This is a YouTube video titled "#295: Beware of These Two Biases in Your Business" published in July 2024. It features Ed Gandia hosting an episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, where he discusses cognitive biases such as recency bias and availability heuristic, explaining how they can negatively impact business decisions and mindset. The content is a solo podcast episode with some additional speaker segments but primarily led by Ed Gandia.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.
Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients.
With over 1 million downloads from listeners.
Just like you across 101 countries, this.
Episode is much shorter than usual.
Rather than my typical 45 minute format, today I'm sharing a quick tip with you. This is part of the Audio Insights I publish for my private coaching clients every weekday, and I thought you'd find it helpful.
So here we go. Hope you enjoy it. Every one of us falls prey to cognitive biases. Not because we're stupid or unsophisticated decision makers, but because we're human and our biology is such that we're programmed to conserve energy. And thinking takes energy. So if our brain can develop thinking shortcuts or heuristics, it will do so. And it does all the time. Now, sometimes these biases and heuristics can help us make good decisions, but very often they help us to opposite. I'll give you two cognitive biases you'll need to be on the lookout for, because they can trick us into doing the wrong things in our business. They're both closely related. The first is the recency bias. So according to Wikipedia, the recency bias is a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones. It gives, and I quote, greater importance to the most recent event, such as the final lawyer's closing argument a jury hears before being dismissed to deliberate. The other one is called the availability heuristic, also known as the availability bias, and it's a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. Here again directly from Wikipedia. So how can these biases negatively impact us? Well, here are just two situations. Say you've hit a rough patch in your business. You try a few things to get back on track. They don't work. And that makes you worry even more, which makes it even harder for you to improve your performance, because prospects and clients can start feeling your desperation. But what really makes matters worse is that you start putting way too much emphasis on your most recent outcomes, which happen to be negative. In this case, it's your most recent examples to take center stage. And if you're not careful, you'll quickly forget all the amazing things you've done and achieved in your business over the years. What seems to dominate your thinking now is all the bad stuff that's been happening over the past few days and weeks. The other situation is when you have the opposite problem. You're beyond book solid. You don't have a moment to breathe. You're stressed, you're burning out, and because of the recency and availability biases, you can't seem to find your way out.
Of this highly stressful situation.
You feel trapped and you quickly forget all the amazing things about your business that you love. Why? Because your current situation overrides all that information. You're placing way too much emphasis, an unfair amount of emphasis on what's happening now and what's happened very recently. Now there's more I could say about these biases, not to mention the other types of biases out there that make us do stupid things. But I'll leave it here for today. The important thing for you to know or to be mindful of is is what your current situation is and to think about how it might be impacting your mood, your mindset and your actions. And just ask yourself, you know, I wonder if the way I'm feeling right now has something to do, maybe an unfair amount to do with what's happened recently. Awareness is the first step to solving the problem.
Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More in Less Time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the detailed show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.
