In short
The “A Fresh Hell” hosts discuss 8 decision-making “razors/laws” (Occam’s, Hanlon’s, Hitchens’, Chesterton’s fence, Parkinson’s, Hofstadter’s, Hawthorne effect, Gall’s law) to help parents and others simplify thinking, avoid assuming ill intent, demand evidence, and manage time and systems.
Guests
Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson. Both are parenting-podcast hosts; they reference psychology interests, parenting dilemmas, and everyday examples (kids, workplaces, family conflict). No other guests appear in the transcript.
Key claims
Don’t multiply possibilities (think “horse,” not “zebra”); don’t assume bad intent when other causes fit (carelessness, lack of info); dismiss unsupported claims without evidence; don’t remove “fences”/change systems without understanding why they exist; work expands to fill time; tasks take longer than expected; people work harder when watched; complex systems must start from a simple working foundation.
Notable examples
missing meatballs = dog, not burglar; preschool coffee invite = out-of-town; “bandage” jury filling in missing facts; Banff wildlife fences causing migration changes; homework/timeboxing with Pomodoro; library vs home accountability; tunnels leading wolves to wait for deer.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOExploring Decision-Making Rules
0:46 to 2:11
Discussion on the importance of decision-making rules and psychological insights.
“Hello everyone and welcome to A Fresh Hell.”
Occam's Razor Explained
2:12 to 3:19
Explanation of Occam's razor and its application in decision-making.
“Famous saying in medicine, when you hear hoof beats, don't think zebras.”
Applying Occam's Razor to Life
3:20 to 5:28
Real-life examples illustrating how to apply Occam's razor in everyday situations.
“But I do think the internet certainly hasn't helped like the availability of vast amounts of information definitely takes us to zebras much faster, I think.”
Introducing Hanlon's Razor
5:29 to 7:53
Introduction to Hanlon's razor and its relevance in understanding intentions.
“That means when you take away all of the possibilities that are, I don't know, outside the norm, it's the thing that remains, like in a mystery that you slice away.”
The Impact of Assumptions
7:54 to 10:47
Discussing the tendency to assume negative intentions and its consequences.
“The original, I guess Hanlon started out saying don't attribute to bad intentions what could be explained by stupidity, but people have sort of broadened that to make it more useful, which it's just not ill intent.”
Raising Awareness in Kids
10:48 to 14:01
Highlighting the importance of teaching children about assumptions and intentions.
“and we'll be driving, you know, on the way to whatever violin lesson and we'll see five kids who are friends with my kids together in town at the pizza shop, let's say.”
Understanding Children's Perceptions
14:01 to 15:05
Explore how children interpret their surroundings and fill in the gaps with their thoughts.
“You want me not to get to Chicago today.”
Understanding Children's Perceptions
15:10 to 16:14
Explore how children interpret their surroundings and fill in the gaps with their thoughts.
“family wedding this summer and thanks to NutraFall, I do not have to worry about grabbing my husband's phone to immediately delete most of the photos because my hair is going to be on point.”
Understanding Children's Perceptions
17:47 to 18:48
Explore how children interpret their surroundings and fill in the gaps with their thoughts.
“Oh, that's why we are so in love with quince.”
Understanding Children's Perceptions
18:55 to 19:05
Explore how children interpret their surroundings and fill in the gaps with their thoughts.
“That's Q-U-I-N-C-E, quince.com slash fresh for free shipping and 365 day returns.”
Show all 19 chapters
Hitchens Razor Explained
19:08 to 21:13
Understand Hitchens' Razor and its implications for making claims and proof.
“Christopher Hitchens, who was a sort of, you know, bon vivant and thinker.”
The Importance of Shared Facts
21:13 to 23:56
Discussion on the need to agree on basic facts before moving into deeper arguments.
“I mean, the downside of this is that the crazy person is going to be so excited when you say you have to prove it because they're going to be like, here are nine different Reddit threads that prove it.”
Understanding Chesterton's Fence
23:56 to 26:32
Explore the concept of Chesterton's Fence and its relevance to decision-making.
“Chesterton was a 19th century fellow who gave a speech and he told a story and the moral of the story was you should not remove a fence until you understand why somebody else put it up there in the first place.”
Lessons from Nature: The Example of National Parks
26:32 to 28:00
Learn how policy changes can have unforeseen consequences, illustrated by wildlife management.
“Meeting your in-laws and starting to deal with their family.”
Understanding Parkinson's Law and Its Implications
28:00 to 32:22
Learn about Parkinson's Law and how it applies to everyday tasks and decision-making.
“And, you know, we've all felt that way of like, well, why would you do things this stupid way?”
Exploring the Laws of Parenthood
34:11 to 42:00
Dive into humorous laws and observations about parenting and managing children.
“The likelihood of your child having a diaper blowout is inversely related to the number of diapers you have in your diaper bag.”
The Hawthorne Effect in Daily Life
42:00 to 49:19
Discover how awareness of being observed can boost productivity and accountability.
“Which maybe is the point of all those Facebook posts to be like, we're watching you construction workers.”
Invite for Audience Engagement
49:20 to 49:58
The hosts encourage listeners to share their thoughts on decision-making laws and biases.
Invite for Audience Engagement
50:39 to 50:58
The hosts encourage listeners to share their thoughts on decision-making laws and biases.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Monday.com AI agents took over my work.
