Too often sales people push their products, feature dump or talk ill of their competitors. The ideal sales person is a Sales Consultant. The term Sales Consultant refers to a sales person who asks detailed probing questions and listens carefully to their clients needs. A Sales Consultant helps their clients grow their business so that the two companies can both grow together. A basic or simple sales person simply tries to take business that already exists.
So how can you be a Sales Consultant?

1. Be prepared. Go to your client’s website , linked in or google their company to learn as much as you can before calling. Failing to do so is lazy and disrespectful.
“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success”. Alexander Graham Bell

2. Build Rapport.  Build a connection with your customer by being personable, neatly dressed if in person and be sincere. Looking around their office for something to pose a connection to is disingenuous and fake.

It is important to respect your customers time and space. Use a public restroom before visiting their office, do not read any names on the paperwork on their desk. Give sincere compliments on their knowledge and give your customer the ability to educate you. To build rapport, remember the following quotes:
“Rapport equals trust plus comfort” Neil Strauss
“Rapport is the ultimate tool for producing results with other people. No matter what you want in life, if you can develop rapport with the right people, you’ll be able to fill their needs and they will be able to fill yours” Tony Robbins

3. Ask open-ended questions.  Ask the most broad questions as possible to start

• “What is new in the market?” “What challenges do you have”
• “What are some changes you would like to see?”
  

“Never miss a good chance to shut up”… Will Rogers
“When you talk you are repeating what you already know. But if you listen you may learn something new.” Dalai Lama
“One of the most sincere forms of respect is listening to what another has to say” Bryant McGill

4. Follow up questions.  Things such as

• “You mentioned such and such, why is that?”
• “When you said abc, I didn’t really understand. Why is that important?”

The reason most people fail to ask follow up questions is that they think they will look dumb. Through the conversation your client will eventually uncover that you did not understand them. Unfortunately for you they’ll be too polite to further explain then or ever again… "Humble your ego to ask for clarification because customers are too polite to clarify" 

“To be heard we must first listen”… LR Knost

5. Move them to topics that parallel to your strengths.   “So you mentioned that quality is important. I know we are more expensive but if it cut down on your rejects would that actually save you money?” This transition should be smooth and fit into something they have already said

6. Be respectful of their time. Remember that learning about your client is not an interrogation and should not feel clinical. This means that you should sound smooth and listen closely to signs they need to go. Sometimes you can bring up a subject that makes them want to stay and talk but the most important thing is to remember to be respectful.

“Respect is not imposed nor begged. It’s earned and offered.” Author unknown

7. Winding down. Once you get a good direction or course of action its important to transition the end of the meeting or conversation. You can be honest that you have a conference call but the best is to be direct and say “I need to go but I will send you the samples or quote you requested by tomorrow. Is that OK?” And always , always keep your word.

Remember  that as humans, there is no sweeter sound than to hear our names or the sound of our own voices. Are you speaking to your client so that you get to hear your own voice or so that they get to hear theirs? Ask detailed , probing questions, listen, be respectful and do what you say you will do.     Simple.

Wall covering news:

Dackor has launched Accent Planks which are an ideal product for wall decoration. These planks decorate Accent Walls for an upscale look. The options vary from the wood-look , Stone and leathers.

The Accent Planks  standard size for woodgrains and hand painted white are 6" x 48" whereas the Accent Planks XL for "extra large" are 24" X 48" since the larger format of leathers and stones look better in a larger size. Due to these panels light weight there are no issues in the panel size.

Accent Planks are made by Dackor in their Orlando based production facility utilizing their rigid 3D Laminates via a hot fused lamination technique to expanded PVC foam and the entire back utilizes an acrylic based peel and stick material rather than the strips used commonly in the plank market. The 6" wide planks come 16 square feet to a box whereas the XL planks come 32 square feet to a box.

To install the planks, you simply peel and stick with no need for grout, sealers or saws. To cut you simply score with a utility knife and pop the plank to its desired length.

