Low-Hanging Fruit May Not Be Low: The Dunning–Kruger Effect

#How to assess opportunities Yesterday we discussed goals. Today, more from the founders of 37signals on opportunities. Imagine many new opportunities around you. How would you choose? Many people pick the one that looks easiest and most achievable: the low-hanging fruit. But the author warns that fruit looking low may not actually be low. It may simply be far away. Move closer and it is higher than it looked; closer still and it is completely out of reach. As with a mountain, only at its foot do you understand its height. In other words, when something looks easy, it may not be easy at all—you may simply not understand it. 37signals made similar mistakes. Wanting new lines of business, it was initially optimistic about hot areas it had never tried, such as adding social features to products or promoting on social media. Untapped gold mines seemed everywhere. In execution, however, everything proved much harder than expected. Those projects were ultimately shelved. Later, 37signals established a rule: never enter a completely unfamiliar new business, however easy it looks. People commonly display this cognitive bias. In fields we have not personally worked in, we naturally misjudge difficulty. This unfounded confidence is hard to overcome. Watching basketball or soccer, for example, many people want to smash the television. Either the players are terrible or the coach is foolish. But could any of us actually perform better? Almost certainly not. Cornell psychologist David Dunning and his graduate student Justin Kruger conducted research finding that those who understand less are more confident. Someone who has never touched a camera may think photography is simply pointing and shooting—what is difficult? An amateur with some knowledge, however, knows how far they have to go. Simply put, the less you know, the more confident you are. Psychology calls this the Dunning–Kruger effect, after the two researchers. The saying that a half-full bottle makes the most noise has a solid psychological basis.