I just got a new Tesla, the Model 3 and honestly I don’t see myself going back to driving anything with a combustion engine again. The car is really bad ass. Anyway, you’ve gotta charge these things. I’m sitting at a Tesla Supercharger station… charging while listening to a podcast, answering emails, planning my 6-month old daughter’s next 18 years of education and fiddling with everything in the car. It’s all so damn smooth and shiny it’s hard not to admire it all (with your hands). After touching all the buttons on the giant iPadish monitor a dozen times, I moved on to the physical components. Window up… window down. Door open… door close. Lot’s of satisfying clicks. Dopamine flowing like a river. Something about quantum mechanics in the background that I would have to listen to a dozen more times to sufficiently start get my arms around how deeply I cannot even begin to contemplate their theories. Feelin’ good. But then, my world falls apart.
There’s a center console with this beautifully smooth widget that opens to a surprising large little (“large little”) cave that holds your important stuff (hand sanitizer and masks) and you can close it too… supposedly. I gently lift and push the little black door over the cave so that all is flush and symmetrical and good in the world. It elegantly and somewhat arrogantly eases back to its original open position. It didn’t stick, because I didn’t press it hard enough. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I romantically guide the futuristic black cave door back into the closed position with just the tiniest bit more force and dopamine courses through my veins once again as I hear and feel the rewarding click and, in that same moment, joy is diluted as my blood pressure rises ever so slightly and the belligerent hatch flips back open. We know what’s up here. Tesla obviously manufactures a low quality plastic vehicle with parts that don’t work. I smell a warranty issue. A lawsuit perhaps. I, correctly shove the shiny contraption back into closed position with enough force to [accepting suggestions for some smart analogy about something that represents slightly more than the appropriate amount forcefulness]. I hold it there for a few moments and contemplate what this customer service call will sound like. It opens. I slam it shut. It opens. I close it correctly this time… finally. It opens. This 30 second exercise may have cost me 30 days of my life. I relax and leave it open. Who really cares. I want it open anyway so that I can re-sanitize my hands. Lord knows, it’s been upwards of 5-minutes since I last doused myself in rubbing alcohol. Something in the background about quarks being in two places at the same time but if you look at one of them it materially effects the location and feelings of the other one and something about parallel universes. Fine. Seems like something easier to think about. All is well in my world.
Later that day, I take my wife and little baby girl to Butterfly World, a real place made of (or perhaps filled with) butterflies. We load everything into the car; self, wife, baby, stroller, car seat, bag filled with infant-accessories, blankets, whatever the heck else fills up two trunks and a back seat for a 2 hour trip and I roll into reverse. All the cameras on the spaceship activate and I can see everything but into the future. Cool. Beans. As we pull out of our building, my wife delicately reaches to her left and proceeds to gently and permanently close the center console with the soft touch of her small index finger. Fuck. You.
Cognitive biases leave us (me) blind to the world and opportunities around us. It’s like we’re viewing everything through a pair of glasses with opaque lenses, that can weirdly see just 1-3 things extremely well. When we seek the perspective of others and cultivate a more diverse set of skills and cognitive tools we’re better equipped to encounter challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Maslow’s hammer, in this case was a friendly reminder that I ought to have, a hint more humility and what Charlie Munger famously calls, a latticework of mental models, at my disposal.
Side note: Abraham Maslow wasn’t the OG of putting definition around this particular cognitive bias. It was rather a more original Abraham. Not to be confused with the original Abraham (if we believe the trustworthy authors of Bibles past). Abraham Kaplan, an America Philosopher (go Merica!) originally said in 1964: "I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."
I am nothing if not a small boy with a hammer.
😂
I was in the same situation!!
But after slamming it 10 times with no luck I've decided to turn on some relaxing music to calm down... and then a little notification popped up on this beautiful screen... saying "Please close the lid gently".
I've got overdosed by dophamine at this exact moment.
LMAO!!! While reading this a memory was trigger from maybe 3 years ago, a memory where I suggested a Podcast. Only few people have the gift of engaging and transporting you to a place, a place created by word written or words spoken. It's amazing that you decided to share that ability!!!
PS: in this world there is hammers and nails, I'll rather be the hammer!