The Optimism Bias — Don’t Let it Kill You
Optimism — a mental attitude reflecting a belief or hope that outcomes will be positive.
If it weren’t for optimism, many of our greatest achievements would not have come to fruition.
As Nietzsche said, us humans like to fool ourselves in order to orient towards the future.
If we weren’t optimistic, or at least hopeful that our actions would result in positive outcomes, then we’d find it might difficult to get out of bed in the morning.
But like most things, taken too far or unjustified, unchecked optimism can prove to be your undoing.
Simpsons fans will recall Homer’s attempt at jumping Springfield Gorge with a skateboard.
Here’s how it went down…
Bart wants to jump across the gorge on his skateboard, Captain Lance Murdock-style. Homer instead attempts to make the jump in an attempt to show his son the dangers of doing daredevil stuntwork, but Bart chooses to not do daredevil stunts ever again in an attempt to prevent Homer from doing it. However, Homer, due to the skateboard unexpectedly going on with Homer on it, almost makes the jump, falling to the bottom banging his head as he goes along. The ambulance later crashes into a tree, sending Homer out of the back on a stretcher and tumbling down again. — Simpsons Fandom
At one point during this jump, Homer was incredibly optimistic that he’d make it — jubilantly exclaiming that it was the greatest thrill of his life — only for this to happen seconds later…
Like Homer, you might have your own adverse experiences with the optimism bias — both great and small.
Perhaps you’re an entrepreneur who invested tens of thousands into developing a product based on the Kevin Coster-inspired premise of ‘build it and they will come’, only to declare bankruptcy shortly thereafter.
Perhaps you invested your life savings into a selection of stocks or crypto assets that you were confident would continue to appreciate in value, only for their value to nosedive shortly thereafter and never recover.
Perhaps you’re an author who wrote a book about the topical ideas of the day. You successfully secured a big name publisher, scheduled lots of podcast and conference appearances and were sure your book was going to sell well…but Nielsen ratings begged to differ.
Or maybe you thought that this whole COVID-19 thing would just ‘blow over’, instead of escalating to shut down the global economy. I know I did, putting the hysteria down to media hype alone as recently as two weeks ago!
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The WorkFlow podcast is hosted by Steve Glaveski with a mission to help you unlock your potential to do more great work in far less time, whether you're working as part of a team or flying solo, and to set you up for a richer life.
To help you avoid stepping into these all too common pitfalls, we’ve reflected on our five years as an organization working on corporate innovation programs across the globe, and have prepared 100 DOs and DON’Ts.