0:02Heidi Grant:And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Ask me anything about games. I'm like, I think someone was named Sansa. That's the only thing I remember. Like, boom, it's all gone. What fresh hell. Laughing in the face of motherhood. I, her cute Poirot, noticed the bandage. with Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson. Here are nine different Reddit threads that prove it. A podcast that solves today's parenting dilemmas so you don't have to.
0:40Maybe a little more specifically applicable, but it's a great law. Hello everyone and welcome to A Fresh Hell. Laughing in the face of motherhood, this is Margaret. And this is Amy. And today we are going to talk about rules for making better decisions. Okay. As a parent and just in life, This is one of my, I love looking up these psychology, like ways we think and why we think things. So forgive me for dorking out and preparing this episode. I love doing this.
1:10Heidi Grant:I'm just along for the ride here. I mean, generally, I do like to take tests that are like, what kind of Muppet am I? Fozzie Bear, for the record. You know, what real housewife am I? I mean, I like tests and quizzes. These are like rules for the way things are and why the way things are. And some of them you're going to find out are not called rules. They're called razors, like Occam's razor, which you may have heard of and some other ones you probably have not heard of. I'm an Occam's razor fan. I like an Occam's razor. So the reason they're called razors is simply because they pare things away.
1:43These rules philosophers came up with over, some of them are ancient and some of them are 10 years ago, somebody said this. But they're ways to make better decisions by allowing you to pare certain things away, certain categories of things. You don't have to consider this. You don't have to consider that. You don't have to consider every single possibility when the doorbell rings of who it is. You can just think of who it would probably be. And that's how you make a better decision about whether or not you want to answer the door right now.
2:12Heidi Grant:It saves us time. Famous saying in medicine, when you hear hoof beats, don't think zebras. that like horses and think of horses, not zebras. That's right. Yeah, I put this in my book, actually. And it's that you should think of the thing hoofbeats. It could be a zebra, but it's probably a horse. And so don't go looking for a zebra. If there's a horse standing outside your window, it was probably a horse. Yeah. And I think that in the post, I'm going to posit, I have no evidence for this at all, and have done no research on the subject. But I'm still going deposit, that in the post-internet age, this phenomenon has gotten exacerbated.
2:55Heidi Grant:And that I think our national dialogue and our internal dialogue tends to be this bump on my cheek is probably the flesh-eating bacteria that I read about on Reddit. And the reason why gas prices are high is because of the giant conspiracy that exists on eight different continents versus people have always had a tendency to that. But I do think the internet certainly hasn't helped like the availability of vast amounts of information definitely takes us to zebras much faster, I think. Yes, exactly. But you don't always have to consider every zebra and every hoofed animal. Sometimes you can just assume it's a horse.
3:41We're gonna make this easier for you. And we're going to make it easier for you to talk to the next crazy person that you encounter who wants to tell you that zebras are coming. Yeah. What if I am the next crazy person I encounter? Then what, Amy? So like the one of these that almost everybody has at least heard of, even if they're not sure what it is, is Occam's razor. William of Occam was a medieval philosopher. He was around in 1300 and he had some crazy ideas. But this one is really.
4:06Heidi Grant:I just want to take a moment, not that he cares, to say shout out to William of Occam. In the 13th century, you're basically so busy trying not to starve to death or die of a plague. And this guy's a philosopher. Like, good for him. He's taking time out of his day to think about stuff when, like, basically everyone is dying of everything. And he's like, let me ponder some stuff. Let me ponder this. Yeah. Good job, William of Ockham. So his most, the idea that has lived through the generations, the way he put it was entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. And the very simple way of putting it that we might put it is don't make things more complicated than they need to be.
4:48Heidi Grant:Would you like to give it to us in the original Latin, Amy? Entia non sut multiplicanda praetor necessitatem. Entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. Yeah, people said they could keep it simple, but it's really a little bit more complicated than that. It's like don't consider more possible causes for an event than the thing that it probably is. Like if I use this example from my own life, if there were meatballs missing from the spaghetti bowl on your dining room table and your dog's paw prints are on the chair, it was probably not a burglar who broke in. It was probably your dog with tomato sauce on her fur.
5:26It was probably her.
5:27Heidi Grant:I always feel like I hear Occam's razor anecdotally. That means when you take away all of the possibilities that are, I don't know, outside the norm, it's the thing that remains, like in a mystery that you slice away. like okay Amy couldn't have done it because she was has an alibi and Margaret couldn't have done it because she's way too nice to rob a bank so it must have been this person who robbed the bank right like that's the razor part of it you pair away the hypotheticals and you stick to what is most probable like you know if it's raining if you can see rain on your window and you hear thunder it's thunder it's not somebody making you know with a speaker outside playing a thunder sound loud enough for you to hear it.
6:17So you don't have to consider that it could be that. The example, so then I was thinking, okay, how do we tell people to apply these to their lives? I think the example that you gave before about the bump on your cheek is probably a pimple and not flesh eating bacteria. Don't assume hypotheticals beyond what is there.
6:34Heidi Grant:And does this apply to a life-changing philosophy presented to me by my husband? I don't know if this is Occam's razor, that don't assume ill intent. That like a lot of... That's coming. So don't jump ahead. Okay, because that I feel like has been very useful to me, but I'm not going to skip ahead. Well, we're there. So let's get there. I believe you're bringing to us Hanlon's razor. So... Oh, I was going to say David Abel's razor because he's the one who told me about it, but he stole it from Hanlon. This guy, Robert J. Hanlon, he literally submitted it as like a reader. Murphy's Law. You've heard of the Murphy...
