Kyle Messenger

Have you ever been over confident about something and then you realize just how wrong you really were? Well, this happens more than you think.  People make assumptions of everything they do. But, when it comes to your career, it can be a lot more serious.  If you were to portray yourself as a professional when in reality you don’t know much about your career, it can effect important people that can make a difference. In, “Don’t Blink!  The Hazards of Confidence” author Daniel Kahnemen, explains how to tell someone who actually have mastery in there field and from ones that don’t.

Kanheman explains how over confident professionals really aren’t experts after all. For example,” This was a perfect instance of a general rule that I call WYSIATI. ‘What you see is all there is.’ We had made up a story from the little w knew but had no way to allow for what we did not know about the individuals future, which is everything that would actually matter.” This explains how they only diagnosed their soldier from just what they have seen in a single test.  When thinking of a professional at something if they had a job to recruit soldiers wouldn’t you think a professional would take a longer procedure to know about their candidates and get a full back round idea rather than assuming his performance of battle just by seeing him help push a log over a wall. Which brings me to the next point, it is not only the pros who think they are know more than they do, everyone in the world according to Kanheman has a mindset that puts them at a disadvantage already. “We are prone to think that the world is more regular and predictable than it really is, because our memory automatically and continuosly maintains a story about what is going on, and because the rules of memory tend to make that story as coherent as possible and to suppress alternatives.” This adds to how memory can be a major factor in our thinking which can altar our minds to only think about your past experiences even if they are not the same scenario. So, if you were to examine somebody’s career and were to notice that they use the same tactics to depict one thing or another, this would be an indication that they don’t have as much knowledge as they speak of. Another way you can tell if somebody falsely believes they are masters in their field include the way they operate in their field. In the article they author explains how the soldiers would be picked based off of one fitness test that hasn’t changed at all. This supports, how having a lack of mastery can affect your strategies and procedures in your career. This matters in the world today because if this is happening in our own military generals this is most likely happening in all fields across the nation. This leads to problems not being able to solve which can then hurt us tremendously as a nation.