“Default Reality Browser” Zoom-Out

Seeing that the first perspective your mind serves up is only the default, and that you can choose a better one.

Evolv was a company that analysed recruitment and workplace data (it was later bought by Cornerstone OnDemand). One of its studies looked at data on tens of thousands of employees to find which traits best predicted how well people would do in a job and how long they would stay.

A surprise finding: applicants who used Chrome or Firefox as their web browser performed better, on average, and stayed in their jobs about 15% longer than those who used Internet Explorer (on Windows) or Safari (on a Mac).

A coincidence? The study only showed a link, not a cause. But the company’s chief analytics officer offered a telling theory: Chrome and Firefox are not the default browsers. Installing one shows a willingness not to accept the default, and to do something about it. That person didn’t settle for the browser that came with their computer. They made the effort to choose, install and use a different one, even if it felt less familiar at first.

Your reality browser

As Zoomologists, we aim to take the same stance with our internal operating system, our minds, and with our default perspectives: the “reality browsers” our minds serve up to us first.

The first way we see a situation is just the default. It came pre-installed, shaped by habit, mood, evolution and experience. It isn’t necessarily the most helpful view, and we don’t have to settle for it. This is an incredibly powerful mindset, and it’s expressed in one of the Zoom-Out signposts:

“Default perspectives can be overridden.”

Zoom-Out signpost

How to change your browser

How do you cultivate and strengthen this mindset? That’s what Zoom-Out is about: building your meta-perspective, your perspective on how you see yourself and the world, and giving you practical tools to step back and choose a more helpful view.

• Try a tool such as the Compass Spinner or Borrowed Wisdom to look at a situation from a new angle.
• Read All perspectives are wrong but some are helpful, another Zoom-Out principle.
• Go deeper with the book, The Zoom-Out Mindset.

Source: the study was reported in 2015, for example by Smithsonian Magazine.