7:11I didn't even include Murphy's Law here. Murphy's Law is anything that can go wrong will. It seems kind of more like a joke to me than anything else. Right. And so there was a book of like, send in your other laws. And so Robert J. Hanlon, like 20 years ago, sent in like, here's my razor. And everybody said, oh, that's a good one. And it's become that now David Ables is talking about it at home. So Hanlon's razor.
7:30Heidi Grant:And I will say, he quotes this exactly. Never attribute to bad intentions, that which can be explained by other causes. He doesn't say that which can be because I'd be like, what the heck are you doing? But he always says never attribute to bad intentions, anything that could be explained by something else. This is a game changer for me. This has changed me vita loca, Amy. The original, I guess Hanlon started out saying don't attribute to bad intentions what could be explained by stupidity, but people have sort of broadened that to make it more useful, which it's just not ill intent. It's carelessness.
8:05It's lack of information. The example I came up with is you didn't get invited to coffee after the preschool drop off, but that's because you were out of town last week when they talked about it. It isn't because everybody hates you and doesn't want to be your friend.
8:16Heidi Grant:Oh, this is such a game changer. I mean, I always say the best advice I ever got. We did best advice episode. My ex said to me, you would be so much more relaxed if you realized how rarely anyone else ever thought about you. And I just it just popped up on my TikTok or reels or something. But there's an amazing scene in Mad Men. And I can't remember any of the character's name because I do a complete brain dump after every season of every show I watch because my husband's always like, remember this and this? I'm like, no, I flushed. Like, I don't remember. How do you do that? I would love to do that.
8:46Heidi Grant:I wish I knew. But I mean, it's like the minute it's over, like Game of Thrones, I watch every episode. Tell me, ask me anything about games. I'm like, I think someone was named Sansa. That's the only thing I remember. But like, boom, it's all gone. I can still come up with Pinky Tuscadero as Fonzie's girlfriend on happy days 100 ,000 years ago. So we have opposite skill sets. But it just came up. And there's a kind of good-looking, smaller guy in the ad agency. And he's in the elevator with Don Draper. And he's mad at him for some reason, played by Jon Hamm. And he's like, I think you're this.
9:22Heidi Grant:I think you're this. I think you're this. And Jon Hamm just turns to him and says, I don't think about you at all. and it just is so like boom and he means it in a mean way but this is my achilles heel it is just a thing that i get very wrapped up in and i know a lot of people who get wrapped up in and sometimes when i hear it from other people i'm like okay crazy literally no one thought of you it's not that 19 people are involved in a conspiracy to make sure that you don't hear about the volleyball Like, what? Like, no, this doesn't even involve you. But I think there must be something in our biology or our mental set points that makes us feel like we are the center of the universe and the center of every story.
10:10Right. And particularly kids. I think this is really useful for kids like your child's brother spills water on the, you know, the drawing that he was working on for an hour. And he's sobbing. It's okay to be upset, but your little brother didn't do it on purpose. He didn't do it to be mean. He did it because he was careless and he's saying he's sorry and he's upset too. And don't, you know, don't accuse him of doing it on purpose. or help your kid understand that ill intent was not really part of it. And that unless you have proof that ill intent was involved, you shouldn't assume.
10:47Heidi Grant:Yeah. And I mean, I live in a small town and we'll be driving, you know, on the way to whatever violin lesson and we'll see five kids who are friends with my kids together in town at the pizza shop, let's say. Immediately, they didn't invite me. They're hanging out without me. What's going on? Blah, blah, blah. and believe me, this goes for the moms as well. Likely they ran into each other at the lockers at the end of the day and someone said, I'm hungry. It's not that there's a vast conspiracy to leave you out of the pizza plan. And I think that this also in working environments, I find all the time that we have something going on, construction going on in the town, right?
11:25Heidi Grant:And people are constantly on Facebook like, what idiot is overseeing this project that the stupid people who don't even know that construction should take a month and it should take, you know, and now it's taking three months because people, idiotic people made this stupid plan. That's always, you know, how people talk about it. And finally, one of the town people came on the board and said, actually, we opened it up and there was like a rotten whatever inside as what happens in construction. And now we have to get the state involved to clear the site. You know, it's annoying. It's bureaucratic.
12:01Heidi Grant:But the way that people assume stupidity is, it's so frustrating or assume ill intent. Oh, yeah, that's right. They're all taking the money. They must have all taken bribes. And that's why it's going on so long. It's having worked in so many different kinds of organizations and seen so many different things. No one has the spare time to be conspiring. I'm telling you, they're just trying to get the sidewalk built. And they found something weird underneath it. But I think people, my brother who's a lawyer often says, you have to tell a jury everything because anything you don't tell a jury, they will fill in for themselves.
12:39Heidi Grant:And so if you, Amy, are the victim of the crime and you come in with a bandage on your arm, totally unrelated to like the bank robbery that you're testifying against, you have to say, what happened to your arm? Oh, I was involved. I burnt it on the stove two nights go because otherwise the jury is like, and she has a bandage on her arm. I'm going to make that fit the story. I, her cue Poirot, noticed the bandage, right? I, it's like, no, I just burnt myself taking cookies out of the oven last night. And now I had to come to court today. But I think that this is such an interesting human quality.
