13 published lessons with this tag.
You cannot improve the alignment between your confidence and your accuracy without external data that reveals the gap between what you believed and what actually happened. Calibration without feedback is guesswork about guesswork.
Your brain does not fail randomly. It fails in a specific, measurable, predictable direction: too much confidence. Across decades of research, in every population tested, the dominant calibration error is overconfidence — believing you know more than you do, that your estimates are more precise than they are, and that your performance exceeds what it actually achieves.
Recording what you expect to happen and comparing to what actually happens is the only reliable method for calibrating judgment. Without a written record, hindsight bias rewrites your memory of what you believed, making genuine learning from experience impossible.
Recent events disproportionately influence your perception of what is normal or likely.
Statistical base rates predict outcomes better than compelling individual stories. Your brain will fight this truth every time a vivid narrative competes with a dry statistic — and your brain will be wrong.
Being well-calibrated in one area does not transfer automatically to others.
Imagining failure in advance corrects for optimistic perception biases.
Actively looking for evidence against your current belief is the fastest path to calibration.
Other perspectives correct for your systematic blind spots.
A log of predictions and outcomes shows you exactly where your perception is off.
Update the strength of your beliefs proportionally to the strength of new evidence.
True humility is not thinking less of yourself but having an accurate model of your capabilities.
The ability to see clearly — not optimistically, not pessimistically, but accurately — is rarer and more valuable than most technical skills. Calibrated perception compounds into better decisions, and better decisions compound into better outcomes at every timescale.