The benefit of this unique wall covering is its ease of install, simple and unique look and lower cost. Dackor supplies renowed sculptured wall plank producers such as Interlam, Vertical Illusions, Lumicor, Soelberg Industries and 3form. Dackor highly recommends these companies due to the unique dimensional look that can only be achieved by these manufacturers. The Accent Planks are simply a more affordable wall covering that is meant to compete more with tile and fabrics.

The look of these Accent Planks are actually created by our selected series of designs which are textured to give a luxury look and since the planks have defined shapes the outline of the planks themselves give the desired finished look.

Dackor expects that the most popular items will be the leather series such as the black and white alligator as well as the stone series, especially the Sahara Stone concrete prints in 24" x 48" panels.

The company will be launching a new website to support the sampling and ordering at www.accentplanks.com

As an avid reader of books on personal development people often ask what is the one book I'd recommend. The answer is "Think and Grow Rich" by Napolean Hill. Its a business and life classic.

Napolean was introduced by Andrew Carnegie to the most successful people at the time. He studied what principles they all had in common and came up with 17 principles which I'll list below.

1. Definiteness of Purpose
Develop Definiteness of Purpose. Success and progress towards achieving your goals in life begin with knowing where you are going. Any dominating idea, plan, or purpose held in your conscious mind through repeated effort and emotionalized by a burning desire for its realization is taken over by the subconscious and acted upon through whatever natural and logical means may be available. Your mental attitude gives power to everything you do. If your attitude is positive, your actions and thoughts further your ends? If your attitude is negative, you are constantly undermining your own efforts. The starting point of all human achievement is the development of a Definite Major Purpose. Without a definite major purpose, you are as helpless as a ship without a compass.

