Hindsight Bias, 10,000-hours, ​Failure, and Grit References

[ErinBecker]

These references were submitted by email from a recent instructor trainee. I will go through them and see which we should add to our materials.

Hindsight Bias I mentioned the Hindsight Bias today, and included the quote I last read about it in Stephen Pinker's book Sense of Style.

10,000-hours I also mentioned the 10,000-hour rule introduced by Malcolm Gladwell. Here is the podcast where he contrasts his book with the research done by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson (his book).

Yet another view on expertise (in the Sports domain, but still interesting) comes from David Epstein (interview and book).

​Failure I added a comment to the lesson stream on my experience with the Israeli Army's view of failure that I thought was interesting (summarized in this quote from Dan Senor and Saul Singer, "Israeli attitude and informality flow also from a cultural tolerance for what some Israelis call “constructive failures” or “intelligent failures.” Most local investors believe that without tolerating a large number of these failures, it is impossible to achieve true innovation. In the Israeli military, there is a tendency to treat all performance—both successful and unsuccessful—in training and simulations, and sometimes even in battle, as value-neutral. So long as the risk was taken intelligently, and not recklessly, there is something to be learned.") from Start-Up Nation.

Grit This work from the Duckworth lab is very interesting (book).

[karinlag]

+1 to these!

IMO, the 10 000 hours/aka deliberate practice is something we can emphasise quite a bit more. And, I love the term "intelligent failure", will adopt the term myself!

[ChristinaLK]

I think the main thing to add is the bit on failure?

Where would hindsight bias go?

[ChristinaLK]

Next steps for this issue:

• Decide if the following should be added to the training + if so, where:
  • information about hindsight bias (add in expertise episode?)
  • any information about the 10,000 hour rule (add to practice episode?)
  • add the quote about the Israeli army + failure to the failure section in the mindset episode
  • content from David Epstein interview/book
• Decide which of the following references to add to the reference page
  • Podcast about 10,000 hour rule contrasts (Malcolm Gladwell + Dr. K. Anders Ericsson)
  • Grit, from the Duckworth lab
  • David Epstein interview + book

[ha0ye]

The mindset regarding failure is also common in the business literature, sometimes as "failure culture" or "positive failure culture", and is usually related to "psychological safety". It would also be a good point to reinforce the motivation for emphasizing the Code of Conduct (see also #645).

Google has a lot of resources on this from their project to understand effective teams. Here's a link to one of the pages on learning from failure: https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/foster-an-innovative-workplace/steps/learn-from-failures/