to advance our species forward.

But… heuristics can shackle us to behaviours that no longer serve us well. Our mental models need to be challenged occasionally. Question your logic, be open, curious and prepared to adapt, change, relearn.

The world’s changing fast at the moment, there’s a lot going on. Trying to understand and predict the impact of world events is exhausting, overwhelming and unhealthy.

There will be many mental models we need to let go of, perhaps expectations of how life is and will be.

In reality, there’s not much we’re in control of and trying to keep control will be hard. Relax a little, be curious rather than concerned. Despite the news hype, for 200,000+ years as a species we’ve been through some pretty significant events that make today’s turmoil seem almost frivolous.

Tour leading, taught me that curiosity, re-learning and adapting were critical. Holding on to what I ‘knew’ was right… was wrong. You can’t control much, but you can control how you respond. Let go. With the right attitude… it will all be OK.

Thanks for taking the time out to expand consciousness.

Go well.

Troy

Troy Flower - Wellteam Founder