What follows is a distillation of my response to Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast with Adam Grant. I highly recommend you listen. If you don’t have the time, or if you just want a 4 minute synopsis of some of the takeaways that were important to me, please read on.
I spent an inordinate amount of time researching for my article yesterday. The problem is an old one: I have a topic I’m excited to share, I feel I need to know more, I do some research on the interwebs, my research takes me past several videos of dogs doing tricks, and of people wearing strange clothes from Target, I get back on track with my research, and ultimately conclude that I don’t know enough to speak on the subject. I end end up publishing a more personal experience, in an article that is shorter than I had intended.
Part of my problem is that I begin writing with an agenda. I’m usually of the mind that people need to think or act differently, preferably the same way I think. In the words of Adam Grant I’m acting like a Prosecutor. Adam Grant lays out several mental modes we adopt when we interact with one another. You can take his test to find your own mode make up here. From his website, this is how he describes each mode:
“In our daily lives, we often think like preachers, prosecutors, politicians, and scientists. Psychologists find that we enter preacher mode when we’re defending a sacred value, prosecutor mode when we’re trying to win an argument, politician mode when we’re campaigning for the approval of an audience, and scientist mode when we’re searching for the truth. These mental modes affect our will to question our own opinions and our skill to open other people’s minds.”
I may begin drafting my article in Prosecutor Mode, but as I digest the findings of my research a series of thoughts occur to me: “Do you really think you can speak with authority on this topic after a few hours of research from Google University? Stay in your lane! You’d never win an argument when you know so little. What right do you have?” It would be tempting to think I am embracing Socratic wisdom, but I don’t think that is what is happening.
Plato’s ‘Apology’ recounts the story of Socrates upon hearing the Delphic Oracle has named him the wisest person. Socrates can’t believe this and sets out to prove the Oracle wrong. During the course of his wanderings he uncovers something interesting. He finds many people who are experts in an area, but they then go on to profess high levels of expertise in subjects where they know little. Socrates is aware of how little he knows, and because he is willing to confess his ignorance in areas where he knows little he realizes the Oracle may have been correct after all.
I seriously doubt my own unwillingness to speak from a point of superficial knowledge is motivated by self-awareness and humility. More likely I just don’t want to be found a fraud. But it’s also dangerous to bandy about such labels as ‘fraud,’ and the podcast touches on this notion too. More specifically, why are you someone with imposter syndrome? Why call it a syndrome? Why are you not simply someone who occasionally has imposter thoughts… just like we all do?
That tactic of reframing to either distance ourselves from limiting beliefs, or to encourage adoption of positive behaviors is something I came across in writings by Nir Eyal. He references a study into motivating voter turnout. It transpires that if you describe yourself as someone who votes, then you may or may not turn up, but if you describe yourself as a voter, then that is now your identity. Now you need to prove that identify correct, by adopting the behaviors that support it. Now, as a voter, you’re more likely to vote.
Are you a Prosecutor? Are you a Preacher? If in the USA, are you a Democrat or a Republican? Aren’t these the wrong questions? We are more complex than this. The world is more complex than this. If we identify ourselves according to a label then we risk having to adopt the behaviors that support those labels. Don’t be a label! (And here I am being a Prosecutor again.)
There was a lot to digest in the two hour podcast. It helped me realize there is much I don’t know. I helped me realize I don’t begrudge the research I always undertake, … and then cast aside. (Sometimes in life you need to go away to find you never needed to leave.) And just like yesterday I find myself crafting something that is two parts personal experience to one part… something else. I hope it may be of some benefit.
