Is all information truth? Are you that little voice in your head – that creates all the drama?
Are capable managers clear thinkers, who have mastered the basics? Perhaps being an effective manager means being able to create some fundamental distinctions and not taking oneself too seriously.
Does part of making effective decisions boil down to dealing with reality. Reality as it is, not how the little voice tells you it should be. What daily practice do Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates with $124 billion assets under management and Meta chairperson, Mark Zuckerberg have in common? [Meta reported a trailing 12-month revenue of $170.35 billion, as of the first quarter of 2025.]
“Information is not the same as truth. Most information is not an accurate representation of reality. The main role information plays is to connect many things, to connect people. Sometimes people are connected by truth, but often it is easier to use fiction or illusion,” says historian of change, Yuval Noah Harari, author of Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.
We love stories, with all their soap opera like emotion and drama. Take the addictive magnetic allure of social media that share the secrets of success and how to get rich quick.
Even social media’s the poor cousin, business books paint stories of magical conquests. Dry data, facts and figures are less appealing, they don’t have that juicy arousing appeal.
Smart means clear and calm
“The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level. I would rather understand the basics really well than memorise all kinds of complicated concepts I can’t stitch together and can’t rederive from the basics. If you can’t rederive concepts from the basics as you need them. You’re just memorising,” advises Silicon Valley sage investor, Naval Ravikant.
“The advanced concepts in a field are less proven. We use them to signal insider knowledge, but we’d be better off nailing the basics,” advises Naval.
Helps to see business reality for what it is – not how we wish it would be. “The ‘monkey mind’ will always respond with this regurgitated emotional response to what it thinks the world should be. Those desires will cloud your reality. The number one thing clouding us from being able to see reality is we have preconceived notions of the way it should be,” says the creator of AngelList, that serves start-ups and investors.
Manager’s mind default programme is to survive – and be right
Imagine our brain’s prime purpose is survival, and conserving energy. Ever notice your mind says – you are always right [well, most of the time].
It’s almost as though the programming that worked thousands of years ago on the East African plains, where the main aim was to eat and escape predators is still the default mode. Catch is we are in the ‘too much’ overwhelm information age, AI, and whatever is coming next.
Time for an upgrade and understanding how a manager’s decision-making system works. Even making the leap to not believing everything, that little voice in your head is telling you.
Helps to step back and imagine yourself, just sitting comfortably across the room, simply watching yourself, and everything that’s going on.
“We can make the all-important decisions needed to survive, and then implement those in the form of orders given to the different parts of our bodies so we can remain safe. That’s it, really. Your brain is your inner voice. It’s the one telling you what’s going on and suggesting how things should be. It is the one making all the noise.”
“And that is magnificent news, because it means that your thoughts don’t define you. If you are not the thoughts in your head, then you no longer need to obey. You don’t even have to listen. Best of all, with a little bit of practice, you can – and should – frequently tell your brain to shut up completely,” writes Mo Gawdat, the former chief business officer of Google X in his 2022 book That Little Voice in Your Head.
Helps to make the distinction, perhaps you are not your mind. One way to do this is just stop, sit back, close your eyes and just watch the torrent of thoughts that come up. It’s almost impossible to turn them off, all you can do is just observe them, like clouds passing in the sky.
Mindfulness has become all the rage, for good reason. Being mindful is simply being aware of the present moment. Seeing the noise for what it is, shifting one’s sense of reality.
Interesting, that the creators of all the distractions, like Mark Zuckerberg and the wizards of Silicon Valley get a business edge through meditation.
Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, started in 1975, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, managing billions of institutional investments, attributes much of his success to meditation.
Dalio practices meditation twice a day, morning and evening, for 20 minutes. Open-mindedness, creativity, and ability to handle difficult situations with calm – are reasons he does it. What is that voice in your head saying now?
