During weekends, my son and I would go out and do stuff. We’d do different activities, like going to a video arcade and hitting different adventure games. It’s a lot of fun and it’s great that I could spend time with him.

But, as we go through our day, we inevitably hit a point where we get hungry and we need to eat something.

One of the things my son likes to eat is Chinese food. And, while I like the basic vegetable lo mein and General Tso’s Chicken, he ends up liking it more than I do most of the time. We’ll mainly hit Chinese buffets, but anywhere we go, it’s usually a relatively enjoyable meal.

At the end of the meal, we always have the fun of opening up our fortune cookies. Not only do they taste good, but the little fortunes inside are generally fun to play with.

As any of you who’ve eaten a fortune cookie before know, the fortunes are just basic words of wisdom and really very generic. They could be applied to pretty much anyone.

One of these times, it got me thinking. What would be the best thing that I could put in the fortune cookies for you?

Here are the 10 fortune cookie fortunes I came up with for you.

“Know Where You’re Going”

If you don’t know where you’re going, then it won’t really matter. You can decide to go north, south, east or west, but if you don’t have an exact destination, you’re just going to wander around.

To have a better chance of getting somewhere you like, stop wandering and figure out what you want and where you’re going. If you don’t know, then stop reading here and don’t continue until you do.

“Take Action”

This is the single thing that is hardest for a lot of people to do. People can decide where they want to go or what they want to achieve, but taking the action needed to achieve their goal is hard for them, especially if it requires stepping out of their comfort zone.

Say, you decide you want to go on a trip to London. You can wish it, plan it out and tell all your friends how you’re going to London, but unless you start doing the things you need to get there, you will never be able to go to London. Take action and do it now.

(Editor’s Note: Have you heard? Stephen Hawking is actually going to space very soon! A perfect example of taking action.)

“Be Consistent”

Action is great, but if you don’t take action consistently, it’s not going to matter. The same is true with exercise and eating healthy. If you aren’t going to do them consistently, you won’t be able to get their full benefits.

It also applies to success. People tend to be a lot more successful doing at least one thing each day towards their goal rather than trying to do everything in a day or two.

Be consistent. It really does make a difference

“Successes Are Built On Failures”

When you’re trying anything new, you’re not going to do it perfect the first time, and that’s okay. You just need to work through things. The more you work through, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you are likely to succeed.

Don’t be afraid of failures because they will eventually bring you success. A lot of today’s successful people failed massively before getting to where they are now.

See Also: Why The Road to Success is Always Full of Failures

“Success Can Be Exponential”

Think about this in an investing sense. If you go and put $100 on a stock and you happen to get lucky, you can increase it up 10 times. That means you can have as much as $1,000. Now, you can do the same thing and take that $1,000 out, put it in 10 other stocks, and see what happens.

You’re not going to hit that home run every time. You’re going to experience some losses along the way. Despite this, you should know that the more you try, the more you are increasing your chances of succeeding. Be smart about it and work hard. Learn from your mistakes and success will build upon itself.

“Good Friends Are Better Than Lots Of Friends”

This is something that you hear even in grade school and middle school. There’s a big difference between a true friend and an acquaintance.

You may be friendly and know a lot of people but not all of them will actually have your back. So, find a few in your life who can really be there for you and stick with them.

See Also: Why You Need to Get Out and Meet Your Friends

“Believe In Yourself”

No matter how many friends you have or how much action you take, if you don’t believe that you can do it, you’re going to find a way to fail every time.

This isn’t just positive thinking. Things aren’t necessarily going to be easy and things won’t just completely flow for you. It may be hard, you may make mistakes, but you have to believe it’s possible.

When you believe it’s possible, it becomes easier to deal with the inevitable setbacks and keep pushing on. Remember, if it’s possible for anybody, that means it’s possible for you, too. So, believe in yourself and believe that you can do it.

“Track What You’re Doing”

One of the biggest things I see people do is start taking massive action on something and have it not turn out as they expected. They may have a plan and an idea of where they want to go, and they start working on it without really knowing if the work that they’re putting in will actually give them the results that they want.

That’s why you need to track things. It’s kind of like a GPS for your goals that helps you to stay on track and get where you want to be- with fewer mistakes and less wasted effort.

There are various ways to do this and there are programs to do it. You can keep it on a spreadsheet or even a notebook.

In addition to tracking your goals and mistakes, it’s important that you also take down notes of your mistakes. This way, you’ll be able to learn from them. They will guide you in what you should and shouldn’t do.

“Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment”

For a long time in my life, I just stuck with the things that I knew I liked. As I got a little older and more stable, I decided that I wanted to try new things.

One of those things is to go and take a trip to Japan for a couple of weeks or even a month. However, before actually booking my trip, I figured that if I’m going to be in Japan that long, then I need to make sure that I can eat Japanese food.

One time, when I was at a conference, I went and tried some sashimi. It was the first time I ever had it and I ended up liking it. Since then, I’ve been more experimental with what I do.

I gained more confidence in experimenting because I know that if I like something I tried, I’ll get to treasure it. If I don’t, then great. I’ll be able to avoid it in the future. Either way, I get to learn something new about myself. This mindset has opened up new possibilities for myself and new avenues in my life.

The best part is that you can apply it to all parts of your life. Failure is a lot easier to deal with when it’s just an experiment that didn’t work. It’ll be easier for you to say: “Ok, that way didn’t work. What else can I try?”

“Do The Truly Important Things First”

This is true in business, family, and life in general. You do the things in business that are going to move you ahead. Although there are little tasks that can take up a lot of your time,  make sure to prioritize the big things. They are the things that will keep your business moving forward.

