Sound Logic vs. Good Judgement

Today, I finally saw the 2x4. Not quickly enough to dodge it mind you, just quickly enough to see it after it walloped my head for the 1000th time.

It's embarrassing to consider yourself a smart person and admit that you have failed to learn from your mistakes.

So before I get into what I learned, I'll share what happened, in a nutshell.

I needed to hire for an open position. I found the perfect candidate. I accelerated their interview process. I made an offer. They accepted. Then they declined. Now I have to start all over.

Along the way, I'd received counsel to do more interviews meet with more candidates, organize my conversations with the candidate differently... I chose to pay this advice lip-service, but do things my own way. In the end, when the candidate accepted, I felt vindicated- like my process was fine and everything else was bureaucracy. When they declined, I had to take a completely different stance on the matter.

Was I right? Was I wrong? Now what?

It was this moment of reflection that I realized why, a smart person like myself, could make bad decisions. I had mistaken logic for judgement.

Not for the first time either. This has happened many times in the past where I've been able to visualize a path from A-Z only to realize the letters in between are alphabet soup.

As an ambitious, unrelenting person, I've found it easy to shake off the error and try again and again and again...

So, if you suffer from the same challenges let me illuminate for you what has been so painfully elicited from my mishaps.

Sound Logic vs. Good Judgement

Logic is one of life's great gifts. It let's you classify, It helps you understand cause and effect. Sadly, it's less useful for decision making than you might think.

Here's a framework for thinking about Logic:

Imagine a box of knowledge. Inside this box are the facts and beliefs you keep inside yourself. These are built from your lifetime of experiences.

When you approach a problem, you start by looking inside the box. You test your assumptions against all the facts in box and see if you can visualize the outcome you desire.

Take for example, an apple you want to pick from a tree. The apple is barely out of reach and you need to figure out how to get it. By drawing from within, you will consider jumping. Logically, if you jump, you can increase your height enough to grab the apple. You may also consider climbing the tree, throwing a shoe, hoisting someone on your shoulders or any number of other things that your experience tells you will work.

Many problems in life are solved by imagining different results and selecting the ones that yield the greatest benefit with the least cost.

That is sound LOGIC.

The nice part about the apple picking is, if you fail to succeed in one way, you still have the other options available to you along with the added experience from your first failure.

Good Judgement is very different.

Good judgement is the ability to select the correct option from the available options the first time.
Good judgement is necessary in situations where selecting the wrong choice will result in the loss of valuable resources (time, money or even lives). Good judgement recognizes that there are things outside of the mental box that, if known, would change the value of your choices.

If Logic is the box, then good judgement is the ability to expand the box relative to a particular situation.

In the case of our apple picking, we might talk to the farmer who tells us that the ground below the apple tree is very soft. This would make jumping much less effective. He could also tell us that the tree is brittle and climbing it would likely break branches. He could even tell you that the apples taste really bad making the whole issue a waste of time.

There are many ways to increase your judgement- experience is the most expensive one. Talking with those with experience is probably the most effective. In between, you may do research on the issues or you may test out some of the cornerstones of your thought process.

Either way, don't make the mistake I did. Don't believe that just because something is the logical path that it is also one of good judgement.

Vocab is worthless

I'd like to make a note on vocabulary:

They teach it in school and promote it as sounding educated. -This is a lie.

Learning words for the sake of knowing obscure words will only help you in scrabble/ words with friends. Don't use them in real life. People won't understand you and you'll be a social reject.

Instead, learn the words specific to an industry or activity (aka jargon- notice how I didn't use it?). Using words that describe what your are trying to say and people understand is a lot more useful than sounding smart.

I feel like telling you this because I'm awesome. At Scrabble. Yep, I'm that guy. Just ask my old roommates about the first time they met me. I walked into a college room and tried to sound intelligent- it backfired. So when I destroy you at the next Word with Friends game don't feel bad. Just pity me for a lonely childhood.