25 Jun Factfulness Rules of Thumb – Really Helpful Reminders

Source of illustrations: Gapminder.org

 
When you are making a big decision or even just going through your day-to-day life, remembering the impact your dramatic attention filter has on how you perceive the world is important.

“Factfulness is a relaxing habit for critical thinking. It helps you maintain a fact-based worldview. It teaches you how to recognise and avoid the most common ways information gets misinterpreted. . . Factfulness is the skill to recognise the common types of stories that tend to get all the attention because they trigger our dramatic instincts.”  gapminder.org/factfulness/

Most of us are aware that we have a dramatic attention filter (it’s doing something with that awareness that is the hard part).  The first illustration below shows how our dramatic instincts play out in different ways. The second illustration helps to provide a great framework for assessing and countering these instinctual responses.