Coaching practices for Falsification Thinking in a New Job

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Falsification Thinking in a New Job, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • One thing goes badly and instantly it’s not "that didn’t work" but "see, you were never actually any good at this"
  • I’m holding a belief tightly and I want to test it honestly, but I know that the second I go looking I’ll find whatever confirms it
  • I walked away from that meeting certain my boss is unhappy with me and certain the whole project is going to fall apart
  • I’ve done the work of weighing the evidence, but now I need to land on a replacement thought that actually fits all of it
  • My beliefs are all hedged into mush

Practices that may help

  1. Falsification Thinking
    Karl Popper argued that a claim is scientific — and useful — only if it can in principle be proven wrong. Falsification thinking applies this to everyday reasoning: instead of looking for evidence that confirms your view, ask what evidence would refute it. This is a well-regarded normative principle in philosophy of science; applying it in practice reduces confirmation bias and sharpens the precision of your beliefs.
  2. Separate competence from performance
    A result below your standard does not retroactively prove you are incompetent — learn to hold these as distinct.
    Impostor Phenomenon, Made Practical
  3. Specify what would falsify your belief before you look at evidence
    Write down what evidence would prove you wrong before you go looking.
    Falsification Thinking
  4. Rule out mind-reading and fortune-telling
    Catch the two most common interpretation errors — assuming you know what someone is thinking, or what is about to happen.
    Check the Facts, Made Practical
  5. Generate a balanced alternative thought
    Replace the distorted thought with a more accurate one — not a falsely positive one.
    Cognitive Restructuring: The CBT Method for Changing Unhelpful Thoughts
  6. Make your beliefs precise enough to be wrong
    Vague claims cannot be falsified — sharpen your belief until it can be.
    Falsification Thinking
  7. Examine the evidence for and against
    Test the thought like a hypothesis: what actually supports it, and what argues against it?
    Cognitive Reframing, Made Practical
  8. Cognitive restructuring
    Identify an automatic thought, test it against evidence, and replace it with a more accurate one.
    Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Made Practical
  9. Review past beliefs for what evidence did and didn’t move them
    Look back at past beliefs and ask: what would have changed my mind then, and did I let it?
    Falsification Thinking
  10. Normalize impostor feelings through selective disclosure
    Tell one trusted peer that you sometimes feel like a fraud — you will almost always find the feeling is mutual.
    Impostor Phenomenon, Made Practical

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