The 37 Signals blog had a recent post about a visit by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ advice.
He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.
He’s observed that the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a well formed point of view, but it means you should consider your point of view as temporary.
What trait signified someone who was wrong a lot of the time? Someone obsessed with details that only support one point of view. If someone can’t climb out of the details, and see the bigger picture from multiple angles, they’re often wrong most of the time.
I’ve been thinking about this piece over the last couple of weeks. And I realized (belatedly..) that Bezos is spot on. The people I admire the most are those who are constantly revising their thesis on life. The points of view they hold today are very different from the points of view they held few years ago. They test their thesis, adapt it with feedback, read and reflect, test again, adapt again and so on.
I never thought of that behaviour in this light though.
Really smart insight. Thanks Jeff.
A Learning a Day 