Notes to myself: Blind-spots - Can we spot them?

Advent of new year brings along a ritual where we take stock of  life. We reflect on our successes, challenges, contemplate on improvements and course corrections. Our resolutions often get diluted with passage of time. .

We manage to keep some of our long term objective outside the span of immediate recall. We devote our time and effort to pursue other tactical initiative or competing priority [1]. Without focused effort it appears that  mundane takes from the important.

We still have hope as studies suggest that we can use week, month and other natural checkpoints to regain focus and get back on track. [2]. By creating weekly/Monthly reflection ritual we increase our chances of making progress and eventually attaining our long term goals.  We may do this in-spite of missing a few intermediate milestones due to other diversions.

One of the insights I had from annual reflection was that my fastest growth has come in the area where I felt most uncomfortable, lacked proficiency or generally felt out of depth. It is easier to negotiate the learning curve when you can identify the area of improvements. There is ample resources and guidance available that will correct these.    

Some of my biggest challenges have come from my blind-spots. These are areas where I consider myself to be adequately informed or where I am totally unaware of my deficiency [3][4]. Will our blind-spots always remain in the realm of "known unknown", "unknown unknowns" or "unknowable unknowns"?[5][6]. 

Analysis of my historical blind-spot have revealed a pattern of my conditioned responses and behaviour traits that can be broadly classified as: 

• Not questioning currently held beliefs
• Crafting arguments to defend my position or rationalising it
• Thinking it is "You  not Me"
• Attributing my behaviour or choice to my personality type that cannot be changed
• Neglecting feedback provided by people around me   
•  Failure to recognise change in environment or context

Being aware of our habits and the associated triggers may alert us to the issue. We need a focused strategy to rectify this deficiency. The components of our structured response can include some of the methods and techniques below:

• Change Mindset: Our mindset is often times the limiting factor that keeps us rooted in our old beliefs and actions. Without having a positive learning attitude it will be difficult to make any progress. Acknowledge that you do not have answers figured out for everything under the sun and beyond. 
• Be aware of your defence mechanism and constructs that you frequently use. Watch out for habits, triggers and conditioned responses. Do not treat them as shields to duck under cross fire. 
• Be open to suggestions and explore opportunities to learn form experiences of oneself and others. 
•  Be more aware counter points and alternate view points to positions you naturally hold. Challenge your most dearly held beliefs or assumptions. 
• Work with others: We may overestimate our capability and be unaware of our own deficiencies. This calls for even more meaningful engagement with our interactions with others.This will give us better handles to unearth issues that are hidden in our plain sight.You may even pick up book or browse videos on any topic to broaden the vision
• Have people in your life who will tell you "as things are not as you wish to hear it". 
• Be open to feedback, actively seek it and be sincere to learn and change 
• Get views from people from different background
• Do not discount feedback from people whom you may not like for any personal reason. 
• Seek opportunities to discuss with others 
• form the point of view of expanding your own understanding rather than influencing others. 
• Try to grasp how they deal with similar situations or what helps them identify their own "blind-spots".
• Deliberate Practice: Identify at least one area that you perceive to be your biggest area of improvement - think of "elephant in the fridge". These may be the things that have almost become a second nature to you.Put deliberate focus to identify gaps, learn and improve on specific area through sustained practice and correction loop. You can internalise learning and behaviour changes by follow-ups:
• Become aware of your mental constructs and arguments and your knee jerk reactions.  
• Notice the scenarios, activities and circumstances in that act as trigger or cues
• Identify and plan measured response in future situations. Ideal scenario will be when you become aware of trigger at the moment and can choose to take measured response instead of conditioned response
• Reinforce new behaviour and learning with regular practice  
• Schedule regular review sessions to identify progress and course correction

Mirrors make our driving safer in dense traffic, undulating roads or inclement weather. Similarly awareness of blind-spot helps us to overcome limitations and march forward in personal growth path.  

© Ratish

References:


[1] Good and Bad Procrastination
There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. 

[2]The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behaviour

People are more likely to pursue various types of aspirational behaviour (e.g., dieting, exercising, goal pursuit) at the start of “new epochs” initiated by the incidence of temporal landmarks, including the beginning of a new week, month, year, and school semester, as well as immediately following a public holiday, a school break, or a birthday.

[3] Dunning Kruger  Effect

A cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. The mis-calibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the mis-calibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others
[4] Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
Successful negotiation of everyday life would seem to require people to possess insight about deficiencies in their intellectual and social skills. However, people tend to be blissfully unaware of their incompetence. This lack of awareness arises because poor performers are doubly cursed: Their lack of skill deprives them not only of the ability to produce correct responses, but also of the expertise necessary to surmise that they are not producing them. People base their perceptions of performance, in part, on their preconceived notions about their skills. Because these notions often do not correlate with objective performance, they can lead people to make judgements about their performance that have little to do with actual accomplishment.
[5]  Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is
Unknown unknown risksare problems that people do not know they are vulnerable to. Unknown unknowns also exist at the level of solutions.  People often come up with answers to problems that are o.k., but are not the best solutions.  The reason they don’t come up with those solutions is that they are simply not aware of them.Unknown unknown solutions haunt the mediocre without their knowledge.
[6] Donald Rumsfeld quote
“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns- the ones we don't know we don't know.”