2. Mastermind Alliance
Establish a Mastermind Alliance. A mastermind alliance consists of two or more minds working actively together in perfect harmony toward a common definite objective. Through a mastermind alliance you can appropriate and use the full strength of the experience, training, and knowledge of others just as if they were your own. No individual has ever achieved success without the help and cooperation of others. The value of “gathering together those of a like mind” is self-evident. A group of brains coordinated in a spirit of harmony will provide more thought energy than a single brain, just as a group of electric batteries will provide more energy than a single battery.
3. Applied Faith
Use Applied Faith. Faith is awareness of, belief in, and harmonizing with the universal powers. Faith is a state of mind which must be active not passive, to be useful in achieving lasting success. Close the door to fear behind you and you will quickly see the door of faith open before you. Fear is nothing more than a state of mind, which is subject to your own direction and control. Faith will not bring you what you desire, but it will show you the way to go after it for yourself.
4. Going the Extra Mile
Go the Extra Mile. Strength and struggle go hand in hand. Render more and better service than you are paid for, and sooner or later you will receive compound interest from your investment. The end of the rainbow is at the end of the second mile. The quality of the service rendered, plus the quantity of service rendered, plus the mental attitude in which it is rendered, equals your compensation. The more you give, the more you get.
5. Pleasing Personality
Assemble an Attractive Personality. A Positive Mental Attitude is the right mental attitude in any given situation. Courtesy is your most profitable asset… and it is absolutely free! Emotions are nothing but reflections of your mental attitude, which you can organize, guide, and completely control. Your personality is your greatest asset or your greatest liability because it embraces everything you control …your mind, body, and soul. To be happy, make someone else happy!
6. Personal Initiative
Create Personal Initiative. It is better to act on a plan that is still weak than to delay acting at all. Procrastination is the archenemy of personal initiative. Personal Initiative:
is contagious
succeeds where others fail
creates work
creates opportunity
creates the future
creates advancement
Procrastinators are experts in creating alibis.
Personal initiative is the inner power that starts all action.
7. Positive Mental Attitude
Build a Positive Mental Attitude. A Positive Mental Attitude is the single most important principle of the science of success, without which you cannot get the maximum benefit from the other sixteen principles. Success attracts success and failure attracts more failure. Your mental attitude is the only thing over which you, and only you, have complete control. A Positive Mental Attitude attracts opportunities for success, while a Negative Mental Attitude repels opportunities and doesn’t even take advantage of them when they do come along. A positive mind finds a way it can be done… a negative mind looks for all the ways it can’t be done.
8. Enthusiasm
Control Your Enthusiasm. To be enthusiastic-act enthusiastically! Enthusiasm is to progress toward success as gasoline is to a car’s engine. It is the fuel that drives things forward. Enthusiasm stimulates your subconscious mind. By feeding your conscious mind with enthusiasm, you impress upon your subconscious that your burning desire and your plan for attaining it are certain. Enthusiasm is a state of mind. It inspires action and is the most contagious of all emotions. Enthusiasm is more powerful than logic, reason, or rhetoric in getting your ideas across and in winning over others to your viewpoint.
9. Self-Discipline
Enforce Self-Discipline. Self-discipline is the process that ties together all your efforts of controlling your mind, your personal initiative, positive mental attitude and controlling your enthusiasm. Self-discipline makes you think before you act. The subconscious has access to all departments of the mind, but is not under the control of any. If you don’t discipline yourself, you are sure to be disciplined by others. Without self-discipline, you are as dangerous as a car running downhill without brakes or steering wheel.
10. Accurate Thinking
Think Accurately. Thoughts have power, are under your control, and can be used wisely or unwisely. Accurate thinkers accept no political, religious, or other type of thought, regardless of its source, until it is carefully analyzed. Accurate thinkers are the masters of their emotions. Accurate thought involves two fundamentals. First you must separate facts from information. Second you must separate facts into two classes? The important and unimportant. Accurate thinkers allow no one to do their thinking for them.
11. Controlled Attention
Control Your Attention. Keep your mind ON the things you want and OFF the things you don’t want! It is much easier to focus your attention on something you believe will happen than on something you believe is unlikely. Controlled attention is the act of coordinating all the faculties of your mind and directing their combined power to a specific end. Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy your mind at the same time. Independence starts with self-dependence.
12. Teamwork
Inspire Teamwork. There is no record of any great contribution to civilization without the cooperation of others. Enthusiasm is contagious and teamwork is the inevitable result. A good football team relies more on harmonious coordination of effort than individual skill. Most people will respond more freely to a request than they will to an order. Helping others solve their problems will help you solve your own.
13. Adversity and Defeat
Learn From Adversity and Defeat. Everyone faces defeat. It may be a stepping-stone or a stumbling block, depending on the mental attitude with which it is faced. Failure and pain are one language through which nature speaks to every living creature. You are never a failure until you accept defeat as permanent and quit trying. Edison failed 10,000 times before perfecting the electric light bulb. Don’t worry if you fail once. Every adversity, every failure, and every unpleasant experience carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit which may prove to be a blessing in disguise.
14. Creative Vision
Cultivate Creative Vision. Creative imagination has its base in the subconscious and is the medium through which you recognize new ideas and newly learned facts. Synthetic imagination springs from experience and reason; creative imagination springs from your commitment to your definite purpose. Imagination recognizes limitations. Creative vision sees no limitations. Your imaginative faculty will become weak through inaction. It can be revived through use. The man who dipped a chunk of ice cream in chocolate and called it “Eskimo Pie” made a fortune for the five seconds of imagination it took to create the idea!
15. Maintenance of Sound Health
Maintain Sound Health. To maintain a Positive Mental Attitude and develop a healthy mind and body, you must conquer fear and anxiety. Anything that affects your physical health also affects your mental health. A Positive Mental Attitude is the most important quality for sound mental and physical health. Exercise produces both physical and mental buoyancy. It clears sluggishness and dullness from body and mind. If you haven’t the willpower to keep your physical body in repair, you lack the power of will to maintain a positive mental attitude in other important circumstances that control your life.
16. Budgeting Time and Money
Budget Your Time and Money. Tell me how you use your time and how you spend your money, and I will tell you where and what you’ll be ten years from now. Take regular inventory of yourself to learn how and where you are spending your time and money. The secret of getting things done is: DO IT NOW! Time is too precious to be wasted on arguments and discontent. Some mistakes are able to be corrected, except the mistake of wasting time. When time is gone, it is gone forever.
17. Cosmic Habit Force
Use of Cosmic Habitforce. It takes a habit to replace a habit. All of your successes and failures are results of habits you have formed. The orderliness of the world of natural laws gives evidence that they are under control of a universal plan. For every result there is a cause, and results are brought about through the use of cosmic habitforce. First you create a habit, then it creates you.