13:16And for me, my husband's a very even-tempered
13:20Heidi Grant:person and just also super nice and gives everybody the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes I believe to his own detriment, because sometimes I'm like, actually, that person is terrible. But and you should really know that. I think in general, that's right, that this need to fill in the gaps of like, what is the secret agenda of the people trying to build the sidewalk? Either they're idiots, or they're on the dole, or they're taking bribes, or whatever it is, it often works against you. It occurs to me that I feel like airlines should understand Hanlon's razor and they should, as you say, fill in the blanks because you know when you're sitting on the airplane and you see the flight attendants sort of talking to each other and then the pilot comes out and they're sort of murmuring to each other.
14:01It's like, you hate us. You want me not to get to Chicago today. You're plotting to keep us on this plane forever when they could just say, we're really sorry. The person who has to sign the paperwork before we can leave is taking a phone call and it might be a couple of minutes because nobody can find her, but we're going to be on our way as soon as possible. We're really sorry. Instead, you just sort of wonder. And I find myself deciding that American Airlines is plotting to make sure I miss my connection.
14:28Heidi Grant:And I do think that this is super important with kids. The small examples that we've given of like the homework and people in town or whatever, but kids are constantly doing this constantly filling in the blanks that like, our neighbors are getting divorced. And you may think like, well, it would never occur to my kids that we're going to get divorced because everything's going fine at home. Your kids are thinking that. They are constantly assigning meaning to things. And this is why it's good to talk about stuff out loud because you'd be surprised what your crazy old kids are thinking about because they're filling in a lot of blanks.
15:05All right, we'll be back with even more rules for making better decisions.
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19:21Anti-God, right. So he wrote a book that was like, God isn't real, whatever. So this Hitchens razor came from, I guess, that book. And he was talking about God when he came up with this truism, but you can apply it very widely. Hitchens razor asserts that which is asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence. So in other words, the burden of proof of a claim is on the person making the claim, not on the other person to prove the disproof. Like if I say to you, you robbed a bank this morning. And you say, no, no, I didn't. I was recording with you. I'm like, well, prove it, prove it.
19:58It's not on you to prove you didn't rob a bank. It's on me to come up with evidence that you did rob a bank. I can't just assert a claim and then make you disprove it.
20:07Heidi Grant:In fact, our whole jurisprudence system is based on this idea, right? That like, you could accuse me of something, but then you have to prove it. One of my kids is taking a criminalistics class, which is super fun and interesting. And we're talking a lot about burden of proof versus, you know, without a reasonable doubt versus preponderance of the evidence and like how it all works. And it is kind of fun to revisit like, oh, that's right. This is how it works. You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I did something. You can't. And I can just say nothing at all in response that if you don't do your job, then I go free because I didn't rob a bank, Amy.
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20:45Heidi Grant:I was recording with you. I mean, it's true, guys. It's true. I would be your alibi in this case. Maybe that was an imperfect example. But think about like every crazy person you talk to at a dinner party who comes in with this like outrageous claim, right? And that you're sort of like, that's not true. Like, oh, really? Well, then why do I think it is? That's not sufficient. You have to come with proof or I don't have to entertain your claim at all. Again, Hitchens was saying like, if you can't present me proof of God, then I don't have to engage with why you think there's God. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the downside of this is that the crazy person is going to be so excited when you say you have to prove it because they're going to be like, here are nine different Reddit threads that prove it.
21:25Heidi Grant:And then you have to be like, that's not really proof. That's like shingle monster 126 who says that. And that's not actually proof. So I would say that Margaret's razor is just nod and say, oh, super interesting. And then find someone else to talk to immediately. That's a good one. Because man, when you ask people to prove that assertions, but I don't know, I have reached a phase in my life, I find in general, where debate, I come from a very debaty family. Like every meal and everything growing up was like, well, I'll take the other side of that. And you know, I guess I do have sort of a podcast where I debate you about parenting issues.
22:06Heidi Grant:But in general, I just find that proving my point is so uninteresting to me. but more importantly you proving your point to me is my kryptonite right now like I just don't want to listen I'll read a book every once in a while like on the podcast we come up with ideas like huh that's really interesting but someone wanting to prove something to me is my personal nightmare and it's also like we agree that oh dinner time is hard here's how to plan it right we're not coming from there is no such thing as dinner time why are you talking about that dinner time is a fiction. That would be pretty hard for us to have an agreement.
22:43Heidi Grant:Yeah. And I'm going to say that, like, as you know, at some point, a phrase always comes to me during the year that is my guiding phrase for the year. Oh, yes. Have you given us a phrase for 2024? No, because I haven't landed on it yet. And it's a little bit late, but I'm starting to think that my phrase for 2024 is facts already submitted into evidence that like, I give you, what can we agree on you know like what facts submitted to evidence means like if you and i are in a dispute at trial where like you're you want to start take you want to take over the podcast and i want to take over the but we both want to fire the other person facts already submitted in evidence it's like your name is amy my name is margaret we host a podcast together we've been hosting it together since 2016 it is about parenting it is called this like we don't have to, how far into the facts can we get before we have something we disagree about?
