I’ve been reading a book called The Scout Mindset by Julia Ganoff. The basic gist is this: the best learners are those for whom their map of the their universe is assumed to be always wrong or missing details.
The best way to not learn anything? Assume your map is fixed. That’s the “soldier” mindset. Scouts are always looking to update their maps. Soldiers protect their maps (sometimes vigorously).
The fastest way to a soldier mindset is to attach a piece of information to my identity. If I identify with X, then I’m going to be more likely to defend assaults on its validity. It doesn’t matter if I encounter contrary evidence; I will split finer and finer hairs to protect my map.
Not everybody is a scout or soldier all of the time, but some people consistently lean one way or the other. The fun part about soldier vs scout is everybody thinks they’re a scout. Nobody wants to be a “stick in the mud” soldier who isn’t open-minded.
Even then, “being open-minded” is still just a state where someone is comparing the invading idea to one they already have. The incoming idea is always placed on a lesser pedestal. It can’t be “just as good”. It has to be better than the held idea. It has to be a lot better than the held idea. And the idea’s source can also impact the idea value. Hitler cures cancer, and all that.
So how does someone figure out if they’re in “scout mode”?
Tactical Doubt
Want to unlock your inner scout? Doubt. This can be hard. Nobody likes to doubt themselves. It’s painful, so we avoid it.
The best way I’ve found to inject a little doubt is to ask myself to take a bet.
How much would I be willing to bet that this statement I’m about to make is true? 10 bucks? $100? $1000? When the number approaches the realm of “financially painful”, suddenly I start checking my facts and figuring out my known unknowns.
This works very, very well. I’ve found I will tighten the circle of what I think I know, ratcheting past information that I find to be wobbly, down to a tightly-packed nibble of known knowns. This keeps me out of trouble in discussions and prevents me from ratholing on anything inconsequential. It also keeps me from bringing anyone else along with me on those ratholes and wasting everybody’s time.
This isn’t my original idea. Ganoff talks about bets in her book to drive better decisions. Annie Duke has a whole book on the subject, Thinking in Bets. If you want to see scouts in action, read about Charity Dean and Carter Mecham in Michael Lewis’ book, Premonition. Or take some tactical doubt for a spin next time you’re about to say something and hang your reputation on it.
Wanna bet?
