Being Point

Tag: Hindsight

  • “You May Ask Yourself, Well, How Did I Get Here?” – Talking Heads

    Wikipedia serves up a fascinating perspective on hindsight:

    “Hindsight bias is the inclination to see events that have occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place.”

    It’s natural to want to explain why events occurred the way that they have; and it’s understandable that, if one believes hindsight is 20-20, that one would have a bias for believing in a high degree of predictability. What hindsight bias suggests is that some humans believe in a world that is almost mechanical in its “cause and effect” nature.

    Yet, events are most often more complex than simple, “If A, then B. If B, then C, etc. In the words of the Talking Heads:

    “And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

    And you may find yourself in another part of the world

    And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

    And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife

    And you may ask yourself-Well…How did I get here?”

    So, this weekend, ask yourself: “How did I get here” and see whether or not your answers are satisfactory. Examine the ways that you analyze the ability of the past, after it’s already happened, to predict a certain future.

  • How Would You Assess Your Ability To Use Hindsight In Favorable And Useful Ways?

    The benefits of hindsight have generally to do with learning from mistakes and the purported ability to develop complete understanding (as in 20-20 hindsight) of the past.

    What happens if we’re wearing less than perfect “lenses” as we review the past? I’ve known many people who carry what I call a “cup of worry” that needs to be filled up anytime its level goes down. The phrase “it’s always something” applies to this world view.

    To the extent that we view the past from, for example, the habitual perspective of being a victim of circumstances, or not having sufficient understanding, or a feeling that “that’s just my luck”: all of those “lenses” of hindsight will be guaranteed to bring us down.

    How would you assess your ability to use hindsight in favorable and useful ways? Are you closer to 20-20, or has your hindsight been negatively impacted by patterns of understanding the world? Where did you learn those patterns?

    What steps can you take to more consistently learn well from the past? How can the history that you are assessing be used to your advantage? Have you noticed that your ability to learn from the past has improved or diminished over the last few years?

  • “It May Be Difficult To Learn From Our Mistakes” ~ Diane Halpern

    Not everyone shares the same sanguine view of hindsight. Author Diane Halpern is downright contrarian and writes:

    “Hindsight is of little value in the decision-making process. It distorts our memory for events that occurred at the time of the decision so that the actual consequence seems to have been a ‘foregone conclusion.’ Thus, it may be difficult to learn from our mistakes.”

    This is the opposite of the 20-20 school of thought. What is your opinion? Have you observed hindsight mis-serving you or anyone else? Perhaps “selective memory” describes something less than perfect vision about the past?

    If you wanted to have your memory be most useful by truly learning from your mistakes, how would you use it? What kinds of things would you focus on? What habits and ways of looking at and evaluating events would you put your attention on? How can you make hindsight and remembering the best it can be so that you can avoid or minimize old mistakes?

  • Is Hindsight Truly 20-20?

    The old saying is that hindsight is 20-20, but is it really? Perhaps in an ideal world, we’d learn from our mistakes so well that our analysis of what happened would be perfect – but life experience teaches that often the same kinds of analyses that produced the “mistake” in the first place are at work in almost any intended 20-20 examination of it.

    Be honest. Is your hindsight 20-20? There’s no question that we can learn from the past – and we often learn significant lessons. But 20-20? Consider that if you’ve been repeating the same mistake, odds are that your hindsight has not been 20-20.

    Where has your hindsight been 20-20 to the point that you not only understood what happened, but you took steps to remedy the flaws in the future? Do you consider “hindsight is 20-20” to be an accurate statement? Why or why not?

    If hindsight in general is 20-20, what about yours? Does it rise to that level? How do you know?