People overestimate dramatic risks and underestimate boring ones.

REFLECTION

WHAT THIS MEANS

Attention is drawn to the dramatic, and danger is mostly boring. The rare catastrophe gets coverage and the daily hazard gets none, so your sense of risk ends up shaped by what is memorable rather than by what is frequent. Meanwhile the ordinary things quietly do most of the damage in most lives.

Ask what your genuine risks are, given how you actually spend your days. Sleep, driving, what you eat, how you handle money, whether anyone would notice if you disappeared for a week. Attention spent there pays better than attention spent on spectacle.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Which ordinary danger in your life gets none of your attention?

MORE IN PERCEPTION & ATTENTION

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