Stretch - Sonsenshein summary

When making an important decision, whether it’s choosing a new IT system at the office or a medical treatment for an illness in the family, people tend to place their trust in experts.

However, experts aren’t always the most reliable people. In fact, traditional experts often don’t have the best perspective. For instance, in 20 years of analyzing political issues, the psychologist Phil Tetlock found that experts aren’t any better at predicting future events than your average person, regardless of their professional experience. Whether people were liberal or conservative, optimistic or pessimistic, the results were the same. In most cases, the experts and non-experts offered comparable prognoses.

Whether it’s for a summer vacation or a work project, most people love having a plan. Planning offers a comfortable roadmap to follow, ensuring that we’ll achieve the best results. But there’s a downside, too. Planning can also cause us to miss out on all kinds of beneficial things.

Often, people learn more by acting than by planning.

People often act as we expect they will – a fact that can have a major effect on our interpersonal interactions. Expectations influence experience, and they can define relationships, too.

Our expectations are essentially images of people or things that we haven’t yet encountered. Just imagine a new employee joins your company. You haven’t so much as spoken to him but your coworker assures you that he’s a jerk. When you do meet this new colleague, you’ll likely treat him differently than if you hadn’t heard anything about him.

Whether it’s a morning coffee ritual or an evening stroll, everyday routines give you a structure that helps you accomplish more things in a shorter time. That being said, people also tend to see routines as boring and inflexible.

So how can you get the most out of your routine without letting it bog you down?

Now that you’ve got a sense of what it takes to be a successful stretcher, it’s time for another important lesson: how to avoid overstretching. Without this knowledge about how to keep yourself in check, you’ll risk injuring yourself or others. To stay safe, just avoid these common mistakes:

The first way that people tend to overstretch is by becoming a cheapskate. For instance, while carefully managing your resources is key to being a stretcher, there’s a limit to how far you can go. Remember, the difference between being economical and being a cheapskate is that the former saves to invest in something meaningful while the latter is scared of spending any money at all.

As people age, they start to learn that working out is necessary to avoid injuries, and the same goes for stretchers. But instead of hitting the gym, the ticket here is to work on balance, specifically between your existing resources and your exploration of new things.

Look around and identify the resources you have at your disposal but haven’t used. This can turn up all kinds of gems. For instance, a recent Indiana University study found that the most important scientific papers were “sleeping beauties,” papers that were published but forgotten.