This blog discusses industry tech things but also sales, marketing, specification, hiring and dare I say "personal development". That is not to say that I'm the one to really develop anyone however on average I read about 20 books a year on a wide variety of topics. From Friedrich Nietzshe and Jordan Peterson to Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank.

From all the reading, I sometimes develop my own ideas or analogies which I think may help others. Some may be common sense but just put in a way to firm up the context to make the info more useful.  

For this blog I'd like to discuss how to become humble by the 400 year observation of yourself. I'll explain below but before I start let me me mention why its important to be humble. Put simply, if you are humble and know your own weaknesses, only then will you be able to grow and take in new information. So to truly be wise, a person must not only obtain knowledge and life experience but they must understand their limitations.
 
 Imagine, if you will, you were able to travel back in time 400 years and found yourself living in those times. Imagine the old things you'd think or superstitions you'd hold. We are a product of our environment and influenced from a baby by our parents, friends, tv, school, and society as a whole. This means that you most likely would not have the same mind had you been borne 400 years ago. What would you tell the 400 year old you? Would you laugh at yourself or somehow view yourself as inferior with delusions and superstitions? Certainly the 400 old self that was subject to living in those times would not only be different but wouldn't they also be closed minded on some topics or possibly think you were odd or too advanced in ways that may not assimilate to that time period? But on many topics, the 400 year old you would be wrong. The old you's inability to see the future or the advancements would mean that its simply beyond their knowledge.


Now imagine you could go forward in time 400 years. What would you experience with the 400 future you? Would you be 200 years old? Would you have a mix of AI such as a robotic arm or memory interface? Who knows. But... Would the future you tell you things to blow your mind and also point out ways that you were wrong? Could it be some ideas that you posses now are simply wrong? You cannot see it because in the context of your position, the shared view of how you interpret your religion may simply be different. If you argue that these are static and do not change I'd refer you to look at the 400 year old you and argue differently.

What is it that I'm trying to say??
Its simple, I have ideas on things but maybe I'm wrong and maybe you are right. I don't mean on things such as what day it is and I need not give a specific instance. But if... you open your mind to others and listen and try to learn from everyone you meet and give respect to others even if you disagree you'll find harmony and happiness in doing so. It doesn't mean to blindly follow others or even to be a flake. It just means that keeping an open mind while holding your own opinions is not only nice... its wise.

The next point to the above is the idea of context. As humans we think in boxes. What that means is that when someone is talking we filter out everything they are saying with the context of our own understanding and put relevance to that topic into a particular box. When two people are debating a topic it is very frequent that from the context that they are both talking they are both correct. We are conditioned as humans to not be able to understand two truths that conflict. So our brains simply shut off all the data that the other person is delivering because it doesn't fit into our box or into our context. If one person is arguing a point as it pertains to say "the local level" and its benefit and another person is arguing a point that pertains to "a societal level" and the argument is based upon whose point is correct they could argue at length. Have you ever watched two people go back and forth over a topic and never agree?

The real key is to not speak with the sole intention of telling someone anything but to use your words to first understand. Asking questions such as "so what you're saying is" and repeating their words to give them a chance to correct you. If you do enough digging you'll be sure to understand them fully. Once you fully understand and agree with what they are saying then you can start to explain how you think and why. If the person is resistant you can ask them "Explain what it is that you think I am saying". If the person cannot repeat back to you what you are saying then you may be able to get them on the same page by explaining "Although I understand you do not agree with me, I only want you to know what I was saying". If the person refuses to leave their box and discuss in a civil and respectful way then just remember the old verse: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

I hope that you have found this post useful and if so please leave me a comment below. Humbly yours.... Mark 

Feeling humble yet? Below are a list of biases that humans possess. Mind blowing...
Name
Description

Ambiguity effect
The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown".