23:37Heidi Grant:Okay. Yes, yes, yes. I get it. And I think that is starting to emerge as my theme for the year. Like, let's not revisit everything we know, we both know to be true. We don't have to rehash. Let's start with facts already submitted in evidence. We understand these things to be true. because I think that with politics and family and conflict that sometimes we're so busy fighting at the margins that it's like we have this huge pool of facts that we actually agree on and I think that might be my phrase for the year that's emerging okay now I'm not willing today to commit to it but it's it's burbling up this next one I had never heard of before I'm gonna suspect that Chesterton's fence is also new to you?
24:25I do not know of the Chesterton fence. G.K. Chesterton was a 19th century fellow who gave a speech and he told a story and the moral of the story was you should not remove a fence until you understand why somebody else put it up there in the first place.
24:45Heidi Grant:So smart. I have so many examples of this. Yes. So I'm going to put it in other words. I guess this one's obvious, but you don't change something until you understand why it's there, because what already exists that you don't understand might still serve some purpose that is not obvious to you yet. But if you remove it, it might be very obvious. I just heard I was just in Banff National Park in Canada. And this was like I have a literal lucky. That's my dream destination. It was incredible. Definitely. I would recommend Banff to one and all when your kids are like old enough to go like hike around and look at pretty lakes and think that that's a good day.
25:21But we were told a story as we were driving along the highway in a van by this tour guide that the roads that go through Banff National Park are dangerous. And, you know, it's dangerous to the animals. So the wildlife crosses the roads and people were hitting them at night. And of course, that's dangerous for people too. So they put up big fences so the animals couldn't cross the road. Well, then all of a sudden, their migration patterns changed. And like, it wasn't working at all. Like, they have to be able to get across the road. So they said, OK, we know what we'll do because we can't let them cross the road.
25:52So we're going to put in a tunnel. So they started putting tunnels under the roads. And then what happened, the unforeseen circumstance was the wolf would just wait at the end of the one end of the tunnel for the deer to come through. He's like, buffet service. Here we go. Right. We can't let them cross the road. We're just going to create a tunnel. Oh, but the problem was when we didn't let them cross the road, then they were dying because they were not migrating in the tunnel. There was a reason we needed to let people cross the road, let animals cross the road, and some of them died. Now they have bridges, grass bridges.
26:22That's not Chesterton's fence. But yeah, they changed something. We'll fix this. And instead, they just created a new problem.
26:27Heidi Grant:This is so smart. And I'm going to tell you where it applies. Meeting your in-laws and starting to deal with their family. That is a Chesterton's fence. So I've told this story on the podcast before. I'm going to tell it very briefly. Glennon Doyle talks about this in one of her books. that I can't remember who the writer is, but possibly Maya Angelou talks about being somewhere and a rug gets rolled out. And she notices that everybody moves to the side of the rug. And she's like, oh, these people, they rolled out this fancy rug. And now everyone thinks they're, you know, not worthy of walking on this fancy rug, but I'm going to show them that we're all worthy.
27:04And she walks all over the rug and then people are appalled.
27:07Heidi Grant:And it turns out that's where they were going to serve the food, which is why people weren't walking on it. And And she uses it as a metaphor for entering her in-laws family that like you walk in and you're like, look at my dumb mother-in-law who still blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, who runs things this way. and that there are in any family system, there are a lot of fences and operating systems and ways of dealing that have been worked out over the course of 20, 30, 40, or 50 years of those people interacting with each other. And when your instinct is to go in and be like, these fences are dumb and I'm here to tear them down.
27:53Heidi Grant:It's not going to go well. And it's also kind of a rude and obnoxious assumption to make. And I think that we've all done it. And, you know, we've all felt that way of like, well, why would you do things this stupid way? And I have a cousin who's still he's probably in his late 60s and talks about driving by his childhood home in the winter and being like, those idiots don't know where the Christmas tree goes. Like, that's not where it goes because it's like someone else is living there they don't have the trismet tree in the right window and it's like right we we feel that we understand why everything is there we understand why the construction is taking longer because we've filled in this story this is such a good one chesterton's fence i'm going to put this on my um list okay parkinson's law this is one that you've probably heard of i want to want to give a shout out to the naval historian c Northcote Parkinson, who came up with this in the 50s, he was also a mathematician.
28:53And he actually like brought receipts and did math. I didn't write down the equation here because I couldn't understand what it was saying anyway. But it proves mathematically that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. This is packing. Yeah, if you have a day to pack, it'll take a day. If you have an hour to pack, it'll take an hour.
29:11Heidi Grant:Correct. I mean, this is the law of packing, we call it, which is right. Like if you oversleep and you have five minutes to pack, you're going to be packed. And then if you have six days to pack, you're also going to be packed. And I mean, one could argue that you might be more likely to forget your toothbrush if you do it in an hour. But yes, that's right. And also, I think that this falls into the category of things are never done. And I remember at some point, someone must have been my mother-in-law was at our house and came up and said, the laundry's done. And I said, the secret to happiness is that the laundry's never done.
29:45Heidi Grant:There's no such thing. Like feeling that the laundry's done is only setting yourself up for the vast disappointment that someone right now is sweating into a pair of socks. Like the laundry is never done. Yes. And stop me if I'm jumping ahead, but this can also be the law that I've talked about a lot from my former like writing mentor, perfect is the enemy of done. That like - Oh, I didn't put that on here, But yes, that's yeah, it kind of falls into the same category that being done is better than being perfect. Being packed is better than being packed perfectly. Well, I've used this. Have you ever tried the Pomodoro technique, which is a way to like get things done where you like set a timer?
