Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

One of my favorite quotes is from Mark Twain:

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”

I’ve started applying this to various facets of my life and I feel that it’s a great mechanism to keep yourself intellectually honest. Self-reflection and questioning could lead to two outcomes: (1) you realize that your beliefs were invalid and you fix them or (2) you realize that your beliefs are correct and the exercise of examination reinforce it.

And if you’re intellectually thorough in your self-evaluation, either outcome is good.

There’s another way to think about this.

In my pre-Google days on WinFS, one of the senior managers said one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard. He said that basically once you reach a certain level (in the scope of an organization), everyone is at roughly the same level of intelligence. The difference the amount of data they have to work with.

If you have two people with the same intelligence, the one with more data will on average make the smarter decision. That’s why a Senior VP’s opinions are often more valuable then, say, a line level Product Manager.

Ignoring The Peter Principal and all that, the insight about amount of data is brilliant. The guy that runs a big venture capital fund will see thousands of business plans and the reasons for success or failure of hundreds of business in the course of a year. Of course, he’s in a good position to give advice on the subject.

And to tie it all together, at some level the act of pausing and reflecting is gathering new information. And with that new information you can use your intelligence to make a better decision.