Why Smart People Make Stupid Mistakes

today i want to talk about how to not be stupid but before we get into that i want to tell you a story about the day a genius lost his multi million dollar cello last week i really couldn't stop thinking about yo yo ma arguably the greatest cellist in history standing on a new york city sidewalk realizing he just left his million dollar cello in the trunk of a cab picture this a world class musician someone who's performed flawlessly in front of presidents and royalty somehow forgot the one thing he's never supposed to forget his instrument his livelihood his million dollar strativarius and when he did the press conference after the cello was found he just said i just did something stupid i was in a rush now this is what really fascinates me about this story it wasn't just a random slip up it was part of a pattern that tells us something really profound about how our brains work and fail and when i dug deeper i actually found other stories three other world class musicians who did exactly the same thing one left a three million dollar violin and an amtrak train each incident happened when they were in a different city rushing to an appointment now this isn't a story about forgetfulness it's about something much more important how intelligence itself can become a trap because most people think stupidity is the opposite of intelligence in the wrong stupidity is the cost of intelligence operating in a complex environment and in today's world that cost is rising faster than we realize think about your own stupid moments for a second that crucial email you completely missed even though it was right at the top of your inbox or the obvious solution you overlooked because you were too focused on something else the clear warning you dismissed because you were in a rush these aren't failures of intelligence they're failures of a different kind and once you understand what's really happening you can protect yourself against them now why did i even start looking into stupidity because i read a great article by Adam Robinson Adam Robinson is an international chess master he's the founder of the Princeton review and in the article Adam wasn't satisfied with the usual explanation for why smart people make mistakes so when he was asked to give a talk at some elite investment conference he chose a topic that really raised some eyebrows how not to be stupid now what followed him choosing this topic was months of rigorous research into all these scientific blunders military disasters business catastrophes he studied magicians who engineered confusion he studied con artists who manufacture mistakes he was on a hunt for a pattern some hidden thread that could explain why intelligence fails us and after a month just trying to define the problem he actually made a very interesting discovery he found that stupidity isn't random it follows a very predictable pattern his definition was deceptively simple stupidity is overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information think about that for a second it's not about what you don't know it's about missing what's right in front of your face that report that you skim too quickly the warning signs that you waved away that gut feeling that you ignored but here's what's truly interesting the smarter you are the more vulnerable you might be to this kind of failure because if you think about it for a second it's not about missing hidden clues or solving complex puzzles it's about missing what's right in front of our faces and through his research Robinson identified seven specific triggers that make us stupid these aren't theoretical they're backed by research in the human error from military disasters to medical mistakes to scientific blunder I'm gonna bring it all back to business and entrepreneurship and what this means for you in a second but it's first outlined these seven specific triggers of stupidity so first of all I'm gonna I'm gonna read them out in a second but I want you to notice how many of them show up in your daily life so these are the seven triggers that make a person makes stupid decisions or mistakes so being outside of your normal environment being in the presence of a group being in the presence of an expert or being one doing any task that requires intense focus information overload physical or emotional stress rushing or a sense of urgency now what makes this really terrifying is that you do not need all seven to happen at the same time to make this catastrophically bad decision even two or three can be enough to compromise your judgment if you remember yo yo ma's million dollar mistake he hit three triggers he was outside his normal environment he was in New York instead of Boston he was rushing to an appointment and he was preoccupied with being late three triggers one million dollar mistake but where it gets really interesting and scary and where Robinson's research starts to become vital for understanding our own cognitive blind spots I'm gonna tell you one more story and then we'll get to it so let's talk about in U.S. hospitals places filled with brilliant highly trained professionals human error causes between 210,000 and 440,000 deaths every year okay this is in U.S. hospitals let that sink in for a second that's not injuries that's deaths it makes medical error the third leading cause of death in America right behind cancer and heart disease now why is this because hospitals are the perfect storm of Robinson's triggers think about it doctors work outside normal hours team dynamics affect decisions the pressure of being the expert intense focus required for procedures constant information flow physical fatigue and always always always the rush of urgency but what's even more important to understand is these aren't bad doctors they're good doctors in bad condition their intelligence isn't failing them their environment is hijacking their intelligence and the same pattern shows up in aviation so the worst aviation disaster in history didn't happen in stormy weather or because of complex mechanical failure it happened on a clear day on the ground when two planes collided at airport nearly 600 lives lost now want to know what the pilot was doing right before the crash racing through a checklist think about this paradox for a second the very tool designed to prevent errors became useless because he was rushing through it and as Robinson points out checklist don't help you if you're stupid about the checklist but let's bring it back to you who's listening right now because this isn't just about doctors and pilots it's about you right now when you're on your fifth zoom call of the day responding to slack messages while you're trying to hit a deadline you're in the danger zone when you're working remotely outside your normal environment when you're dealing with team pressure group dynamics when you are racing to meet a deadline when you're juggling all these different projects and you have information overload you're in the danger zone so most of us are living in the danger zone and what's even scarier is that a lot of us here are always on we're always trying to do more especially people that listen to this show a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to