30:27You've talked about it. What is it like 23 minutes or something? Yeah, it's called that. I mean, it's kind of a silly name. But the reason they call it that is I guess you can make a decent tomato sauce, a Pomodoro sauce in 25 minutes. So you set a timer for 25 minutes. I actually have two hourglasses, a big one and a little one. So the big one's 25 minutes and you turn it over like I'm going to send those three emails that I've been putting off for two weeks. And you give yourself 25 minutes to do it. And it's remarkable what you can get done in 25 minutes when you only have 25 minutes to do it.
30:54So I don't do that every day. But when I really don't want to do something I really need to do, I gamify it. I make it like how quickly can I do this? I only have this long to do this. And I have found it helps with kids too to give them five minutes to do something. Don't say like, we're leaving in two hours. Did you pack yet? You need to say, we're leaving in five minutes, even if you're lying and get them to do it quickly.
31:14Heidi Grant:Well, I think this is also very, can be very useful around homework. We have a half an hour to do your math homework. Let's go. Because otherwise it could become a lot of like, we were just doing it last night. Let me do one question and then pet the cat. And like, and then, and it's like, if that's the way you want to approach it, it's fine. But if I'm helping you, we have 10 minutes or we have half an hour to complete this because I actually don't want to spend 57 minutes of my Tuesday night doing eight geometry problems because we're petting the cat and we're getting a drink of water and wait, I have to go to the bathroom.
31:52Heidi Grant:And so I have found the technique of what are your three subjects? And we have this much time to do each of them. And so go use the bathroom, get a snack, get a glass of whatever you do. When we sit down, we're doing this in half an hour. Yeah, yeah. Because homework, the homework creep. I mean, there's too much homework. We've talked about it. Homework is a nightmare. But there's also the problem of homework will expand to fill the entire evening if you don't check it. That's right. Great. I agree. All right, let's take a break. We'll be back with even more ways to make better decisions. After a long day in the summer sun, my skin needs a hydration reset.
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34:18Heidi Grant:And now, the laws of parenthood. From the What Fresh Out podcast. The law of change. The likelihood of your child having a diaper blowout is inversely related to the number of diapers you have in your diaper bag. If you have forgotten diapers entirely, the likelihood of said blowout is 100%. Playroom's law. A toy that has not been played with in three years will increase in value exponentially the day you announce your plan to place that toy in the giveaway pile. The playdate theorem. Anything that can go wrong on a playdate will. Yes, you did just hear the beloved tea set your grandmother gave you crashing to the ground.
35:00You better get in there. Dinner time's razor. If you take away all the food your child hates and serve them only the foods they said they loved yesterday, they will claim instead to want a food you thought they said they hated two days ago. Newton's law of toddler motion.
35:16Heidi Grant:A toddler at rest will not stay at rest. Seriously, stop relaxing at the birthday party. That kid is about to make a break for it and you need to move now. Chesterton's Stuffy. Never remove a stuffed animal from your child's room, no matter how matted or disgusting, until you understand its role in the stuffy hierarchy. The road trip hypothesis. Your child's likelihood to fall asleep in the car is reversely correlated to how much you want them to fall asleep. If you were hoping they would take a long nap when they get home, you are out of luck. They will fall asleep for the six-minute trip home from the store and be cranky all afternoon.
35:56The law of teenagers. All human beings possess inherent values that govern their reasoning and behavior, except teenagers, who are just feral morons. You've been warned. This has been the Laws of Parenthood. From the What Fresh Out podcast.
36:21so next up is Hofstadter's law Douglas Hofstadter in 1979 noticed that everybody was predicting that computers playing chess were going to beat humans playing chess within like 18 months when somebody taught a computer how to play chess like well that's it but then by 1981 it still hadn't happened humans were still beating computers computers beat humans now playing chess but at the time he uh so he came up with his law which was things always take longer than you expect even when you take into account Hofstadter's law very self-referential so this is kind of like more examples of this things always take longer than you think they're going to take so I guess if you think you'll finish your homework in an hour it might take two hours if you think the new tunnel into downtown is going to be done in three years it's going to take five but things actually always take longer.
37:10Right. Yeah.
37:10Heidi Grant:The sidewalk. Because people are taking bribes and are extremely stupid. No, because it. Bad, bad people. Yeah. So despite your best estimates, I do find this. I don't know. I'm going to write somebody a birthday card and I think that'll take me 30 seconds. Well, it takes you 10 minutes to go find the card, then go look up their address, then go find a stamp, right? That things take longer. I am too optimistic about what I can get done in a day. I list five things and I do two of them because things take longer than I thought they would. This is a problem that my spouse has so badly. He will say to me, I'll say, well, we have to get these three things done over the weekend.
37:50Heidi Grant:And he's like, no problem. We'll do them on Saturday. And I'm like, great. So when you bend the space time continuum and you are able to live in three alternate Marvel timelines, we will be able to get these things done. But and I don't know, he's an engineer. I don't know what the mindset is. This one doesn't light me up, but he has this insanely, just the inability to calculate how long things will take. And I think it's a kind of optimism. And in a lot of ways, it can be a good quality, but it gets very frustrating when it's like, we have to take three kids. And then, by the way, we're having people over at 530, and we have no food in the house.
