Definition: "The tendency of your mind to change your beliefs to fit your actions".
Example: The Good Samaritan story: A man is badly beaten in the streets - a priest and Levite pass the man without helping - a third 'Good Samaritan' stops to offer aid. "Jesus seems to imply that stopping to help is all about some internal, identity-related promoting pressure: what makes the third man stop is mercy and love for a stranger, core values that embody how Jesus wants his followers to approach the world."
Insight: People with high cognitive load are more likely to accept default options.
Insight: Interventions that create or take advantage of a 'busy' environment with a strong default option are likely to have high adoption or behavioural change.
Insight: Lowering cognitive burdens within an environment can change behaviour or lead to more effective decision making.
Insight: Your brain tends to selectively focus on evidence to support pre-existing beliefs. Changing your mind takes up cognitive resources.
Insight: The more varied your sources of information and open you are to new evidence, the harder it is to fall victim to confirmation bias.
Insight: People often use research after they have come to a conclusion to confirm what they believe they already know.
Insight: A culture of skepticism is important.
Insight: Some of your interventions or projects will fail - this is to be expected, and provides useful insights - if everything we do is a success it is likely we are falling to confirmation bias.
Insight: Losing or failing hurts - the more effort we put in to something, the more we ignore evidence that it has not gone well.
Insight: Pilots or test runs allow us to test ideas without putting a lot of resources behind them, so failure becomes less of a burden.
Insight: We have a tendency to engage with people that already will like our ideas or products, and ignore those that are detractors.
Principle: Be intentional about reading widely and seeking additional points of view.
Principle: Cultivate a culture and belief that failure is important.
Principle: Run pilot tests, and expect to fail.
Definition: Looking for good enough.
Example: Setting a minimum score (e.g. 7) and considering anything above the bar to be the same.
