The Mental Starting Point

I guess I'm pretty smart. I've been telling everyone for months that the New York Times proposed paywall (paying for online content) won't work because no one will go from "this is free" to "OK I'm willing to pay for this." The even smarter folks at Techdirt picked up a quote from an equally smart guy named Dan Ariely, who is a behavioral economist:

The main problem of this approach is that over the years of free access, the New York Times has trained its readers for years that the right price (or the Anchor) is $0 -- and since this is the starting point it is very hard to change it...

First point: It's tough to change established thought patterns. It's something akin to fixing a gear on a bike that's buried in mud beneath a sunken boat in a sea filled with really hungry sharks.

Dan-the-behavioral-economist (cool geek job title, Dan) goes on to point out that if the NYT decided to offer something unique and desireable, the paywall might pay off. But that's not part of their plan. The Grey Lady appears to be submerged in that fixed state mentality of What Was Once Proven To Be True Will Always Be True. In this case, it's "We're the New York Times; we're the preferred source." When print was king, that was true. Now fast, first and accessible rules our news worlds.

Second point: Fixie is good for a bike, not so good for a mind.

The battle against fixed state mentality is ubiquitous and forever, so it's good to practice fluid thinking. Certain professionals - scientists, I'm thinking - know better than to trust static ideas, so they try not to take anything for granted. Is the world round? Yes, but it's also flat.  Questioning even proven truths can bring illuminating results.

A mentality I constantly question is "I'm not the athletic type." As a kid I was lousy in gym, crap on the playground, last to be picked for any team. Lots of kids were like that, but I actually trained myself to fail on the field so that I could quit and go do something else. I'd run slow and get tagged, get hit by the ball I was supposed to dodge, etc. It was an insanely successful device - I suffered far less humiliation than my fellow stumblers, who stuck with it and endured the pain of public failure.

It had a nasty backlash, though. I had created a truth for myself, so that's who I was - the non-athlete, non-competitor, bleacher kid. So in high school, when I discovered that I was really good at running hurdles, my interest hit a brick wall - I couldn't get the gym coaches to take me seriously. Changing someone's fixed idea of me - the idea I created - wasn't going to happen. Not in high school, anyway.

It took a marathon training program, a world-class fitness guru, a couple of kick-ass programs (Jim's Performance Max and Tony's P90X) and lots of brain-bending therapy over many years to finally rid myself of that programming. I still battle it, but I think I should always battle it. Now that I've finally pried that bike loose, it's a really sweet ride.