38:30Heidi Grant:At what point will that be? The steps that it takes, and we've talked about this with marriage relations, and trying to say like, okay, taking the kid to the birthday party involves they need to be dressed for the birthday party. They need to have a swimsuit because it's a swimming party. They need to have a towel that needs to be in a separate bag. Then they need clean underwear. Then they need a birthday present, a card. Then the present needs to be wrapped that like breaking down the steps of things. Yes. This is my spouse has the same issue. This is the I'm just going to jump in the shower real quick.
39:06Yes, yes. That if you're leaving at two, you can start to get ready at 157 by just jumping in the shower real quick. That's Hofstadter's law not being obeyed.
39:15Heidi Grant:I finally had to this may or may not be related. But I finally had to say to my husband when we're busy, like, you know, we had people over this weekend, it's like, we gotta clean the whole house, we got to get it was outside, you know, we haven't been outside in a while, we got to clean off all the chairs and furniture, there's so much to do. And then he like goes missing. And I'm like, where I finally said you have to text me I'm sorry you have to text me and say I'm going to the bathroom or like I'm going that's a good one you just text disappear like where are you you you this is exactly Margaret's law you have to text me before you go to the bathroom I'm sorry our marriage has come down to this but like where have you disappeared to for 25 minutes while I'm literally like holding a piece of furniture in the back waiting for you to take the other side and it's like oh i'm just gonna do this thing real quick been there nope been there nope nope this one is more this is useful for parents i think hawthorne effect the hawthorne effect so there is it's named after uh hawthorne works electric company in hawthorne illinois they were trying to run some productivity tests what would make workers more productive they were kind of out like, do we give them breaks every 60 minutes or every 90 minutes?
40:31Do we have it brightly lit or maybe a little more dimly lit? Do we, you know, have things come from the left to the right? There were A-B testing, all kinds of things to see which one was better. And they couldn't get good data because everything was better. If they had breaks every 60 minutes or every 90 minutes, they were both the same better. And like the light in the dark was both the same better. They were totally confused until they realized that the variable was somebody standing there with a clipboard watching.
40:58Heidi Grant:yes this is heisenberg's uncertainty principle which is i use this exact i talk about this all the time because i think it's so true heisenberg's uncertainty principle is you cannot study something without changing it that like the study of it and i was recently involved in a project and people were making a documentary about the project that i was involved you're doing the project and then they're making a documentary about the project while you're doing the project right right i was doing the project and people were making a documentary about the project and I was like guys it's Heisenberg all along like we can't we will never you and I mean documentary filmmakers are always like we're a fly on the wall pretend we're not here blah blah blah blah but when you have a camera pointed on you you do not behave the same as when you don't have a camera pointed on you it is impossible and this is in science Heisenberg is is cited all the time because the act of like putting amoebas in a petri dish and like changes their environment so you don't really know what you're studying are you studying amoebas are you studying amoebas that have been pulled out of their environment and put in a petri dish and they might be very different things and i think hawthorne effect right is that things work people work harder when they know they're being watched, right?
42:19Heidi Grant:Which maybe is the point of all those Facebook posts to be like, we're watching you construction workers. Yeah. And we want you to be faster. But yeah, for sure that I have a really funny dynamic in my house where we have a sliding glass door that I can see from different areas of the house what's going on in that room because it reflects in the sliding glass door, which my children have never figured out. It's the eyes in back of your head. I'm also, it's true. And I've never told them and I never will. Hopefully they won't listen to this episode. But yeah, so I'm often like, are you cleaning up in there?
42:56Heidi Grant:Yeah. Oh, really? Because I can see you're watching your phone. And they're like, what? Like, how does she see me? And they still don't. They have yet to figure out. But yeah, I mean, I like the idea that there are eyes on you. Yeah. So this is, I wanted to figure out how it could make this a useful effect to know about. And yeah, same thing, gamify it, right? If kids know you're watching them, they're going to work harder. Accountability partners, this is why I think I get more done at the library than I do in my house, because you are with other people who are heads down, and you want them to think you're also very working very hard, and you get more done.
43:34Heidi Grant:I have found for myself over a long life of trying to exercise and having various levels of success with staying in, you know, what I would consider good shape and at a top or even a mid, bottom mid peak of exercise. I am a person who has to work out with other people. I just, I think it all the time. I'll be halfway through like a really hard yoga class. And I'm like, wow, if I was doing a tape, I would definitely stop. Like, but I would never walk out of a yoga class. And that's my Hawthorne effect. And it works to my advantage. And I mean, we're in partnership. I've always worked with partners generally.
44:10Heidi Grant:I just left to my own devices. I really do better with the Hawthorne effect. Well, it turns out humans do. So good. Well, I must be universally applicable. This one's a good one that I also hadn't heard of before. Gall's Law. So John Gall, he was a pediatrician. And he wrote in 1975, a book called Systemantics that was about like the study of systems. So I mean, smart person because I wrote a book about systems and was a pediatrician. Anyway, Gall's Law is a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and can never be patched up to make it work.
44:51You have to start over again with a simple working system.
44:55Heidi Grant:Love this. This is so smart and good and so true and so good for kids to think about. And I mean, my kids are still young and I mean, I entertain it because they're, you know, young and dreamy, which is great, but their plans, like their life plans tend to evolve. Like I have a logo for my business. That's step one, make a logo. It's like, wow, that's step 9 million. Step one, what is your business? What are you making? What is the line of profitability? Where are you manufacturing your stuff? But they're just like, my logo slaps. And I'm like, okay, I'm glad your logo slaps, but you have to build such a solid foundation.
