Noteworthy Nonsense

Notes on Communication, Decision-Making and Business & Investing

Communication, Decision-Making Austin T Communication, Decision-Making Austin T

Problem Solving: Avoiding The Silver Bullet Approach

As you move forward in life, you’ll continually be faced with problems of varying difficulty. Unlike grade school problems, many real world ones will tend to be tangles and tangles of causes—especially when people are involved. If you’re routinely blinded by the one-big-thing approach, you’ll miss valuable solutions.

But if you’re looking to improve your lot in life by solving important problems, you’ll want to avoid silver bullets by always looking for two causes.

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Direct vs Indirect Communication: Why What’s Meant Isn’t Always What’s Said
Well-being, Decision-Making, Communication Austin T Well-being, Decision-Making, Communication Austin T

Direct vs Indirect Communication: Why What’s Meant Isn’t Always What’s Said

With direct communication, politeness and tact isn’t the emphasis. Instead, the primary concern is the information itself. Where indirectness can allow too many costly misunderstandings to gum up a system, directness is clear as day. That’s one takeaway.

Indirect communication can have a softer touch as it suggests, implies, or indicates. This flanking maneuver doesn’t oppressively tell, which can antagonize egos, but instead it asks the audience to play a part in understanding.

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Why Leaders Overpromise
Pyschology, Decision-Making, Business and Investing, Business, Communication Austin T Pyschology, Decision-Making, Business and Investing, Business, Communication Austin T

Why Leaders Overpromise

“Overpromising may be necessary to get the resources. It may be necessary to get the initial enthusiasm that is needed to do anything at all. There is so much inertia that realistic promises are at a major disadvantage. They’re at the major disadvantage because everybody else is over-promising.” - Daniel Kahneman

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