Your Best Self #4: The Spotlight Effect

What's up, everyone. This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew. Welcome back to Founder’s Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you, the business builder, the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business, a team, or a new product. This week on Founder’s Journal, we're doing things a little differently. We are dropping a mini-series focused on being your best self. I'm giving you mental models, strategies, and tips to get you in the right mindset before the new year. That means instead of just one episode Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, this week we're giving you two: a new show that you won't want to miss plus a classic episode you maybe haven't heard before. If you haven't listened to today's classic episode, go back and check it out. But today I am talking about The Spotlight Effect. Let's hop into it. 

What is a cognitive bias? 

So a few days ago, Elon Musk, in true Elon fashion, tweeted an infographic that was titled “50 cognitive biases to be aware of so you can be the very best version of you.” And his tweet above the infographic said, this should be taught to all at a young age and then had the infographic and that infographic had a diagram and description of these 50 cognitive biases that I just described. And so I plan to talk about a number of these cognitive biases in future Founder’s Journal episodes, but I decided to take this episode to explain what a cognitive bias is and share one of these 50 biases that I think more awareness around could lead to a happier you in 2022. So let's start from the top. What is a cognitive bias? Well, the textbook definition is a cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make. It is something that typically works as a rule of thumb that helps you simplify the world and reach decisions with speed. Here's how I understand it. I've said this in past episodes, but my belief is that we have two experiences with the world. The first is the experience of what actually happens. And the second is our story of what actually happens. And while our goal in life is to have clarity around our story of what happens, sometimes that story gets muddied, whether it's because the world is super complex and we need shortcuts to understand it, or because we are emotional beings and our stories serve our emotions in some way, the story of what happens ends up being far different than what actually happened. Now, cognitive biases are shortcuts that bias our stories, and don't allow us to see what actually happens in the world clearly. And the whole idea is if you can have awareness around these biases around any, or hopefully all of the 50 biases that I mentioned earlier, you'll be able to revise your stories of the world to account for them. I seriously think you could take an entire course on cognitive biases that control our lives, and you would get more value from that course than 99% of classes you took in college. So consider this first bias I'm about to share the first of many in this category of content that I'm going to share in future Founder’s Journals. 

The Spotlight Effect

Cognitive bias number one is something called The Spotlight Effect. I'm going to do something similar to how I defined the cognitive biases overall before, which is share the textbook definition and then I'll share my interpretation and a few personal examples. The Spotlight Effect is the phenomenon in which people tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are. The reason for The Spotlight Effect is the innate tendency to forget that, although you are the center of your world, you're not the center of everyone else's world. And studies have proven that The Spotlight Effect is a very real thing. So there's this one study where a student was asked to complete a task in a room of other students. And this one student was asked to wear an embarrassing shirt. In this study, they were asked to wear a shirt with Barry Manilow's face on it. The researchers asked the student wearing the Barry Manilow shirt what percentage of the room they thought noticed his or her embarrassing shirt? And the embarrassing shirt wearer estimated 50%. In reality, only 25% of the people in the room were able to identify the Barry Manilow shirt. And interestingly, when other students that were asked to watch a recording of this room were then asked how many people notice the embarrassing shirt they answered similarly to reality, which was 25%. All of that to say that actually wearing the shirt and being in this situation caused people to overestimate how many people would notice. So here's my take on The Spotlight Effect, which I think I have to call the Barry Manilow effect now: Very simply, we are very, very bad at estimating how much the world cares about us. This is not to say that you're not important, and it's not to say that you're egotistical and think the whole world revolves around you. But because we are the lead actors in our own lives, we think that everyone is watching our Broadway show at all times. And that's just not the case. And I've seen this manifest in so many ways in my life. When I moved from the CEO role to the executive chairman role, I feared what people would think and say, calling me a fraud or thinking that I got a demotion. When I left Morgan Stanley to do Morning Brew full time, I worried that people would call me crazy and say that I'm an idiot for trying to start a newsletter business. But want to know the truth here? No one fucking cared. They didn't care and that's not to make you feel unimportant, but it's just the reality. We are the center of our own universes, but we are not the center of other people's universes. Now I think that this can actually be an incredibly motivating thing, because as you think about taking a big leap of faith in your career, or going full time on that silly side project, or making some other big move in 2022, just tell yourself nobody cares. Nobody is going to laugh at you. Nobody is going to judge you. Nobody is going to care about you because just like you, they are the center of their universe and think everyone is caring about them as well. 

I want to hear from you

So to recap, cognitive biases are really powerful. They show up constantly in our lives and we need to identify them and control them. So they don't control us. Now, I have a quick ask of you, my amazing Founder’s Journal community. First pound, the subscribe button for Founder’s Journal on Apple, Spotify, or the podcast player of your choice. It is the number one way we grow the show and it's also how you find out about content when it drops. And also while you're doing that, if you'd be so kind to leave a review on Apple, I believe they also just added the functionality to Spotify. And thank you so much again for listening. I hope you have a great start to the new year and I'll catch you next episode.