No one is using Microsoft 95 anymore. You’ve long gotten rid of your Nokia 3310. With most things in life, we’re encouraged to rethink and re-evaluate from time to time. Even if you still own the same house or flat you did 20 years ago, you’ve probably revamped it by now: at the very least you’ve updated the fixtures in your kitchen, repainted your walls and spruced it up a bit. I’m also willing to go out on a limb and assume that you’re not still wearing the same outfits and trends you loved in your teen years. (Although, horrifyingly enough, low-rise jeans have come back to haunt us all.)
And yet, when it comes to beliefs, opinions and knowledge, the opposite is true. People are praised for being decisive and certain, for staying true to their convictions, for not letting anyone or anything shake their beliefs. Sticking to your guns is seen as admirable. And sure, sometimes it is. But we tend to cling to assumptions, instincts, habits and even plans regardless of their merit, making them a part of our sense of self – often to our detriment, writes organisational psychologist Adam Grant in his book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know.
‘We favour the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt, and we let our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We laugh at people who still use
