Bill Nye: Which thinking habit do you wish you could break?

The question

Which thinking habit do you wish you could break?

Originally asked

Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017

Vox's fixed 9 Questions format asks this verbatim across respondents.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Bill Nye

Science communicator and television presenter

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

Jumping to conclusions. We all create hypotheses in undisciplined fashion, and then you have to go back and be intellectually disciplined.

Sean Illing, Vox, “9 questions” series, 17 June 2017 source ↗

Others on this question

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Charlie Munger Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023

inversion frequently will solve problems which nothing else will solve. And in life, unless you’re more gifted than Einstein, inversion will help you solve problems that you can't solve in other ways.

Recorded USC Gould School of Law commencement, 2007, Speakola, 2007 source ↗

Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964

They had large resources of compulsion at their disposal, but I was stubborn. Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn. In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet. I do not at all excuse myself for this foolish neglect of opportunities procured at so much expense by my parents and brought so forcibly to my attention by my Preceptors.

Recorded Chapter of his autobiography, written at Chartwell in 1930, Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (Thornton Butterworth, 1930), Project Gutenberg Canada, October 1930 source ↗

Whitney Cummings Comedian and writer; co-creator of 2 Broke Girls

Overthinking. I tend to conflate the amount of time spent on something with how good it is. Sometimes intuition is better than proof, and gut instinct better than hours of “work.”

Recorded Sean Illing, Vox, “9 questions” series, 15 April 2017 source ↗

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Novelist and essayist