We all have our opinions on different issues. Is Atlanta a better CRE cluster than Charlotte? Is alternative working/work from anywhere here to stay? Two monitors versus three? (Surely you knew I wasn’t going to go political?)
With opinions, it’s very easy to hold an opinion for a long time and have it become more and more ingrained in how you think. Take my monitors example. For me, it’s three monitors; any fewer is simply inefficient and wasteful. Yet I also know many people that prefer a single screen and many that have very good reasons for preferring two over three. These people are insane but they exist and I have to acknowledge that their reasons make sense to them.
Opinions are driven by context and context is constantly in a state of change. Tomorrow a new type of monitor may be released that makes a single monitor the ideal. Or maybe VR will completely change the visual working game. The context of all of this matters.
Any long-held opinion should be reviewed because of this shifting change in context. Many opinions can survive decades with little change. Maybe there aren’t enough facts yet. Maybe the facts are suspicious. Maybe your personal situation simply encourages the opinion to be maintained.
However, long-held opinions are dangerous. They become glaring blindspots to us as we rely on them more and more regardless of context. At that moment, opinion becomes stereotype. Now you hold a position based not on fact, context, or situation but because you simply do. That’s what we should all be watching out for.