It goes the same with family. You need to make sure you can be there for them when they need you. Show up at birthdays. Make sure you’re there for the important times in your family members’ lives as that will help build a great bond. Do the important things in life but make them your first priority.

 

The post 10 Actually Useful Fortune Cookie Fortunes appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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Why is achieving success so hard? Why is overcoming cognitive biases difficult?

Maybe the problem isn’t you. Or more accurately, the problem isn’t the conscious you. It’s possible that you’ve been unconsciously sabotaging your own success.

If you are curious to know, below are some of the unconscious ways your brain can stop you from becoming productive and successful.

Information Bias

Information bias is a cognitive bias that makes you attribute distorted value to information. Among other things, information bias is what makes you want to gather as much information as possible on a project before starting it.

It’s one of the most common productivity blocks and you’ve probably experienced it yourself.

Think about any time you wanted to start a project but you just had to get all the information you could before doing so.

Collecting information and researching on a topic isn’t wrong. The problem, however, is when you already know all you need to but still feel the urge to find out more. You’ll never have all the information on any subject, and trying to know everything is a recipe for stagnation.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is another cognitive bias that makes humans more likely to accept information aligned with their pre-existing beliefs, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong.

This leads to a situation where you seek out ideas not for information, but for confirmation.

One of the biggest fears of most human beings is rejection. And, unfortunately, we tend to tie our beliefs to ourselves. A rejection of our beliefs is, by extension, a rejection of our very being. This makes us more likely to look for information that already supports what we believe in.

A lot of us look for reasons to avoid change and maintain the status quo. Accepting the absolute intractability of your nature is much easier than making an effort to change.

If you’re shy, you’ll actively look for information that makes being shy seem like a good thing. You’ll completely overlook any negative effects and think of them as absolutes that you have no control over, even though that isn’t the case.

So, how do you avoid it?

Spend a day pondering over your deepest limitations. Then, actively look for information that contradicts these beliefs. You may find out that you’re a much more productive and better person than you initially thought.

The Sunk-Cost Fallacy

The sunk-cost fallacy is one of the most insidiously pervasive time wasters in our lives. It is a belief that something is worth your while simply because you’ve already made an investment in it. The more you invest in one thing, the harder it becomes to abandon it.

The sunk-cost fallacy exists because we hate losing more than we love winning. Even the slightest scent of potential loss can send us scurrying like rats for cover.

How many times have you sat through a movie you hate simply because you’ve already paid for it? Would it not be better if you got up and walked away as soon as you realized you wouldn’t like it?

The financial loss in both situations is the exact same. In the second scenario, however, you wouldn’t waste your time.

Think about when you started a project that you, later on, realized you didn’t like. Normally, you’d probably abandon it immediately. But you already spent money on it so you’re likely to persevere and just go on with it, even though it’s an utter bore.

Ignore sunk costs and your life will become much less cluttered and much freer.

Planning Fallacy

The planning fallacy, originally proposed by Daniel Kahneman, makes us underestimate the time, costs, and risks associated with an action while overestimating the benefits associated with the same actions.

Why does this happen?

Some researchers suggest that we tend to look at the most optimistic scenario when predicting the future. Others, meanwhile, attribute it to wishful thinking.

If you doubt this, think back on how many times you’ve thought you’ll finish a task in time and you were wrong. You’ll quickly realize how commonly we fall prey to the planning fallacy.

Luckily, there’s an extremely simple way we can obviate the effects of this fallacy: allocate more time than we think necessary to any task. This way, you’ll avoid missing a deadline.

See Also: Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail

Completion Bias

Have you ever decided to do something simply because you knew it would be done quickly and you wanted to check something off of your to-do list?

If so, you’ve fallen victim to completion bias.

Completion bias makes us prioritize smaller tasks over larger ones. We do this because completing a task makes us feel like we’ve accomplished something, even if we had more important things to do.

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of completion bias, especially if you have a to-do list. Completion bias is what makes you feel like you’ve had an extremely productive day, only to realize that you’ve done almost nothing important.

The worst part of this bias is that a huge number of us notice it but never really understand its danger. I, myself, had realized that I was more biased towards easier tasks, but I simply dismissed it as something normal and natural. Only when I read an article talking about it did I realize that I had been harboring a cognitive bias all along.

Luckily, it’s also relatively easy to eliminate. Break down all your larger tasks into small, bite-sized actions, and arrange them in the order you want to do them. This way, you can actually get something done.

Conclusion

There are several cognitive biases that can affect almost every aspect of your life- from productivity to business to relationships. Although you can’t fully eliminate them, overcoming cognitive biases aren’t that difficult. There are things you can do today that can eliminate as many biases as you can.

How do you eliminate a cognitive bias?

Carl Jung famously said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

He was right.

The only way you can gain control over an unconscious impulse or desire is to manifest it consciously. If that sounds like gobbledygook, don’t worry, I’ll tell you how to do that in a moment.

Get a band or a ring that you can wear on your hand or finger. Then, pick a cognitive bias you want to minimize.

Every time you find yourself manifesting that cognitive bias, move the band or ring from one hand to another. Every time you move it, consciously distance yourself from the cognitive bias.

Pretty soon, you’ll find yourself transferring the band less often than before. If you persist with this exercise, you should reach a point where you’ll have lowered the impact of the bias as much as possible.

Start this process immediately and you’ll find yourself transformed into a more rational, clear-headed, and logical individual in no time at all.

The post Outsmart Your Brain: Tips On Recognizing And Overcoming Cognitive Biases appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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