Abidul So, I’ve started reading this book called Factfullness (by Hans Rosling). Through reading a couple of chapters I’ve encountered much useful information. But, I only want to talk about a couple of points that I’ve found super useful in the book and I was able to use them as action points in my lifestyle right away.
Generalization
A quick example first to explain the idea faster: The author was talking about a trip he did with his students to a country in Africa which wasn’t poor but not rich as well. While he was walking with his students on the trip they walked into an elevator and one of the students was late and was running to catch up before the elevator door closed so her classmate put her hand to guard the door against closing, next thing she knows that the door doesn’t care and keeps closing on her hand till a point she was about to lose her hand because the elevator started going down. Luckily, the situation was handled by her group, they pulled her back and gently took out her arm. But, if it wasn’t for them she’d be armless now just because she thought it’s normal to guard an elevator door like that.
Explaining
As you can see in the example above the student generalized an idea she had from her tier of community, the tier that is developed enough to have such mechanics in elevators, and without thinking she used that fact in her head to act upon that. I know that this example is small and could happen to anyone, but I truly believe that such an example defines many things in our life that we generalize without realizing and we deal with many situations as if it was the same from what we knew somewhere else or some-when else.
How to improve this
After reading this I’ve started to realize that I should be more mindful about what I say or what I talk about. I tried to improve my way of reacting or doing things bit by bit starting by just doing this on big actions or reactions, and then later over time, I will use this in smaller things more often till it becomes a habit.
Take a pause, be mindful of the where and when, take the initial action, check if it works in the situation needed before doing it and make sure the context is similar to your older experience, then and only then do it.
The takeaway
Try not to rush decisions in your life and act slower than this fast-paced world is pushing you to pace. As long as it’s not a life/death situation, then take your time and try to not generalize your knowledge.