45:52Heidi Grant:And this is right, the house building is a good metaphor for this, right? Like, you build a giant mansion with a bad foundation, it's going to fall down. Like, it doesn't matter how elaborate it is. And fixing it, living in a house that was built poorly, fixing it is basically impossible. Like, trying, I always tell people who come to our house to work on it. You can skip the whole monologue, please, about how badly this was done, how it can never be. I get it. It's a nightmare in here. But I don't need to hear the monologue for the 900th time of why would anyone do it this way? Because the person who built my house didn't do a great job.
46:30Heidi Grant:Yeah. And so we're constantly patching it, but it's never going to be good. This is, I think, why so many times systems that we set out to create for ourselves and our kids can fall by the wayside almost immediately. Like I'm thinking of like I have a kid with ADHD and when that child was younger, I would approach with systems that were, you know, color coded and large and exciting to me and completely overwhelming and didn't work for the first 10 minutes. And so you drop them when really what would have worked is a simpler system like whiteboard like I thought about your example of writing just scrolling on a whiteboard what's for dinner you didn't spend$200 on on meal planner cards and things and if you did they be you know in a decorative basket right but the whiteboard where you just scribble Monday lasagna Tuesday pizza is maybe a good place to start it's a good simple plan yeah and I think that this is a good thing to keep in mind when stuff is not working that this is a great law to keep in mind when stuff is not working.
47:34Heidi Grant:That like, what is the foundation of whatever this system is? Because I think we have a tendency to want to be like, I'm going to add another staircase. No, I'm going to prop this up. No, I'm going to this. And that taking a hard look at whatever system is not working and going all the way back to foundations. And I also have made the argument that sometimes this is not possible. Sometimes in our interpersonal relationships, if you've known someone a long time and you've figured out systems that work, that are kind of like crazy matchstick towers into the sky that are like rumbly and rickety, but like you're standing on them, that you may not be able as a middle-aged person to dismantle that system and start again with that person.
48:22Heidi Grant:Like sometimes you just are like, we are on our own little rickety platforms. And this is how we're going to have to relate to each other. And we're going to just try to have to not upset these rickety platforms because you can't tear down every system and be like, it didn't start from a good place, you know, because I believe you're back at Chesterton's fence here. This house is way too complicated, right? And we got a fit, but it's there for a reason. That's right. And if you come into my house, it started with and you're like, look at this dumb pole. let me pull it down. Guess what? You're going to be killed in the avalanche of stuff falling on you.
48:57Right. But when it's like not a house you're living in, but I don't know, a spreadsheet. We run our business, you and I, on spreadsheets, and we tend to add more columns, more columns, more sub-spreadsheet. Maybe at some point, it's like, what was this really tracking in the first place? And you can kind of start over with a simpler system.
49:13Heidi Grant:Well, and we've had that conversation. I can't think of how many times we've had that conversation where we say we're tracking this in six places or these are redundant spreadsheets and okay like let's go back and simplify simplify simplify amy i don't ask for i demand a part two of this because this was so exciting we have bunches that we didn't get to including lots of biases that are fantastic that like making a decision based on a bias that you may not realize is there. And so I'm going to invite our audience to come to our What Fresh Hell Facebook page, which is at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash What Fresh Hell cast, and tell us if they know of any good rules, laws, razors, or biases.
50:01Heidi Grant:And we will look them up and do a part two of this because this was such a fun episode. I could talk about this all day. I love this stuff too. And this includes ones that you have made up like Mark was Margaret's law? I forget what it was. Oh, you have to text me. I have to literally, yeah, you have to text me before you go to the bathroom. Maybe a little more specifically applicable, but it's a great law. I'm going to live by it anyway. Live by it. And with that, friends, we will talk to you next time. Thanks so much for listening. So long.
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From the publisher
There is no magic formula to making the perfect decision every time, but there are philosophical principles, or "razors," you can use to pare down your options and see your problem more clearly. These razors can cut through the clutter of complexity and help us see the forest for the trees. And while they weren't designed with parents in mind, they can come in pretty handy!
Starting with the most famous, Occam’s Razor, we discuss how paring away unlikely hypotheticals leads to the most accurate solutions.
Next, we delve into Hanlon’s Razor, which reminds us to avoid attributing malicious intent when there’s a simpler explanation. This principle can help us avoid unnecessary conflict and foster understanding, especially in relationships.
Then we discuss Hitchens’ Razor, which places the burden of proof on the person making the claim. This can be a valuable tool for evaluating arguments and avoiding baseless assertions.
We also explore Chesterton’s Fence, which encourages us to be cautious about changing things without understanding their original purpose.
But that's not all. Listen to the episode to hear the rest, and let us know your own rules for clearer thinking!
Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:
Itamar Shatz for Effectiviology: "Hanlon’s Razor: Never Attribute to Malice That Which is Adequately Explained by Stupidity"
Farnam Street blog: Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Thinking
Reallemon for Medium: Hitchens’s Razor and its Place in Debate
Kendra Cherry for Verywell Mind: How the Hawthorne Effect Works
Our episode on decision fatigue
Go to our Facebook group and tell us what rules and razors you live by!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/whatfreshhellcast
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:
https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/
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