Either/Or Thinking

Either/Or Thinking

Here is another post from Lou Tice at the Winners Circle. In this one he explores how “either/or”, or “black and white”, thinking can be a problem. And, once again, it’s a post that has really got me thinking about myself, and how I think about things.

Have you ever heard of “either/or” thinking? It’s a dangerous, but common, mistake many of us have been conditioned to make.

“Either/or” thinking, or black and white thinking as it is sometimes called, is basically just what it sounds like. Either/or thinkers don’t see shades of gray. They want easy answers to difficult questions, so they see life in terms of winners and losers, good guys and bad guys, success or failure, right and wrong.

But they fail to realize that right and wrong often depend on time, place, culture and purpose, among other things. They also fail to understand that no one is all good, or all bad, and that success and failure necessarily depend on how you define them, just like winning and losing do. It is a one-dimensional way of looking at the world.

“Either/or” thinkers don’t see the degrees of difference that stretch between most opposites, because if they did, it would require more complex thinking skills and a willingness to deal with subtle differences. Now, I mean it when I say they don’t see these things. They build scotomas, or blind spots, to this information, because it threatens their either/or belief system. So, even if the information is true, it doesn’t get through.

Do you ever catch yourself doing either/or thinking? Most of us do, from time to time, and it drastically limits our options. Deliberate self-awareness is essential – and a strong desire to keep your mind open to the full range of possibilities that will keep you from getting locked in a one-dimension world.

Lou Tice
The Pacific Institute

As I’ve sat and thought about this post, I’ve come to realize that: when it comes to other people, and what they’re doing, I tend to avoid “either/or” thinking; but when it comes to me, I tend to apply it. Other people can fall happily between the two, can be nearly right for instance, and I will happily accept that. But with me, especially when it comes to be right or wrong, there’s no real middle ground — if it isn’t absolutely right, then it’s wrong.

The trouble is, of course, things are rarely absolutely right. For instance, when I write anything, it can take for ever sometimes, as I agonize over which words to use — something which my memory really doesn’t help with at the moment. And I’m never totally satisfied with what I actually write. It’s probably the major factor in why I resisted writing a blog for as long as I did.

I never used to be quite so intolerant towards myself. But I think I can imagine where the change started. I did several different types of work in my working life, but for quite a number of years I was a centre-lathe turner, in engineering. For a few years I worked somewhere that the tolerances were pretty easy to hit, so mistakes were rarely made. But when I moved into a firm of precision toolmakers, it was a different matter. The tolerances we worked to were incredibly tight, sometimes as little as 0.0002 of an inch. Mistakes were made; if it was outside of that tolerance then it was wrong — no such thing as nearly right in that environment. Mistakes were made, but never accepted; you’d have thought the sky was going to fall in judging from the reaction of the bosses — it was always personal because you didn’t want them to make money. The job became a living nightmare; they were awful people to work for.

Thinking back to those years has been quite difficult. I think they did have a really quite marked effect on me. I won’t go into details about all of the crap that happened there — suffice to say that I finished up settling with them on an unfair dismissal charge before it went to a tribunal, it really was that bad. But it has been quite cathartic to write this down, and I think I’ve had something of an epiphany moment in thinking about how that time has effected me. And, hopefully, that will help me to make some much needed changes. I need to re-learn to be as tolerant of myself as I am of others.

I usually get something of value in my thinking from these posts from Lou Tice at the Winners Circle — this one maybe more than most. If you think you might as well, do please consider subscribing to the daily emails, they really are worth it.