Assume Nothing

Or risk making an ass of u and me.

Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash

I don’t obsess over Fashi Mindset’s numbers. First, my newsletter list is quite small, grows maybe one new subscriber every week, which means an average of about 26 news subscribers a year (I know, the math is not matching there, abeg just give me grace this Sunday). The open rate for Fashi is about 46%, under half of those who receive.

I’m cool with that.

I could plead and prod for subscription referrals to friends and family, maybe even do an Insta and/or Twitter ad, but honestly, I just want to focus on the writing. What will be will be. Wetin man go do?

Now, at times I do wonder if folks don’t just roll their eyes and delete, postpone and forget my Fashis. I’m human, I’m not a GPT like John Wick.

And then I get notes like this:

I read every Fashi Mindset piece I get via email…

”I'm well. And since we last spoke, what's happened is: I went to study on a scholarship in <redacted to protect this person’s identity> which had fun and hilarious moments but at the beginning of the second term I had psychosis. So I was in the hospital for a while and then I came back home. I've been in recovery ever since. Recovery took longer than expected but God willing, or the Universe, I'll go back at the beginning of next year.

By the way, your articles helped me in the past several months, you wouldn't begin to imagine how much. There is a phase when I was doing a lot of thinking and they really put things in perspective, so thank you so much for this! I don't know how to make it more heartfelt than that.😂”

Know what? Say no more. More ginger to my step. We keep pushing.

This is the thing about untested assumptions. You take incomplete or even inaccurate information, and then you run with it as fact. That’s what I did here—Chidi, no one is reading your stuff, or it is disruptive and taking up space in their inboxes. If I assume as fact, then my decision is to stop writing, or stop sharing. Assumptions ready to ruin a good thing I have going. Assumptions ready to deprive my friend of much-needed perspective as she worked thru her big setback.

Nah.

In my work as a product consultant and coach (and I am a beast at it, FAFO), I make sure the people and teams I work with map out the riskiest assumptions around their idea or product, and then design an experiment to test and validate (or invalidate) that assumption. It is an eye-opener for almost all of the people who bring me in to help them, as the testing flips their plans around humongously. Hugely. In a very good way. Bad assumptions being made that would cost the business millions or lost customers are caught and mitigated before one cowrie is spent.

So of course, Chidi being The Chidi, I had to extrapolate this to our daily grind. As part of my Loaded course, handling assumptions is fundamental. The way we test and validate assumptions in product and business is the same way we should test and validate our assumptions about our money, work, health, family. Here’s the question for you:

What are the assumptions you are making right now that pose the biggest risks to your interactions with people, situations, and relationships today, in the past, and as you plan for the future? What are the riskiest assumptions that you have to test in your head right now before you cause wahala?

To answer that question, you need to do an assumption map: determine the core assumptions in your head right now around your money, work, health, and family decisions that pose the biggest risks if you are wrong, and then do the same with the most important assumptions that you have the least information about. Then go immediately and test those bad boys with a simple experiment.

Simple experiments, Chidi? Ah-ah, come on now. A phone call. That’s an easy experiment. A conversation. Gbam…see how clearly you can see now (cue the Jimmy Cliff classic). Clarifying lunches or coffee. Facts, not fiction. Same thing as I say to my product people, everything is an assumption until tested and validated. Everything o.

Do you realize how much katakata, mental stress, wahala, uselessness, and heartache have been averted by running these tests? Hmm?

There’s this quote I have written in my short book—”in too many circumstances, we do not deal with our affairs in accordance with correct assumptions, but rather we follow thoughtless habit.” It is the reason I don’t go off with a soundbite when a topic starts to trend on social or in my circles. I need validated facts. And you know my sound will bite with serious ginger if I decide to soundbite. How many times did we hear something and then it ended up being BS, but not before think pieces and conclusions without any validation were dropped like Taylor Swift and Beyonce albums at the same time? If someone stops calling me or ghosts me, I cool off any emotional impulses (and they are there) by reminding myself that, “Oga Chidi, you don’t what you don’t know…if you want to know, go and ask. If you don’t want to know…then fashi, and move on. No assumptions, plis.”

Easier said than done. But it is a heuristic that works.

Anyways, let me not assume I know what I’m talking about jare. Let me go and enjoy my Sunday, abeg.

Until next.

(disclaimer—that ass u and me = assume thing is almost a worn-out cliche. not an original Chidi-ism, so I am not taking credit for that one o).