Retired Beliefs

Ideas I once held strongly but have since abandoned. Each represents a small death of certainty and a rebirth of understanding.

About Success & Achievement

Former belief: Success is mostly about hard work and determination.
What changed my mind: Observing how much luck, timing, and privilege affect outcomes. Hard work is necessary but not sufficient.

Former belief: The best person always gets the job.
What changed my mind: Seeing how much hiring depends on cultural fit, unconscious bias, and who you know rather than pure competence.

Former belief: If you're good at something, you should monetize it.
What changed my mind: Learning that turning every skill into a revenue stream can kill the joy that made you good at it in the first place.

About Learning & Education

Former belief: More information leads to better decisions.
What changed my mind: Realizing that information overload often leads to analysis paralysis and that wisdom is more about filtering than accumulating.

Former belief: Formal education is the best way to learn anything important.
What changed my mind: Discovering that the most valuable skills I have were learned through experimentation, failure, and direct experience.

Former belief: Smart people are right more often than others.
What changed my mind: Watching intelligent people make systematic errors due to overconfidence and blind spots.

About Technology & Progress

Former belief: Technology always makes life better.
What changed my mind: Seeing how social media, smartphones, and other "improvements" can decrease rather than increase well-being.

Former belief: Efficiency is always good.
What changed my mind: Learning that some inefficiencies serve important purposes—like building relationships, providing redundancy, or creating space for serendipity.

Former belief: Automation will free humans to do more creative work.
What changed my mind: Observing that automation often just creates new forms of busy work and surveillance rather than liberation.

About Human Nature & Relationships

Former belief: People are basically rational.
What changed my mind: Studying behavioral psychology and observing my own irrational decisions despite knowing better.

Former belief: Good communication can solve most relationship problems.
What changed my mind: Discovering that some conflicts stem from fundamental incompatibilities rather than misunderstandings.

Former belief: Everyone wants to improve themselves.
What changed my mind: Realizing that many people prefer the familiar discomfort of their current situation to the uncertain discomfort of change.

About Work & Career

Former belief: Following your passion is the key to career satisfaction.
What changed my mind: Seeing that passion often follows mastery rather than preceding it, and that "do what you love" is privileged advice.

Former belief: Working harder will always lead to better outcomes.
What changed my mind: Learning about the diminishing returns of effort and the importance of working on the right things rather than just working more.

Former belief: Competition brings out the best in people.
What changed my mind: Observing how zero-sum thinking can destroy collaboration and create perverse incentives.

About Money & Economics

Former belief: Rich people earned their wealth through superior skill or effort.
What changed my mind: Understanding how compound advantages, inheritance, and systemic factors play larger roles than individual merit.

Former belief: The market is efficient and rational.
What changed my mind: Witnessing bubbles, crashes, and the role of psychology in economic decisions.

Former belief: More money will solve most problems.
What changed my mind: Seeing how additional wealth often creates new problems and that many of life's challenges are not financial in nature.

About Personal Development

Former belief: You can become anything you set your mind to.
What changed my mind: Accepting that genetics, circumstances, and timing place real constraints on possibilities, even with maximum effort.

Former belief: Consistency is the most important virtue.
What changed my mind: Learning that rigid consistency can prevent adaptation and that sometimes changing course is wisdom, not weakness.

Former belief: Self-improvement is always good.
What changed my mind: Realizing that constant optimization can become a form of self-rejection and that acceptance is sometimes more valuable than change.

Each retired belief made room for a more nuanced understanding. The goal isn't to stop having strong beliefs, but to hold them lightly enough that they can evolve.

@article{yotam2025retired-beliefs,
  title   = "Retired Beliefs",
  author  = "Yotam, Kris",
  journal = "krisyotam.com",
  year    = "2025",
  month   = "May",
  url     = "https://krisyotam.com/notes/on-myself/retired-beliefs"
}