Anchoring or focalism
The tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor", on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject)

Anthropocentric thinking
The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena.

Anthropomorphism or personification
The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.

Attentional bias
The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts.

Automation bias
The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.

Availability heuristic
The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.

Availability cascade
A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").

Backfire effect
The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one's previous beliefs.cf. Continued influence effect.

Bandwagon effect
The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.

Base rate fallacy or Base rate neglect
The tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case).

Belief bias
An effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.

Ben Franklin effect
A person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person.

Berkson's paradox
The tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities.

Bias blind spot
The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.

Cheerleader effect
The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.

Choice-supportive bias
The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.

Clustering illusion
The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).

Confirmation bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Congruence bias
The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.

Conjunction fallacy
The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.

Conservatism (belief revision)
The tendency to revise one's belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.

Continued influence effect
The tendency to believe previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected. Misinformation can still influence inferences one generates after a correction has occurred. cf. Backfire effect

Contrast effect
The enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus' perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.

Courtesy bias
The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one's true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone.

Curse of knowledge
When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.

Declinism
The belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past favourably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.

Decoy effect
Preferences for either option A or B change in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is similar to option B but in no way better.

Denomination effect
The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g., coins) rather than large amounts (e.g., bills).

Disposition effect
The tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.

Distinction bias
The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.

Dunning–Kruger effect
The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.

Duration neglect
The neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value

Empathy gap
The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.

Endowment effect
The tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.

Exaggerated expectation
Based on the estimates, real-world evidence turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally inverse of the conservatism bias).

Experimenter's or expectation bias
The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.

Focusing effect
The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.

Forer effect or Barnum effect
The observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.

Framing effect
Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented

Frequency illusion
The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias). This illusion may explain some examples of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, when someone repeatedly notices a newly learned word or phrase shortly after learning it.

Functional fixedness
Limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.

Gambler's fallacy
The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."

Hard–easy effect
Based on a specific level of task difficulty, the confidence in judgments is too conservative and not extreme enough

Hindsight bias
Sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable[48] at the time those events happened.

Hostile attribution bias
The "hostile attribution bias" is the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.

Hot-hand fallacy
The "hot-hand fallacy" (also known as the "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand") is the fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.

Hyperbolic discounting
Discounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. Hyperbolic discounting leads to choices that are inconsistent over time – people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning.Also known as current moment bias, present-bias, and related to Dynamic inconsistency.

Identifiable victim effect
The tendency to respond more strongly to a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at risk.

Illusion of control
The tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.

Illusion of validity
Belief that our judgments are accurate, especially when available information is consistent or inter-correlated.

Illusory correlation
Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events.

Illusory truth effect
A tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity. These are specific cases of truthiness.

Impact bias
The tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.

Information bias
The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

Insensitivity to sample size
The tendency to under-expect variation in small samples.

Irrational escalation
The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong. Also known as the sunk cost fallacy.

Law of the instrument
An over-reliance on a familiar tool or methods, ignoring or under-valuing alternative approaches. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Less-is-better effect
The tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly.

Look-elsewhere effect
An apparently statistically significant observation may have actually arisen by chance because of the size of the parameter space to be searched.

Loss aversion
The disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it. (see also Sunk cost effects and endowment effect).

Mere exposure effect
The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.

Money illusion
The tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.

Moral credential effect
The tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.

Negativity bias or Negativity effect
Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories. (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).

Neglect of probability
The tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

Normalcy bias
The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.

Observer-expectancy effect
When a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).

Omission bias
The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).

Optimism bias
The tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes (see also wishful thinking, valence effect, positive outcome bias).

Ostrich effect
Ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.

Outcome bias
The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Overconfidence effect
Excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.

Pareidolia
A vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Pessimism bias
The tendency for some people, especially those suffering from depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them.

Planning fallacy
The tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

Post-purchase rationalization
The tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was good value.

Pro-innovation bias
The tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation's usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.

Projection bias
The tendency to overestimate how much our future selves share one's current preferences, thoughts and values, thus leading to sub-optimal choices.

Pseudocertainty effect
The tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.