build more put more hours in burn the midnight oil burning the whatever candle at both ends working on weekends a lot of us a lot of us have an issue with always being on now what's scary about that is that according to Robinson's research not getting enough sleep and pulling an all-nighter it gives you the motor controls and reflexes of someone who's legally drunk a lot of people in the entrepreneurial space we laugh about powering through and brag about these marathon work sessions we almost wear our hard work and our sleep deprivation like a badge of honor but your brain doesn't care about your hustle culture mantras it operates on biology non-motivation so here's what really happens when we ignore these limits because our brain has a processing capacity that's remarkable but also frighteningly limited we can solve these complex mathematical equations we can create art we can navigate social relationships but if you try and do them all at once everything falls apart this is why those seven triggers of cognitive collapse aka stupidity were your first book about at the beginning of the podcast become exponentially more dangerous when combined with our always on mentality think about multitasking for example something that we all think we're good at so Robinson's research shows that talking on a Bluetooth headset while driving doubles your accident now having a passenger in the car also doubles your risk because you're chatting with them but there's a crucial difference a passenger sees the traffic and stops talking your Bluetooth call keeps going flooding your brain with input that it can't handle you've just stacked multiple triggers time pressure from the drive social pressure from the call and complexity from managing both simultaneously now when you're constantly juggling slack notifications email threats family responsibilities and endless decisions living in that always on seven trigger world your brain starts making micro trade offs you don't even notice it's not just about the immediate task anymore it's about your brain trying to manage an endless stream of demands while dodging cognitive collapse each decision triggers a cascade of compromises that transforms how you perceive reality now let's stick with this car driving example to show you what the implications can be I know that not everything is life or death but you have to understand that when you have too much going on stupidity carries over into every part of your life and praying that it's never life or death but understand distraction multitasking all of this can have real implications so when you are driving and you are distracted and you have all these other cognitive triggers happening first your visual field literally narrows it's like trying to watch a movie through paper towel tube you can see what's directly ahead but your peripheral vision goes dark so that car merging from the right your brain might register it a half crucial second too late then your reaction time splits so when you're fully focused your brain takes about 250 milliseconds to react to a sudden event if you add a complex conversation about next week's presentation that doubles it's like when you're trying to catch a ball while solving a math problem you're not going to be good at either but what gets really interesting is the more intelligent you are the more you overestimate your capacity to handle this overload so your brain which is running at its limits starts making classic stress induced mistakes so time compression you miss judge distances and speeds emotional tunneling your frustration with work conversation bleeds into your driving decisions tasks switching failure you miss exits or traffic signals because your brain is buffering between tasks pattern blindness you fall back on automated responses even when the situation requires something different so this is why robs and points it out you instinctively turn down the radio when you're lost your brain knows something most of us ignore it has limits when the radio goes down you're not just reducing noise you're freeing up processing power that your brain desperately needs think of your cognitive capacity like ram in a computer just like opening too many browser tabs eventually crashes your laptop pushing past your brain's processing limits doesn't just slow you down it fundamentally changes how you perceive and react to the world around you and just like a crashing computer by the time you notice the problem it's usually too late so what do we do we can't avoid all these triggers we can't opt out of modern life but we can be smarter about how we handle high risk cognitive situations so first recognize that these factors are additive right one trigger you can probably handle it two three you start to go into danger territory all seven you are virtually guaranteed to make significant mistakes second understand that awareness isn't enough the pilot in that aviation disaster knew he was rushing yo yo ma knew he was late knowledge doesn't protect you from these cognitive traps instead you need a system that kicks in before your judgment is compromised so if you're outside your normal environment and you're rushing stop like full stop this combination is cognitive kryptonite when you feel urgency rising treated as a warning sign the sensation of rush is your brain's check engine light and if you're facing important decisions and recognize any of these triggers postpone the decision if possible now remember how we started this story with a genius leaving his million dollar cello in a cab is a twist I haven't told you about yet when they found yo yo ma's cello something fascinating happened at the press conference instead of making excuses or downplaying the situation he said something profound I just did something stupid I was in a rush now why is that so important because that's the difference between intelligence and wisdom intelligence is knowing how to play a million dollar cello wisdom is knowing when your brain isn't functioning well enough to take care of it now what does this mean for you every day you're handling your equivalent of a million dollar cello maybe it's your company strategy maybe it's your team's well-being your clients trust your family's future the truly smart move isn't trying to be perfect it's building systems that protect you from your brains predictable fail your modes for the next week when you feel yourself rushing treat it as a warning signal not assigned to speed up but a trigger to slow down remember robinson's crucial insight stupidity isn't about lack of intelligence it's about missing what's right in front of you because your cognitive filters are overwhelmed so the next time someone tells you to hurry up remember the most expensive mistakes happen not when you're being too careful but when you're trying to be too efficient because the truth about excellence it's it's not about never making mistakes it's about respecting the conditions that make mistakes inevitable and having the wisdom to change those conditions before they change your future and the next time you find yourself rushing into an important meeting want to ask yourself what's more expensive being five minutes late or making a million dollar mistake