Action Bias
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I’ve written and spoken about minimalism a fair bit over the past decade, ever since I recalibrated my life to focus on what was most vital to me, and decided to spend less of my time, energy, and resources on the comparably non-vital.
Most of the questions I’m asked about minimalism from readers and audience members are about how best to rid oneself of possessions most efficiently: how to pack things up, give things away, and bypass the inclination to just keep accumulating.
I generally respond by asking the questioner to pause and ask themselves what’s actually important to them, so that they’re not just chucking all their possessions into a trash bin and assuming peace and enlightenment will follow. I encourage them to slow down, to wait, even, so that the effort they intend to make will be more likely to help them achieve their actual goals.
It’s understandable—especially when we’re stressed or psychologically burdened in some way—to vibrate with enthusiasm when a seeming solution to our discontentment or malaise bubbles up through the ether. It makes perfect sense that we might want to act upon and immerse ourselves in that potential solution, posthaste.
Unfortunately, it’s possible to own very little, to buy very little, to maybe even have no possessions at all, and to still feel unfulfilled and rudderless. The act isn’t the point: the intention behind the act is the point. Hence, my oft-repeated suggestion to take a moment to assess what that intention might be before jumping into the deep end.
Such a delay, though, can seem nonsensical or even torturous to someone who feels the need to move toward some new mental state—to quickly cross the liminal space dividing one way of being from some other, hopefully better way of being.
Movement feels like progress, and progress in any direction can make us feel as if we’re on our way. That we might be making progress in the wrong direction, heading North instead of South, or toward a career that will drain us rather than one that will fuel us is often irrelevant in the moment: motion is motion, and motion feels good.
In some cases, this tendency to act is the consequence of social norms.
Research into the behaviors of soccer/football goalkeepers during penalty kicks indicates that it’s statistically optimal for the goalkeepers to stay in the center of the goal, rather than jumping to the left or right. Staying in the middle, though, is often perceived by the athletes playing these positions as inaction, which can make them feel foolish if they fail to deflect the ball. In contrast, failing while making a visible effort—an impressive jump in one direction or the other—seems less foolish.
As a consequence, goalkeepers only do the optimal thing—staying in the middle of the goal—2% of the time.
A similar bias toward action can be found in many workplaces, and often in the world of entrepreneurship, as well. In these contexts, action bias implies not succumbing to “paralysis by analysis” and avoiding endless meetings, opting to move forward perhaps sooner than is prudent, rather than waiting for someone to give you permission.
Sometimes, though, this bias can incentivize us to optimize for the illusion of productivity over actual productivity.
It’s possible, for instance, to sit and think deeply, to calmly reflect on a problem and solve it, and to do so in a way that—from the outside—looks utterly unproductive. From your boss’ perspective, you’re just sitting there, doing nothing at all.
Contrarily, it’s possible to be completely unproductive but to check all the boxes for what productivity is thought to look like, externally, and to thus collect one’s paycheck without ever contributing a dollar to your company’s bottom-line.
In other words: it’s possible to do nothing except look like you’re doing everything, and to perhaps even feel like you’re contributing a great deal because you’re checking all those boxes.
Sometimes, though, the most productive thing you can do is nothing, as movement in any direction would only add to existing problems or create new ones.
There’s an old Greek term, “iatrogenesis,” that generally refers to negative things that happen as a result of medical professionals practicing their craft—things that would not have happened had those medical professionals done nothing, instead.
Infections caused by improperly sterilized instruments, for instance, would be an example of iatrogensis, as would side effects caused by drug interactions or unnecessary procedures.
This same concept extends to all aspects of life, be it work or our personal health and relationships. There are times in which the most productive thing we can do is nothing at all, despite the inner drive that tells us that something needs to change and we need to change it.
Amplifying this pseudo-compulsion is an accompanying bias toward things we can measure over things that we can’t. It’s tricky to demonstrate the value of inaction—almost like trying to prove a negative—but noting the influence of having done something is often comparably simple.
There’s a concept in Taoist philosophy, “wu wei,” which literally means something like “non-doing” or “effortless action.”
This concept has a great many meanings and interpretations, but in general it’s meant to help adherents understand how to flow through life rather than bull through life, and how to achieve harmony with oneself and everything else in existence, leading to accomplishment and transformation through a perfect economy of energy; a stark contrast with more aggressive and arguably extreme views about what productivity looks like.
In the world of compositional aesthetics—art, design, photography—negative space refers to a portion of the page, Polaroid, website, or canvas that doesn’t have anything on it; perhaps not empty in a literal sense, but it doesn’t contain any elements that are meant to grab our attention; it’s all background.
Such space can be any color, despite often being casually referred to as “white space,” but it plays the role of blankness, of nothingness. It’s a lack of content meant to serve as a counterbalance against the focal-point, the something that the creator of the work wants to make more prominent.
Inaction, defined as a contrast to what we consider to be productive action, often serves the larger composition in a similar way.
Being busy isn’t the same as being productive, and movement isn’t the same as moving in a particular direction.
One of the most productive things we can do, sometimes, is nothing at all: pausing to reflect before we act, for instance, or allowing a spiraling situation to play itself out naturally, rather than inserting ourselves for the sake of feeling proactive and involved, perhaps worsening matters as a consequence.
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