Reactance
The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice (see also Reverse psychology).

Reactive devaluation
Devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary.

Recency illusion
The illusion that a word or language usage is a recent innovation when it is in fact long-established (see also frequency illusion).

Regressive bias
A certain state of mind wherein high values and high likelihoods are overestimated while low values and low likelihoods are underestimated.

Restraint bias
The tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.

Rhyme as reason effect
Rhyming statements are perceived as more truthful. A famous example being used in the O.J Simpson trial with the defense's use of the phrase "If the gloves don't fit, then you must acquit."

Risk compensation / Peltzman effect
The tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases.

Selective perception
The tendency for expectations to affect perception.

Semmelweis reflex
The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.

Sexual overperception bias / sexual underperception bias
The tendency to over-/underestimate sexual interest of another person in oneself.

Social comparison bias
The tendency, when making decisions, to favour potential candidates who don't compete with one's own particular strengths.

Social desirability bias
The tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviours in oneself and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviours.

Status quo bias
The tendency to like things to stay relatively the same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system justification).

Stereotyping
Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

Subadditivity effect
The tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.

Subjective validation
Perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.

Surrogation
Losing sight of the strategic construct that a measure is intended to represent, and subsequently acting as though the measure is the construct of interest.

Survivorship bias
Concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn't because of their lack of visibility.

Time-saving bias
Underestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively low speed and overestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively high speed.

Third-person effect
Belief that mass communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves.

Triviality / Parkinson's Law of
The tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Also known as bikeshedding, this bias explains why an organization may avoid specialized or complex subjects, such as the design of a nuclear reactor, and instead focus on something easy to grasp or rewarding to the average participant, such as the design of an adjacent bike shed.

Unit bias
The tendency to want to finish a given unit of a task or an item. Strong effects on the consumption of food in particular.

Weber–Fechner law
Difficulty in comparing small differences in large quantities.

Well travelled road effect
Underestimation of the duration taken to traverse oft-traveled routes and overestimation of the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.

"Women are wonderful" effect
A tendency to associate more positive attributes with women than with men.

Zero-risk bias
Preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Zero-sum bias
A bias whereby a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another).

 
This blog discusses industry tech things but also sales, marketing, specification, hiring and dare I say "personal development". That is not to say that I'm the one to really develop anyone however on average I read about 20 books a year on a wide variety of topics. From Friedrich Nietzshe and Jordan Peterson to Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank.

 


From all the reading, I sometimes develop my own ideas or analogies which I think may help others. Some may be common sense but just put in a way to firm up the context to make the info more useful.


For this blog I'd like to discuss how to become humble by the 400 year observation of yourself. I'll explain below but before I start let me me mention why its important to be humble. Put simply, if you are humble and know your own weaknesses, only then will you be able to grow and take in new information. So to truly be wise, a person must not only obtain knowledge and life experience but they must understand their limitations.
 
 Imagine, if you will, you were able to travel back in time 400 years and found yourself living in those times. Imagine the old things you'd think or superstitions you'd hold. We are a product of our environment and influenced from a baby by our parents, friends, tv, school, and society as a whole. This means that you most likely would not have the same mind had you been borne 400 years ago. What would you tell the 400 year old you? Would you laugh at yourself or somehow view yourself as inferior with delusions and superstitions? Certainly the 400 old self that was subject to living in those times would not only be different but wouldn't they also be closed minded on some topics or possibly think you were odd or too advanced in ways that may not assimilate to that time period? But on many topics, the 400 year old you would be wrong. The old you's inability to see the future or the advancements would mean that its simply beyond their knowledge.


Now imagine you could go forward in time 400 years. What would you experience with the 400 future you? Would you be 200 years old? Would you have a mix of AI such as a robotic arm or memory interface? Who knows. But... Would the future you tell you things to blow your mind and also point out ways that you were wrong? Could it be some ideas that you posses now are simply wrong? You cannot see it because in the context of your position, the shared view of how you interpret your religion may simply be different. If you argue that these are static and do not change I'd refer you to look at the 400 year old you and argue differently.

