Grey Rhinos and Black Swans: The Art of Prioritising.

 

"When ‘black swans’ meet grey rhinos’, the very nature of the habitat undergoes transformation." (The India Way: Dr. S. Jaishankar)

 

While skimming through Dr. S. Jaishankar’s book on India’s strategies for an uncertain world, I came across two terms: ‘black swan’ and ‘grey rhinos'. I had heard these words and guessed their meaning to be something like ‘unexpected’ and ‘obvious," respectively, by a literal interpretation. However, out of curiosity, I did a little more research using ChatGPT and came across two books on these words.

First is "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book explores the impacts of unpredictable and unprecedented events, known as black swans. The basic argument of the book is that our understanding is limited to our individual experiences. As Europeans had never seen a black swan before their discovery of Australia, they assumed that black swans didn’t exist. The author goes on to explain the limitations of economic and statistical methods in predicting such events; however, I am not going to explain that all here.

The second book is titled "The Grey Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore" by Michele Wucker. As you might have guessed, this book talks about the highly probable events that we tend to ignore or overlook. As with rhinos, the grey rhino refers to events that are large, visible, and charging towards us, yet we fail to act on them or respond to them. We'll look at the reasons and frameworks for dealing with grey rhinos, but first I'll discuss a thesis that I've used to prioritize things and to explain things to friends. While I do not claim to have always adhered to these principles, nevertheless, they have helped me. Having found some insights about black swans and grey rhinos, I think I should try to formulate my thesis properly.

My thesis (if it can be called one) is based upon observing our day-to-day lives in which we always have a long list of tasks to complete, and yet often we find at the end of the day, that while we were doing something, little could be achieved. Not just about days; if we look at longer periods of time, we often tend to feel dejected by the gap between "what we did" and "what could have been done". Many a time I am reminded of the six years that have gone by since my graduation, yet nothing concrete is visible. Clearly, a lot of things could have been done better and differently.

So I try to differentiate between what is "important" and what is "urgent and immediate but not important."For example, important things for me are to prepare well for the exam, maintain a good daily routine, eat well, talk to family and meet friends, and so on. While urgent or immediate might be to attend a classmate’s birthday party. I am not arguing that you should avoid all social events that don’t add to our "important tasks", but we do need to understand the concept of "opportunity costs". Basically, the economic concept of ‘opportunity costs’ refers to the cost of the next alternative that must be given up in order to pursue a certain action.

So, the basic argument of the thesis is to observe and see that the seemingly urgent or immediate tasks don’t adversely impact "important goals." That would imply that if you have already studied for 8–10 hours a day, you can hang out with friends. However, if you are hanging out every day because the exam isn't there on the next day or because you are healthy enough, and so on, then you are compromising the ‘important’ for the sake of the "urgent." Now I'll try to connect (my undeveloped thesis) to the books we just discussed above.

We often do feel that we should have studied or slept on time instead of using social media. I have felt many times that attending some meetings should have been avoided. But social relations don't always allow you that liberty . There are friends who might feel disrespected by you saying no. I believe we should accept their criticism humbly if we have ignored them without a plausible reason like being preoccupied with something more important. However, I have seen my friends understand that prioritizing our own important tasks doesn’t amount to disrespect.

So, like gray rhinos, we tend to ignore important tasks for a variety of reasons. Michele Wucker gives five reasons, which I’ll describe here briefly:

1.  Cognitive biases: tendency to focus on short-term outcomes rather than long-term outcomes That’s why we called it "urgent" or "immediate" over important.

2.  Group-thinking -  when groups prioritize consensus over critical thinking, which frequently leads to the dismissal of dissenting opinions. This is evident in various economic policies.

3.  Complacency-  being overly comfortable in one's current position.

4.  Institutional inertia—maintaining the status quo

5.  Siloed thinking - occurs when we fail to plan holistically.

These sophisticated words mean what we simplified as "important" and "urgent."

To sum up, if we have prioritized the most essential, we are better prepared to deal with both black swans and gray rhinos. I'd like to connect it to another idea expressed beautifully in a couplet by Rahiman Das ji.

एकै साधे सब सधै, सब साधै सब जाय।

रहिमन मूलहिं सींचिबो, फूलै फलै अघाय॥

In simple words, it means that if we focus on one important thing at a time, the rest is taken care of. If we just look after the roots properly, the plant will bear flowers and fruits automatically. So I would like this one important thing to be our own selves. If we can take care of our own body and mind, discipline our day, and never fail to account for the faults and rectify them, most things can be dealt with in a better way. This would require us to identify the important and try to reconcile it with urgent if possible.

While you and I cannot reverse the time or revisit it in retrospect to rectify our responses to past events, we can certainly apply a few lessons so that we are rescued from roaring rhinos and are not blown away by black swans.

(If you have come to this last line, I would like to see your views about this write up, do comment.)

D Ram