Half empty or half full? Or how you (can) know more than you think, and act on that
You surely know the adage, that seems to speak something about human natural tendencies:
Are you a half empty or half full kind of person?
Depending on the context, that might mean slightly different propositions…
Do you tend to be a pessimist or an optimist?
Do you see the world with lenses which are mostly negative or positive?
Are you under or overconfident?
Do you tend to dwell on the challenges imposed against you, or try to do something about them?
And so on…
Although I am not necessarily an expert in the subject, I do observe the world around me, so I would guess there are a number of factors coming into play here, and because of that people might fluctuate on where they stand across time. But it is also probably true that there's such a thing as a natural personal tendency - what comes out naturally at moments you are doing things most subconsciously.
Now, here's a slight reframing of the whole thing, that I wonder to which extent it's correlated or crossing each other…
Could seeing half empty/full be in some contexts largely a representation, or at least influenced by, how much you are uncertain about something, as well as how you deal with uncertainties in general?
If there's anything into that proposition, then I would argue that one can do something about it! In the sense of having tools available that might help you to see with some different lens, and start seeing more opportunities where you didn't earlier on. Which is just yet another way of saying seeing it half full, in the context.
It boils down to how you can be more intentional and deliberate about reducing uncertainty. Which is, at a very practical level, exactly what good measurements are all about, by the way:
A quantifiable way to reduce uncertainty to support decision-making.
The good news is that it is something that can be learned and sort of honed in as habits and ways of approaching challenges. I recommend "How To Measure Anything" by Doug Hubbard as an invaluable inspiration for that, including practical exercises to train yourself.
And hopefully, and all things going well, if you had a natural tendency to see it half empty, you can intentionally and deliberately choose when you don't want to get stuck, and want to do something about stuff, what's not working or something like that. Figuring out that you (can) know more than you think, if you really dig into things, apply your expertise, your just common sense, and learn a trick or two (like from the book which I've recommended).
What it takes is to reduce uncertainty up to a level that you are willing to take a kind of bet on it, accepting that decision-making is often not the art of only doing it when you have all the facts (that's typically too late, if even realistic). Rather of making progress despite the risks, although neither recklessly, as you could anchor the process into a sensible and good enough reduction of uncertainty to take a bet on it.
You can almost think of it as a way to both ensure that you see the half full, but perhaps ideally that you can fill it a bit more of it, if needed be - the larger the bet, the more you want to see it filled.