The Five Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done

Michael Dearing is the former chief engineer for Sun Microsystems and has PhD in computer scientist. He gave a presentation on some “common patterns of automatic thought among those who get a lot of stuff done [and/or] create tons of value” in Silicon Valley.

Here’s my distilled version:

• Definition: cognitive distortions are strong patterns of automatic thoughts.
• They are important because they act as filters that ultimately influence thinking, shape interpretation of reality, and become the basis for action.
• The Big Five
  1. Personal Exceptionalism: “I am special.”
     • Definition: a macro sense that you are in the top of your cohort, your work is snowflake special, or that you are destined to have experiences well outside the bounds of “normal;” not to be confused with arrogance or high self-esteem.
     • Benefit: resilience, stamina, charisma.
     • Deadly risk: assuming macro exceptionalism means micro exceptionalism, brittleness.
  2. Dichotomous Thinking: “X is sh*t. Y is genius.
     • Definition: being extremely judgmental of people, experiences, things; highly opinionated at the extremes; sees black and white, little grey
     • Benefit: achieves excellence frequently
     • Deadly risk: perfectionism
  3. Correct Overgeneralization: “I see two dots and draw the right line.”
     • Definition: making universal judgments from limited observations and being right a lot of the time
     • Benefits: saves time
     • Deadly risk: addiction to instinct and indifference to data
  4. Blank Canvas Thinking: “Painting by numbers isn’t art. And I want to make art.”
     • Definition: sees own life as a blank canvas, not a paint by numbers
     • Benefits: no sense of coloring outside the lines, creates surprises
     • Deadly risk: “Ars gratia artis,” failure to launch, failure to scale
  5. Schumpeterianism¹: “I am a creative destruction machine.”
     • Definition: sees creative destruction as natural, necessary, and as their vocation
     • Benefits: fearlessness, tolerance for destruction and pain
     • Deadly risk: heartless ambition, alienation

Are you a person who gets stuff done?

1. Named after Joseph Schumpeter ↩