The Fresh Perspective Your Content is Missing

Parking fines suck!

Sticking out from beneath the wiper blade of my car yesterday was the unwanted gift of a $140 ticket. Confusion gave way to frustration as I re-read the parking sign. I was in the wrong. How could I have missed it?

In my rush to catch the train, I'd found the perfect spot to leave my car. I checked the time and the restrictions. My brain registered the '4P' on the sign and gave me the green light to park.

What my brain conveniently filtered out was the restriction on parking to the right of the sign, which applied to all vehicles except those authorised by the council. I wanted the parking space to be legitimate, so my brain perceived it as such.

By the way, no prizes for guessing which side of the post I left my car.

Before jumping to conclusions

It turns out that I was not as foolish as I thought I was in that moment.

At the heart of this apparent brain malfunction is the concept of top-down processing. If you think of the brain as a two-way street, bottom-up processing occurs when your eyes perceive something. Light hits the retina, sending signals via the optic nerve to the brain, which pieces together the colours, shapes, and letters into a recognisable image. This is 'slow' and energy-intensive.

To save time and energy, the brain relies on top-down processing. Using existing knowledge to make predictions about what you're seeing, the brain forms a mental model that it uses to fit sensory data. For me, the goal was to 'quickly find a space to park in. '

My brain's mental model was 'empty spaces in the car park are often time-restricted'. I saw the 4P on the sign, checked the time, and at that point, my brain had found the data it was after. It stopped further processing and ignored the information about authorised vehicles.

Perception and reality

This 'shortcut' is a form of confirmation bias, favouring information that confirms a pre-existing belief. When we want something to be true, such as an empty parking space, our brain acts like a biased detective, looking for clues that support its case and rejecting those that don't. Our desire acts as a filter on our perception. Psychologists call this motivated perception.

The efficiency of this system is its greatest strength, and also its biggest flaw. In most cases, these mental shortcuts serve to help us. They enable us to navigate each day without being overwhelmed by sensory overload.

When driving down a familiar road, you don't need to consciously process each house, tree, and road marking. Your brain's top-down model of the road does the hard work, freeing up your focus for the unexpected, such as a pedestrian stepping out in front of you.

The problem arises when the brain's model fails to align with reality. The parking sign was an unfamiliar variable, but my brain treated it as familiar, replacing the text with my expectation of what it said. I wasn't looking for 'Vehicles Authorised by Council Excepted', and so didn't see it.

This kind of event happens more often than we think, and explains why we frequently 'see what we want to see.'

What can we do about it?

The first step is recognising this inherent bias. The fact that I got the parking ticket may not have been a sign of foolishness. Instead, my brain was acting as it's designed to - efficiently, but not always accurately.

The solution to this is slow, deliberate action. Rather than going for the quick and easy answer, ask, "What am I missing? What information might prove my assumption wrong?".

For me, it means taking a few more seconds and reading each line of the parking sign, especially if I'm in a hurry.

By consciously switching from fast, predictive thinking to slow, deliberate analysis, we can override internal biases and see the world, including parking restrictions, a little more clearly.

Being aware of blind spots

I was so focused on finding a parking spot that I completely missed the 'Authorised Vehicles Only' restriction right in front of me. It got me thinking about how we all develop blind spots in areas with which we are familiar.

When you're deeply immersed in your business, it's easy to overlook what's obvious to outsiders. Your content might be suffering from the same tunnel vision - saying what makes sense to you, but missing what your customers need to hear.

Clarity in your messaging

I was so focused on my goal (finding a parking spot) that I completely missed the crucial information right in front of me.

Sound familiar? When you're juggling a million priorities as a business owner, it's easy to miss the details that could make or break your content. Your message might be saying '4-hour parking', when customers need to know it's 'authorised vehicles only.'

The cost of unclear messaging? Much more than my parking ticket.