Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Write down what you're assuming
Facts and assumptions
Assumptions and facts feel identical because the brain delivers them in the same emotional tone. On paper they separate, and much of the suffering turns out to be fueled by sentences that begin with maybe or what if.
What the facts ask for
The known list then shows what it asks of a person. A friend who hasn't replied calls for patience. A mistake at work calls for an apology or a correction. A medical appointment next week calls for writing down questions. That returns attention to the actual responsibility: responding to the information on hand instead of trying to control the answer.
Sitting with questions
Part of the difficulty is a culture of instant certainty, where food deliveries can be tracked and flights followed across a map in real time. Emotional life doesn't work that way. Relationships don't offer constant reassurance and careers don't come with guaranteed outcomes. Emotional maturity includes sitting inside unanswered questions without letting imagination answer them.
Why do assumptions feel as solid as facts?
Daniel Kahneman described a habit he called WYSIATI, short for what you see is all there is, in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow. The mind builds the most coherent story it can from whatever information is on hand and does not flag what is missing. A coherent story produces a feeling of confidence, and that feeling carries no label separating known facts from guesses. Kahneman argued that confidence tracks the coherence of a story and says little about the quantity of evidence behind it.
Does writing worries down help?
Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock of the University of Chicago tested this in a 2011 study in Science. Students prone to test anxiety who wrote about their worries for ten minutes before a final exam scored higher than a control group. The effect appeared in a field study of high school biology exams as well as in lab experiments.
Why do uncertain waits feel longer?
David Maister, then a professor at Harvard Business School, laid out the psychology of waiting lines in a 1985 essay. He argued that uncertain waits feel longer than known, finite ones, and that unexplained waits feel longer than explained ones. His list of eight propositions about waiting also includes that anxiety makes waits seem longer.