This is Stevea Robbins.

Welcome to the Get It Done Guys' quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

It's election time.

Suddenly all of our friends are experts in foreign policy, environmental regulation, economics,

and all kinds of other things they never talk about except in election years.

If only they realized how ignorant, irrational, and hideously

unqualified to vote they all sounded. Not like us, of course. We are completely educated

on all of the issues. We're rational and we are gloriously qualified to vote. That's why

it's good to be us. Sadly though, we are also human, so we still have unconscious biases that can destroy our good decisions.

Our brains sometimes feel certain about an issue, even when there's no actual basis for the

certainty. I was eating Seshwan chicken once, and I was absolutely certain that that cute little

red pepper would be super easy to eat. And it was. If by super easy, you mean strapped to a gurney, screaming while

being shuttled to the emergency room for an emergency tongue transplant. We all have built-in

biases that blind us to even the most obvious disasters right in front of our noses. Just take one look

at 1970s fashion, flowery embroidered bell bottoms worn with fringed leathered vests. It took us years to

truly realize the horror of what we'd done. Biases matter because they distort our worldview. Our

worldview determines our actions, and our actions determine the results that we get. If we act

on bias instead of reality, we get worse results. Your boss gives you a hard assignment.

If you have a bias to believe that your boss hates you, what you think is, they're

torturing me, and you quit. Oops. It turns out your boss gave you a hard assignment because

you're up for promotion to lesser grand pooh-bah. This assignment would prove your worth

to the council of poohs. If you had known the truth, rather than your false belief, you might be lounging around

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