Eliminating errors is the key to success

WHEN POPE Julius II asked one of the greatest artists of our world, Michelangelo: “Tell me the secret to your genius. How did you create David, the masterpiece of all masterpieces?” Michelangelo’s answer was a simple: “I removed everything else that was not David.” In his book, Rolf Dobelli, a Swiss novelist and entrepreneur, writes about exactly that. He presents a series of short, cogent articles that illustrate fallacies and shortcomings in the modern thought process. By supporting them with real-life examples, he provides the reader with new ammunition in cutting through some of the fluff that defines modern communications. Say for example; do you know what makes you successful? Probably not clearly enough. Dobelli points out that people often do not know what makes them successful. It is equally hard to point out what make us truly happy. However, everyone knows what makes them miserable, what kills success and destroys happiness. The realisation highlights the fundamental basis of our thought and decision making processes. Negative Knowledge (what not to do) is more potent than Positive Knowledge (what to do). Dobelli’s book, spreading over 99 smallish chapters, tells his readers to adopt Michelangelo's method; basically focus on everything that is not David. Greeks, Romans and other medieval thinkers gave this process a term; Via Negativa—eliminate errors, processes, and stuff that destroys happiness and kills success, to have a clear and better understanding of life and its meaning. Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, accepted the importance of Via Negativa in building his successful empire. While writing about himself and his partner, Charlie Munger, Buffett wrote: “Charlie and I have not learnt how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learnt is how best to avoid them.” What Dobelli presents is a list of 99 fallacies and biases which influence people’s thought processes (for example; personification, confirmation bias, hindsight bias, etc.). One of the finer things about Dobelli’s book is that the author illustrates some of his points through personal experience. One of his chapters—Why you should not read the news—he writes that modern “news” is to the common mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, even easy to digest, but destructive in the long run. As an experiment Dobelli allegedly stopped reading and listening to news for three years. The first few weeks were difficult, however, he writes, after a while he allegedly had a fresh outlook, clearer thoughts, and valuable insights into the world surrounding him, and better decision making ability. Despite not reading or listening to the news, he remained informed of most world developments through social circles, which acted as a news filter. Instead of the daily news, Dobelli suggests to his readers to read long background articles and books to understand their worlds better. Dobelli argues that real insight is never instant. It takes time to piece together complex causality, and the global news machine of bite-sized nuggets does not do complexity. The Art Of Thinking Clearly started as a series of notes and personal anecdotes, which Dobelli took for himself. Later, it turned into newspaper columns, and finally, a book. In one of the discussions in his book, Dobelli writes that the majority of errors which he mentions in the book are related to each other. Though he is not a social scientist, however, Dobelli's wealth of knowledge about entrepreneurship and his capacity as a novelist, makes this book an interesting read. What the book does not do is guarantee success. What it does is to help eliminate the smaller stuff. This is not a how-to book. There are not many seven steps to an error-free life. Though this book may not hold the key to happiness, at the very least it acts as insurance against too much self-induced unhappiness. If we could learn to recognise and evade the biggest errors in thinking we might experience a leap in prosperity—that is how the introduction starts. Fortunately, it stays true to this ideal. It is not a book that shoves morsels of what to do down the readers’ throats. It is rather a true self-help book that helps focus on the self first.