When you judge something, you basically have to think "half right, half wrong."
More precisely: "correct from one angle, wrong from another."
I deliberately wrote "have to think" because it comes from reasoning that way logically.
Of course "half" is a figure of speech — the ratio isn't exact.
At minimum, you should concede something in your stance on thinking.
A decision is choosing which thinking position you take — and then putting that into action.
At least taking intellectual risk itself should be something almost anyone can do.
If you understand what the risk is, there's nothing wrong with taking that "thinking position."
Without some thinking position, you can't move to action anyway.
And if your prediction fails and you take a hit for that position, you must not conclude that reality was wrong.
That's just bias.
Honestly admit that your thinking position was wrong.
But when that thinking position was wrong, you must not fully surrender to the opposite position either.
Flexibly changing the ratio is welcome — but you shouldn't completely switch the position itself.
Reality just happened to go that way; nobody can predict that in advance.
More than that: even people who keep succeeding only had their thinking position happen to be right that time — in other words, they were lucky.
Especially when you're young or light on results, seniors who've succeeded more than you may tell you "you're wrong," berate you, and you fight back while hurt — then when results don't come, they say "see?"
Conversely, even if you follow that senior and move your thinking position to theirs, that isn't bad in itself. Flexibility deserves praise. But if results don't come, you're still the one responsible.
Whatever the gradient of the ratio, "I took that thinking position" doesn't change.
Suppose there's a "new manga artist" and a "sharp editor," and the editor trashes the work the artist wants to draw.
The new artist gets angry, takes it to another magazine, serializes it, and succeeds. Judging from reality that "the new artist was right" is indeed correct.
Going further back and saying the editor was wrong is easy — but it's only hindsight.
This is similar to the relationship between "founder" and "VC." Emotionally I want to side with the new manga artist and the founder too — but judging by results is bad, and even without results you should be careful about judging.
"Correctness" can only be evaluated from one-sided views.
The big downside of keeping thinking positions as gradients rather than 0/1 is that both deciding and acting "take time."
0/1 is clear, and it's clear after you act too. PDCA speed and the like are faster.
Still, reality isn't that simple — basically nothing is pure 0/1 — so the gap versus "gradient thinking" tends to be larger.
But when that stance is right, the upside you enjoy should be large. (At least in the short term.)
Which is better depends on the person — and holding a gradient on every judgment is hard anyway.
So you can't divide people into "binary people" vs "gradient people."
You can't be binary about everything, and the reverse is also true.
It should differ by the subject.
That's all.
Tweet© 2025 ZUUHE