What is it that I'm trying to say??
Its simple, I have ideas on things but maybe I'm wrong and maybe you are right. I don't mean on things such as what day it is and I need not give a specific instance. But if... you open your mind to others and listen and try to learn from everyone you meet and give respect to others even if you disagree you'll find harmony and happiness in doing so. It doesn't mean to blindly follow others or even to be a flake. It just means that keeping an open mind while holding your own opinions is not only nice... its wise.

The next point to the above is the idea of context. As humans we think in boxes. What that means is that when someone is talking we filter out everything they are saying with the context of our own understanding and put relevance to that topic into a particular box. When two people are debating a topic it is very frequent that from the context that they are both talking they are both correct. We are conditioned as humans to not be able to understand two truths that conflict. So our brains simply shut off all the data that the other person is delivering because it doesn't fit into our box or into our context. If one person is arguing a point as it pertains to say "the local level" and its benefit and another person is arguing a point that pertains to "a societal level" and the argument is based upon whose point is correct they could argue at length. Have you ever watched two people go back and forth over a topic and never agree?

The real key is to not speak with the sole intention of telling someone anything but to use your words to first understand. Asking questions such as "so what you're saying is" and repeating their words to give them a chance to correct you. If you do enough digging you'll be sure to understand them fully. Once you fully understand and agree with what they are saying then you can start to explain how you think and why. If the person is resistant you can ask them "Explain what it is that you think I am saying". If the person cannot repeat back to you what you are saying then you may be able to get them on the same page by explaining "Although I understand you do not agree with me, I only want you to know what I was saying". If the person refuses to leave their box and discuss in a civil and respectful way then just remember the old verse: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

I hope that you have found this post useful and if so please leave me a comment below. Humbly yours.... Mark 

Feeling humble yet? Below are a list of biases that humans possess. Mind blowing...
Name
Description

Ambiguity effect
The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown".

Anchoring or focalism
The tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor", on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject)

Anthropocentric thinking
The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena.

Anthropomorphism or personification
The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.

Attentional bias
The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts.

Automation bias
The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.

Availability heuristic
The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.

Availability cascade
A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").

Backfire effect
The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one's previous beliefs.cf. Continued influence effect.

Bandwagon effect
The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.

Base rate fallacy or Base rate neglect
The tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case).

Belief bias
An effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.

Ben Franklin effect
A person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person.

Berkson's paradox
The tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities.

Bias blind spot
The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.

Cheerleader effect
The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.

Choice-supportive bias
The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.

Clustering illusion
The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).

Confirmation bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Congruence bias
The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.

Conjunction fallacy
The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.

Conservatism (belief revision)
The tendency to revise one's belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.

Continued influence effect
The tendency to believe previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected. Misinformation can still influence inferences one generates after a correction has occurred. cf. Backfire effect

Contrast effect
The enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus' perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.

Courtesy bias
The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one's true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone.

Curse of knowledge
When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.

Declinism
The belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past favourably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.

Decoy effect
Preferences for either option A or B change in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is similar to option B but in no way better.

Denomination effect
The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g., coins) rather than large amounts (e.g., bills).

Disposition effect
The tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.

Distinction bias
The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.

Dunning–Kruger effect
The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.

Duration neglect
The neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value

Empathy gap
The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.

Endowment effect
The tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.

Exaggerated expectation
Based on the estimates, real-world evidence turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally inverse of the conservatism bias).

Experimenter's or expectation bias
The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.

Focusing effect
The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.

Forer effect or Barnum effect
The observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.

Framing effect
Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented

Frequency illusion
The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias). This illusion may explain some examples of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, when someone repeatedly notices a newly learned word or phrase shortly after learning it.

Functional fixedness
Limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.

Gambler's fallacy
The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."

Hard–easy effect
Based on a specific level of task difficulty, the confidence in judgments is too conservative and not extreme enough

Hindsight bias
Sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable[48] at the time those events happened.

Hostile attribution bias
The "hostile attribution bias" is the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.

Hot-hand fallacy
The "hot-hand fallacy" (also known as the "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand") is the fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.

Hyperbolic discounting
Discounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. Hyperbolic discounting leads to choices that are inconsistent over time – people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning.Also known as current moment bias, present-bias, and related to Dynamic inconsistency.

Identifiable victim effect
The tendency to respond more strongly to a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at risk.

Illusion of control
The tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.

Illusion of validity
Belief that our judgments are accurate, especially when available information is consistent or inter-correlated.

Illusory correlation
Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events.

Illusory truth effect
A tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity. These are specific cases of truthiness.

Impact bias
The tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.

Information bias
The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

Insensitivity to sample size
The tendency to under-expect variation in small samples.

Irrational escalation
The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong. Also known as the sunk cost fallacy.

Law of the instrument
An over-reliance on a familiar tool or methods, ignoring or under-valuing alternative approaches. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Less-is-better effect
The tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly.

Look-elsewhere effect
An apparently statistically significant observation may have actually arisen by chance because of the size of the parameter space to be searched.

Loss aversion
The disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it. (see also Sunk cost effects and endowment effect).

Mere exposure effect
The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.

Money illusion
The tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.

Moral credential effect
The tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.

Negativity bias or Negativity effect
Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories. (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).

Neglect of probability
The tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

Normalcy bias
The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.

Observer-expectancy effect
When a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).

Omission bias
The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).

Optimism bias
The tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes (see also wishful thinking, valence effect, positive outcome bias).

Ostrich effect
Ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.

Outcome bias
The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Overconfidence effect
Excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.

Pareidolia
A vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Pessimism bias
The tendency for some people, especially those suffering from depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them.

Planning fallacy
The tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

Post-purchase rationalization
The tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was good value.

Pro-innovation bias
The tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation's usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.

Projection bias
The tendency to overestimate how much our future selves share one's current preferences, thoughts and values, thus leading to sub-optimal choices.

Pseudocertainty effect
The tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.

Reactance
The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice (see also Reverse psychology).

Reactive devaluation
Devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary.

Recency illusion
The illusion that a word or language usage is a recent innovation when it is in fact long-established (see also frequency illusion).

Regressive bias
A certain state of mind wherein high values and high likelihoods are overestimated while low values and low likelihoods are underestimated.

Restraint bias
The tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.

Rhyme as reason effect
Rhyming statements are perceived as more truthful. A famous example being used in the O.J Simpson trial with the defense's use of the phrase "If the gloves don't fit, then you must acquit."

Risk compensation / Peltzman effect
The tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases.

Selective perception
The tendency for expectations to affect perception.

Semmelweis reflex
The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.

Sexual overperception bias / sexual underperception bias
The tendency to over-/underestimate sexual interest of another person in oneself.

Social comparison bias
The tendency, when making decisions, to favour potential candidates who don't compete with one's own particular strengths.

Social desirability bias
The tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviours in oneself and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviours.

Status quo bias
The tendency to like things to stay relatively the same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system justification).

Stereotyping
Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

Subadditivity effect
The tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.

Subjective validation
Perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.

Surrogation
Losing sight of the strategic construct that a measure is intended to represent, and subsequently acting as though the measure is the construct of interest.

Survivorship bias
Concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn't because of their lack of visibility.

Time-saving bias
Underestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively low speed and overestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively high speed.

Third-person effect
Belief that mass communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves.

Triviality / Parkinson's Law of
The tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Also known as bikeshedding, this bias explains why an organization may avoid specialized or complex subjects, such as the design of a nuclear reactor, and instead focus on something easy to grasp or rewarding to the average participant, such as the design of an adjacent bike shed.

Unit bias
The tendency to want to finish a given unit of a task or an item. Strong effects on the consumption of food in particular.

Weber–Fechner law
Difficulty in comparing small differences in large quantities.

Well travelled road effect
Underestimation of the duration taken to traverse oft-traveled routes and overestimation of the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.

"Women are wonderful" effect
A tendency to associate more positive attributes with women than with men.

Zero-risk bias
Preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Zero-sum bias
A bias whereby a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another).