“If you move a tree, it will likely not survive. But if you move a man, he will most likely thrive.” It is an old Chinese saying. And over the years I came to firmly believe in the profound wisdom of that.
Looking back at my life, I have benefited from every major change I managed to make, whether it was moving to another country, or change my study trajectory to another graduate program.
The other day I happened to listen to the podcast by Steven Levitt talking to Senthil Mullainathan. These two happen to be my most admired economists, from both of whom I have learned a lot. Indeed their conversation contains a lot of gold nuggets. But the most intriguing part is the duo discussing change the status quo:
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MULLAINATHAN: I’ve taken away the fact that when you’re near indifference, which is a lot of the people in your coin experiment, they’re like, “Hey, I’m indifferent. I’ll let you decide.” And when you’re near indifferent, you’re not actually near indifferent, so — right? You should be able to figure out which way the bias goes. You’re like I’m indifferent. Guess what? You have status quo bias. So if you’re near indifferent, it’s easy. Change. And there’s so many things like that. You’re like if you’re near indifferent, what’s your bias? You tend to pick the better known option. Great. You’re near indifferent, pick the less known option. I found that just a very powerful situation, a powerful tool.
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In the end, this saying by Senthil stuck with me:
Sometimes change is good just for change’s sake.
You can listen to this podcast here: