When was the last time you were wrong?

Being wrong sucks. That’s why many of us play it safe in most arenas. It’s easier to defend than it is to build. That’s why we order the same foods from restaurants and rewatch the same TV shows. They do what we expect them to, there’s less risk of being let down.

It speaks to a perspective of defending rather than building. Performance, though, doesn’t improve by always being right. It comes from noticing when you aren’t.

And then doing something about it.

A well-cited 1991 study reduced human behaviour into two modes:

Exploration: the riskier path of seeking new ideas, perspectives, or ways of doing things.

Alex Hutchinson’s new book expands the definition: Exploration is where the outcome is uncertain, there’s a possibility of failure, and it requires effort.

Exploitation: the route of refining what we already know. When the focus is an inch wide and a mile deep.

Please note there’s no negative connotation to exploitation in this context; it simply means doing something you already understand.

Ultimately, in pursuit of performance, oscillation between the two is ideal. We explore to find something new, determine if it’s beneficial, then exploit.

But it’s so easy to return to what’s familiar. We’ve covered this in-depth before. Philosophers from Fromm(!) to Kierkegaard have highlighted the complications that arise from freedom.

That’s why we take the same route to work, hold the same political beliefs, and consume content from the same creators. Consistency can get comfortable. It can also become confining. Familiarity breeds confidence, rightly so, but when that turns presumptuous, it becomes a problem.

Mastery left unquestioned becomes maintenance.

After all, when we stop noticing we’re wrong, that only means we’ve stopped looking.

Perspective Check

You either saw the blue or the gold dress, or heard Yanny or Laurel. The answers are both right and wrong. Once we understand how the sausage is made, as it were, it becomes clear that your “truth” can be someone else’s “lie.”The more we acknowledge this and remain open-minded, the wider our aperture for performance becomes.

When our beliefs are challenged, the brain doesn’t react like it’s getting new information. It reacts like it’s under attack.

A 2016 neuroscience study showed that when people are presented with facts that contradict their strongly held views, the brain’s default mode network lights up, the same region associated with self-reflection and emotional defence.

In other words, being wrong feels like being threatened.

When we choose to explore rather than exploit, we’re encouraging failure. But as physical training shows, this is how we evolve.

Building Or Defending

There’s a quiet shift that happens when we’re good at what we do. We tend to move from curiosity to protection. Dopamine has diminishing returns for a reason: it encourages us to seek out what’s next.

We start out building and often end up defending.

That defence often looks like competence on the surface. But underneath it? Stagnation. A creeping fear that if you let your guard down, you’ll be found out.

“We’ve replaced what works with what feels good.” – Thomas Sowell

Being right feels good. So does staying comfortable. But that doesn’t mean it’s serving you.

Harvard research studying 19,000 people aged 18 to 68 found they consistently believe they “changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future.” The amount we change does slow down over the course of our lives, but noticeably less than we expect it to. This is called the end of history illusion.

Gilbert, co-author of the study, surmised our potential as such: “the person you are right now is as transient, fleeting and temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.”

We underplay our potential for change in the future to our detriment; we’ve explored in the past, now it’s time to exploit. The version of ourselves right now isn’t final. We’re still malleable. You’re far from done.

We act as if we’ve arrived. Really though, we’re always arriving.

Kids Can School You

I was talking to my 10-year-old niece recently. She rattled off mind-blowing facts from school that sounded outlandish. I was sceptical, so I looked them up…and she was right. Again and again. It reminded me that being older has no inherent connection to being right. It just means we’ve had more time to get attached to our answers.

We calcify without noticing. In politics. In relationships. In leadership. And in performance. Flexibility, not certainty, allows us to adapt, improve and outlast.

Exploration isn’t just a metaphor. Genetic research has shown that modern people born further from humanity’s African origin — those whose ancestors historically migrated more often— are more likely to carry gene variants associated with novelty-seeking and exploration. It’s literally in our blood to roam.

What are you holding onto that no longer serves you?

You can stay right. Or you can grow. Not both.

Exploration is uncomfortable. But it’s where the light is. It’s what got you here in the first place. That early restlessness, the refusal to settle, the sense that there was more to see and more to say. That’s still in you — if you stop defending long enough to hear it.