The Focusing Illusion: A Science-Backed Life Trap

Imagine two different people on the same mid-January day.

One lives in California. He walks outside in shorts and a t-shirt. The warm sun beams down on his face. He puts on his sunglasses, unlocks his car, and turns the AC on full blast.

One lives in New York. He walks outside in a heavy jacket. He grimaces as the cold wind hits his uncovered face. He opens the trunk of his car, takes out a brush, and starts cleaning the snow and ice off his windshield.

Which one do you assume is happier?

You just picked one in your mind. And I probably would have picked the same. Right up until I lived both.

Yes, the truth is, the two people are both me, just one year apart.

And our assumptions about their relative happiness reveal an important cognitive trap everyone needs to understand.

It's called the focusing illusion.

A cognitive bias where people overemphasize the importance of a specific, visible factor when estimating the overall happiness of an individual or group.

In this piece, I explored why what you can see is almost never what matters, and shared a simple question I like to call my Tuesday Test...

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