Thinking tool: Meet with advisors in your head
How great would it be to ask the brightest minds for advice on your problem?
Well, you can kinda approximate this by imagining what they'd say. I have a few role models I often imagine, and it's surprising how often this comes in useful when deciding what to do!
Examples:
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What would Jesus do? is a widespread version of this, which many Christians use to make better decisions.
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Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, said:
"if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better in life and work better in education. It’s way better than just giving the basic concepts."
And of course, doing this in your head means you can mix advisors both dead and alive!
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Sometimes when deciding how to lead projects, I think of different people I respect and imagine what advice they'd give me. Often this advice conflicts - but that's useful for the same reason hearing real people debate is.
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Before meeting with someone, you can guess what advice they might give. Then, consider if this changes what you want to ask them, or what you want to prepare. Similarly, in meetings people often ask predictable follow-up questions; guessing them ahead of time means you arrive well prepared, and the meeting is more productive!
Most people probably already think through the questions they'll get asked for job interviews. So extending this to other consequential meetings should be straightforward!
Related concepts
This is part of my thinking tools series. Also consider:
- Do the obvious things: think through "what are all the obvious things a reasonable person in this situation would do", then do them
- Empathy as a career superpower: being able to accurately simulate people is yet another example of why empathy is so useful