Feeling like the future is slipping out of control?
You’re not alone
Date: 31-03-2025
Reading time: 2 minutes
SHIFT #21
There are mornings when the sky outside is calm, but the storm is within.
The calendar is full, the inbox is raging, and yet—what gnaws at you is not what’s urgent, but what’s unknown. It’s not the decision on your desk, but the quiet sense that something larger is shifting, and you can’t quite see it.
We tell ourselves it’s the market, the cycle, the chaos of our times.
But often, it’s something subtler. Quieter. Closer.
The architecture of our own mind—trying to make sense of a world it was never built to predict.
Uncertainty isn’t just out there—it’s in here, shaped by cognitive shortcuts that once helped us survive but now hijack clear thinking.
In this newsletter, we will cover:
1. Narrative Fallacy – How our love for stories leads us astray.
2. Salience Bias – Why the loudest signal isn’t always the most important.
3. Hyperbolic Discounting – How short-term thinking distorts long-term success.
4. Complexity Aversion – Our tendency to oversimplify what’s intricate.
5. Fear of Regret – How anticipated regret paralyzes decision-making.
6. Action Bias – Why doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing.
7. Control Illusion – The stress of believing we have more control than we do.
8. Surrogation – When metrics replace meaning.
9. Ambiguity Neglect – How ignoring uncertainty leads to overconfidence or paralysis.
10. Emotional Forecasting Error – Why we’re bad at predicting our future emotions.
Cognitive Hijackers and how to counter them:
🔹 Narrative Fallacy
We crave coherent stories, so we overfit random events into patterns (“The market’s collapsing” / “This is a sign”).
To Break it: Ask: What data am I ignoring to keep this story neat?
🔹 Salience Bias
What grabs attention (a crisis, a loud voice, a shock) dominates decision-making, even if it’s irrelevant or low-impact.
To Break it: Build signal discipline. Focus on the important, not the urgent.
🔹 Hyperbolic Discounting
We downplay long-term payoffs in favor of short-term relief—like deferring hard decisions.
To Break it: Timebox your thinking: What will this look like in 2 years?
🔹 Complexity Aversion
In the face of complex systems, we oversimplify—blaming one cause, one person, one solution.
To Break it: Embrace systems thinking. Map inter-dependencies before acting.
🔹 Fear of Regret (Anticipated Regret Bias)
We avoid decisions not because they’re risky—but because we fear blaming ourselves later.
To Break it: Shift from fear of regret to clarity of intention. Ask: What would I regret not doing?
🔹 Action Bias
In uncertainty, we default to doing something—even if stillness is wiser.
To Break it: Make inaction a considered choice, not a passive default.
🔹 Control Illusion
We believe our actions can steer outcomes far more than they actually do. This creates stress when reality resists.
To Break it: Separate controllables from concernables. Influence is not control.
🔹 Surrogation
We substitute metrics for meaning—chasing KPIs even when they no longer represent the right thing.
To Break it: Periodically ask: What is this metric a proxy for—and is it still valid?
🔹 Ambiguity Neglect
We treat uncertain information as if it were certain—leading to overconfidence or paralysis.
To Break it: Use probabilistic thinking. Not “yes or no,” but “how likely?”
🔹 Emotional Forecasting Error
We’re terrible at predicting how future events will make us feel. So we fear the worst—needlessly.
To Break it: Anchor in past resilience. You’ve been through chaos before—and emerged.
Conclusion
We are not captives of chaos, nor victims of volatility.
We are simply human—navigating complexity with tools forged in a simpler time.
But awareness is an edge. When we see the lens, we sharpen the view. And in that clarity, even the most uncertain future begins to feel… a little less unknowable.
