I try to keep an open mind about most things, but sometimes I wonder if that’s a good idea. After all, isn’t there that old saying about not keeping your mind so open that your brains fall out? I really don’t believe that old saying (despite the way my avatar looks, there’s been no danger of my brains falling out of my head) but I do wonder if there’s a cost to keeping yourself open to every possibility.

There’s an anecdote about Douglas Adams, possibly exaggerated, that goes like this: he was quite proficient in backwards writing. Whenever he made a change to one of his scripts or stories, he’d go to his typewriter, put in a fresh sheet of paper, and start retyping that unit of content from the very beginning. For whatever reasons, the end result was often shorter. Thus, he’d turn an 8 page script into a 4 page script with lots of (supposedly) hard work.

Some people might say that he was procrastinating heavily by sticking to easy, known work and just retyping the old script, again and again, as a means to delay the point of having to figure out and add something new to a script. To look at it less cynically, perhaps Adams was truly able to come up with a better, shorter product with what other people called “backward writing”. Plenty of other writers do this through their revision process, which often produces a shorter, better product.

Other people might say that all of that retyping was just the cost of having an open mind.

Look at it this way: having an open mind means you’re willing to review your assumptions and beliefs when you find new information. In some fields, there is no end of new information, especially when you are treading in undiscovered territory, like, say, last year in social media.

There’s no question that there’s value in changing your thinking when you find important new information. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to know if something is important at any given point in time. You could argue that this is an important skill that separates the geniuses or wildly successful people from the rest of us. Sometimes you need to spot the sea change (or changes in general) and be ready to do a lot of reinvention to make sure you survive or thrive in a new environment.

But, at other times, are we just reviewing our core assumptions over and over again, because it’s familiar activity, requires little critical thinking, and it’s easy to do?  Do we just go through the motions half-heartedly just to put a mental checkmark beside some imaginary task list?  Or do we think we’re doing the right thing because we’re insecure or afraid of being disloyal to a sworn cause?

I don’t know, but I think we all need to set some kinds of parameters, based on common sense and experience, to figure out when it makes sense to rethink our life strategy.  Some kind of game changing, ultra-exclusive-secret offer sent to a mailing list with no visible recipients or blind Tweeted to a random crowd isn’t a good example of this.  A tip or suggestion from a trusted resource, on the other hand, might be worth considering.

Sometimes it’s pretty clear that you need to change your way of thinking, as I’m sure happens to most people facing serious illness, financial difficulties, or some other hardship.  Other times, it may be to be more discriminating.

Here are some possible advantages of being open-minded:

• Truth and clarity – the truth sometimes hurts, but it is always valuable
• Purpose – having your world-view changed can (re)ignite a sense of purpose in your life
• Self-esteem – it feels good to be right

Here are some of the costs to being open-minded

• Lost time – reinventing the wheel takes time and shouldn’t be done lightly
• Lost effort – with time comes effort
• Uncertainty – can you tolerate ambiguity and a lack of certainty?  How about confusion?
• Inconsistency/loss of reputation and respect – if people see you revising your opinions and changing your behaviour, this may make them feel less confident in you (unless, of course, you demonstrate an uncanny ability to go against common practices and be wildly successful at doing that)

I don’t think there’s much in the way of clear cut answers for this topic.  I think you just need to consider how open-minded that you want (or need) to be and to gain some kind of understanding on when it makes sense to change your beliefs and directions.  However, I can’t help but think this is a powerful skill to develop.

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