FACT-CHECKING IS OPTIONAL
Friday, June 25, 2021
Some thoughts visit.
They are just passing through.
Others stay on longer.
Ideas get in our heads. They occupy valuable space – not like tourists or house guests, but more like permanent residents. They put down roots. No fact-checking.
Just as oysters layer a coating on sand grains to build hard pearls, we layer ideas and old habits on top of one another until that idea becomes a permanent fixture in our heads – hard to dislodge, sometimes impenetrable to modify.
Many noggin-notions start early in life, get embellished by teachers, parents, peers and public-sphere influences.
Again, fact-checking is optional …
As we mature in our thinking, I wonder if we operate differently. I think we think we should, but is that how our head works?
I had an idea recently for a project – in my mind, it was half-designed, well advanced in what it would be and when, and how – oh my, I had it all figured out. Then I talked to someone, an expert in the execution side of such projects, someone who offered some significantly different and nuanced ideas.
Good ones.
Better ones.
It took about a half-hour for those better ideas to overcome what had almost taken root.
I think I need to keep talking to many smarter, younger, innovative people – and do it more often. Their ideas are rooted in their heads too, but they are different from mine. I doubt this kind of lesson will change fundamental beliefs, but I think it will make me more open and receptive.
But here’s the real lesson I take from this:
That morning, when I made that call, I was showing I was open – told him I wanted to enlist his help, get his ideas and invited him to help me make my project idea better.
Coincidentally, the same morning, I got a lengthy hard-sell email requesting a conversation from someone else in the same industry – wanting to sell me his ideas. I’ll get back to him, of course, but the hard-sell pitch was the wrong way to set the stage for entry to my brain.
Somebody once joked that fish is like houseguests – after three days, they start to stink.
I wonder if thoughts are like houseguests, some disappear in less than three days, while others stick around for a long time. Fact-checking, it would seem, remains optional.