MONTHLY MULLING 💡
The Ladder Framework & The 3 Musketeers of Making Life-Size Decisions
Hi👋 Tapan here.
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Happy Sunday y’all!
🇳🇱 I am in Amsterdam for the weekend and it’s gorgeous out here. It’s amazing how the city is built around pedestrians, public transport, and cyclists! Not Just Bikes, one of my favourite YT channels, talks about the importance of this in a lot more detail.
😮💨 Over the last week, I have been on a mission to revamp the content on my website. I have published new articles and made changes to a few old ones (Cargo Cult Thinking, Diderot Effect, Strong Opinions Loosely Held, The Knowledge Pipeline).
🙏🏽 Can I ask y’all for a favour? If you have been enjoying Monthly Mulling, please share this issue on your Twitter or Instagram and tag me! I will add the recommendation to the ‘Newsletter page’ on my website.
📖 Currently, I am reading: What’s Our Problem by Tim Urban
This book is a self-proclaimed self-help guide for society. It is written by Tim Urban, who is the author of my favourite blog Wait But Why. Over the last six years, Tim has focused on a few key questions: What is happening in our world? Why has everything turned into such a mess? Why do people act like babies? When did things become so tribal? Why do humans behave in certain ways? In response, he developed a framework for thinking about society, which he explains in this book.
🪜 How Do You Think? - The Ladder Framework
The Ladder Framework comes directly from Tim Urban’s book, What’s Our Problem?
🧠 The Ladder is a thinking tool that helps us see the world and ourselves in a better light. One of the most important takeaways is to be aware of each rung of the ladder and how we form our beliefs.
According to the framework, there are two minds at play:
🧞♂️ The Higher Mind, which aims to seek truth, and 🐒 The Primitive Mind, which seeks confirmation of existing beliefs (hello, confirmation bias!).
As the image shows, there are 4 rungs in the realm of thinking. Four ways of forming beliefs.
🔬 Scientist (Higher Mind in control) - You start with "I don't know", evaluate information, form a hypothesis, test it out, and voila, you've created knowledge!
🏈 Sports Fan (Higher Mind has the edge) - You are like a real-life sports fan who wants a fair game without corruption, but still roots for one team over the other.
👨🏽💼 Attorney (Primitive Mind has the edge) - Your reasoning is motivated, and beliefs aren't treated like an experiment, but like a case to be won. An Attorney doesn’t start at Point A. They start at Point B and then find their way to Point A.
Before I move forward, I have to clarify this point. As a person with quite a few real-life attorney friends, this is just Tim’s way of explaining the 4 rungs of thinking. In a real-life courtroom, attorneys know that the best way for the system to yield truth is for them to make the best possible case for one side of the story 😅
🤐 Zealot (Primitive Mind in control) - Your beliefs are sacred, not to be challenged, but to be protected with 100% conviction.
Next time when you are reflecting on your beliefs, use this framework. See how it was formed. Were you a Scientist or a Zealot?💡
🤷🏽♂️ Happy, Smart, and Useful
Derek Sivers is one of my favourite authors. I frequent his simple website frequently for inspiration. On one such occasion, I stumbled upon this article on making life-size decisions.
There are three things to consider:
😁 What makes you happy
🧠 What’s smart — meaning long-term good for you
🙇🏼♂️ What’s useful to others
We have a tendency to forget one of these.
🧠🙇🏼♂️ Smart & useful (not happy) - The stereotypical child fulfilling their parent’s dream of going to the best school and making money. It's rational, like a machine, but without happiness, which is the oil that keeps everything running smoothly.
😁🧠 Happy & smart (not useful) - This is the lifestyle design addict who obsessively focuses on creating the perfect life. It's not bad to be self-focused, but it relies heavily on being lifted by others.
😁🙇🏼♂️ Happy & useful (not smart) - This is like the stereotypical charity worker who works tirelessly to help the impoverished. They do good for the world, but there's a lot of unused potential.
😁 What about just happy? (not smart or useful) - It's important to be happy, but if you focus only on the present and don't prepare for the future, you'll be filled with regret. And if you only serve yourself and not others, you'll miss out on many rewarding experiences.
So…
When life or a plan feels ultimately unsatisfying, it’s usually because you’ve forgotten to find the intersection of all three:
😁 What makes me happy
🧠 What’s smart
🙇🏼♂️ What’s useful to others
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