When I was new to Bengaluru, I relied on Google Maps for my daily commute. The 22 km stretch offered a variety of combinations. Google Maps allowed me to avoid the busier roads on a given day.
But the idea of optimizing my travel time on a daily basis soon took its toll. I was often mentally exhausted by the time I reached the office. One day, I decided to take one particular route no matter what the maps said. There were days when the route turned out to be clogged. But the upside was well worth the occasional trouble. Sans the decision overload, I came to the office much fresher.
Ever since, I have often weighed over how a decently designed autopilot outwits continuous recalibration most of the time.
Blind Consistency
Speed without direction is pointless. True. Rushing in the wrong direction is worse than staying put.
Yet, as Robert Cialdini observes in “Influence”, “blind consistency” has its own advantages.
“First, like most other forms of automatic responding, it offers a shortcut through the density of modern life. Once we have made up our minds about an issue, stubborn consistency allows us a very appealing luxury: We really don’t have to think hard about an issue anymore. We don’t have to sift through the blizzard of information we encounter every day to identify relevant facts; we don’t have to expend the mental energy to weigh the pros and cons; we don’t have to make any further tough decisions.”
“Instead, all we have to do when confronted with the issue is to turn on our consistency tape, whirr, and we know just what to believe, say, or do. We need only believe, say or do whatever is consistent with our earlier decision.” ~ Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion
You may ask: Why avoid the burden of thinking at all?
The answer is simple. The modern world is complex.
If you have to focus on your core work, you need to expend minimal time and thought on peripheral things.
“The allure of such luxury is not to be minimized. It allows us a convenient, relatively effortless, and efficient method for dealing with complex daily environments that make severe demands on our mental energies and capacities. It is not hard to understand, then, why automatic consistency is a difficult reaction to curb. It offers us a way to evade the rigors of continuing thought.” ~ Influence
When Agile Fails
One way to look at ‘agile’ methodology is it’s a way of ‘continuous recalibration’.
Lately, there is this clamor to bring the ‘agile’ approach to other disciplines, including marketing. In my experience, this approach is counterproductive in the content marketing domain.
Let me explain. In a piece of communication, a 50% complete draft is not a 50% good article. It is (mostly) a 100% bad product. People looking at the half-baked product might ask for a complete overhaul. Yet, when the new draft is again reviewed at 50% progress, it might suffer from the same half-bakedness that marked the previous draft.
It’s possible that at 100% completion, the first draft may have actually met approval. Even if not approved right away, the feedback is more likely to be specific and do-able.
Most stakeholders underestimate the chasm that separates an edited version from the first draft. When energized by sharp editing, the same material can become unrecognizably superior.
When Index Funds Are Better
The world of Indian equity has witnessed new peaks lately. Considering the staggering returns of many funds, it may be a difficult task to select the best mutual funds to invest in.
However, a few data points can greatly aid your decision-making. According to this 2024 report, 63% of equity mutual funds failed to beat their respective benchmark indexes in the last three years.
To add to it, it’s difficult to predict the funds that will continue to perform well after 10, 15 or 20 years. The past returns are an unreliable indicator of the future performance.
As Radhika Gupta, CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, tweeted: “It is pointless trying to invest in the #1 fund because #1 changes very fast. Sorting by top returns isn’t an investment strategy. Consistency matters much more.”
Chasing the top-ranked fund might even limit your gains. You shift to a fund at its best, and exit when it underperforms. So, effectively, you’re carrying forward the underperformance along every fund on your way.
The constant recalibration comes at the cost of peace of mind and mental energy. Not to mention the expertise required to do this right.
To starters who can ill-afford to spend so much time and energy in selecting their investment choices, index funds offer an autopilot option. You may lose out on the potential gains that only 37% of funds have managed to achieve. But the tradeoff is that your fund will certainly not fall into the underperforming category either (which is 63% as reported earlier).
Conclusion
You can learn anything, but not everything. Apart from our core focus area, it’s better to adopt autopilot systems for other aspects of life. Sure, there’s a need to review and introspect the system once in a while. However, once a reasonably scrutinized autopilot system is adopted, it pays us well to blindly use it in our decisions.
Musings by Madhav 
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