Nobody's looking at you, buddy

Let’s play chicken:

A family has a chicken coop containing 12 egg producing hens. One night, a terrible storm kills all but eight chicken. How many chickens did the family have in the morning?

The answer, at your local farm (and at the end of this email).

Do you even bias, bro?

There’s something I love called spotlight bias. When I say love, I mean I would violently murder. Out of all the biases (and there’s plenty bad ones out there) this one is by far the most evil out there simply because it looks so innocent at first.

But first, let’s talk about cognitive biases and how they’re basically the only reason why we’re not lateral thinking like it’s 1953.

Nerd fact, 1953 is when the CIA started experimenting with LSD in all sort of fun ways (spoiler: they weren’t fun).

Cognitive biases make our ape brain not hurt too much by simplifying stuff for us.

Big thoughts hurt tiny man, so biases are there to make sure we don’t hurt ourselves too much by thinking the big think.

Joke aside, our brain likes patterns. Cognitive biases are meant to create patterns. Availability bias is another fan favorite, especially in the press. Did you recently read 3 different articles about sharks killing people? Goddamn, these sharks have been killing like crazy recently.

Not really, since you’re more likely to die from a champagne cork accident than eaten by a shark (that’s an actual statistic), but your brain will make you think that whatever information your consuming MUST be happening at scale.

So what does have to do with lateral thinking?

Everything.

If you’re not aware of your biases and how they influence you, you’ll always be your own brain’s court jester. The problem with biases is that they’re predictable and it’s why most people will come to the same conclusion when exposed to the same piece of information.

Spot me, daddy.

Let’s look at the spotlight bias, my favorite.

An example of spotlight bias is when you’re in a subway and are HYPER aware of every move you make because you feel like all eyes are on you.

Or when you’re entering a room or an open office space you’re not familiar with and suddenly feel like the entire office stopped working and is monitoring your every move.

In reality, almost nobody’s looking. People care more about themselves and how others see them than what others are doing.

In business, spotlight bias is a bitch. Why?

Because it makes you think people care about what you have to say and that makes you hyper aware of everything you do.

If you’ve ever had a boss that obsesses over every single word or detail, he’s most likely suffering from spotlight bias.

In reality, your first job is to make people care about your business or product enough to “look”. But spotlight bias makes you skip that step more often than not, thinking that once you do something everyone will be gasping for air waiting for your next move.

Most of the time, they’re not.

So if you wanna up your game when it comes to lateral thinking, start being aware of how your brain is tricking you and start fighting back.

Speaking of tricks, here’s the answer:

The family still has 12 chickens, 8 alive and 4 dead.

I know, I groaned too.