10 Words or Phrases That Convey Intelligence and Nuance

Source: Jose Miguels, Pixabay, Public Domain

How-to books and even, ahem, blog posts, may not sufficiently engender behavior change.

My clients generally find that the more concise the advice, the more likely they are to follow it. Well, the ultimate in brevity of course, is the word or phrase.

Here are ten words and phrases that you might want to more often use in in 2021—Not a bad New Year's resolution. Beyond using them, they are concepts worth incorporating into your thought processes. Of course, there’s no need to wait until the New Year. Feel free to start now.

Risk/reward. An example that's on all our minds is whether and when to take the COVID vaccine. Here’s how one might assess the risk/reward of taking the vaccine as soon as it’s available to you.

• How much exposure do you have to the virus? For example, if you have limited indoor exposure to people outside your household, you're at lower risk.
• How concerned are you that serious new side effects might become evident as more time passes and more people have taken the vaccine? (Many experts consider that risk low but you might consider the Moderna report to the FDA, published in Dec 2020. The part that discusses this is on pages 48+.
• How concerned are you that the vaccine may confer only short-term immunity? Most expert opinions range from a few months to two years.
• How concerned are you that the vaccine won’t prevent you from spreading the virus to others? That is yet unclear.
• How concerned are you of being among the people who, per that report to the FDA, experience one or more significant side effects. Might it be better for a while to simply take the behavioral precautions and wait a while before taking the vaccine?

Opportunity cost. Most of our actions come at a cost, for example, what we could do with the time if we didn’t spend it, for example, reading this article. That’s called the opportunity cost. Of course, none of us use every minute optimally, but considering opportunity cost is useful when deciding among choices.

Wise. “Clever” or even “smart” only goes so far. A “wise” decision considers not only what’s right for now, but in the long run, and not just for you, but for your sphere of influence, even for the planet. I also like a loftier version of “wise:” cosmic justice: What is the right decision, not just for humankind (another word that encourages wise thinking) but in terms of universal goods and evils. For example, a clinician in a small town might be clever in planting a false rumor about his/her only competitor. A smart clinician might write an article for a local publication that highlights his/her best attribute compared with the competitor without mentioning the competitor. A wise clinician might realize that the greater good might be served if the two of them agreed to market jointly, highlighting the sorts of clients that each is most effective with.

Merit. That is a messy word—It’s so hard to ascertain. Merit goes beyond what can be quantified. It’s the overall benefit versus liabilities of an idea, product, service, or person. That often requires subjective, qualitative assessment. Too often, people avoid that messiness by relying too much on the quantitative or black-and-white. For example, “Pat graduated from Harvard; Lee graduated from No-Name State, and Alex didn’t go to college” so I'll just interview Pat. That can result in sub-optimal selection.

Low-risk action. Some of my clients ruminate too long. They’d be wiser to take a low-risk action. For example, a client has, for two years now ruminated on whether to apply to clinical psychology graduate school, feeling he has to solidify his core beliefs and career goals before deciding whether to apply. It's probably wiser to apply, and upon entering, use his existing beliefs and potential career goals as a starting place while remaining open to changing based on the experiences and people he meets. It's a bit like the sailor who wants to go from L.A. to Hawaii. S/he'll end up in Hawaii sooner if s/he stops the land-based planning at the point of diminished returns, sets sail, and then adapts the course, position of the sails, and speed, depending on the weather encountered.

Shoestring competitor. This is an example of a low-risk action. Often, enacting the full-blown version of an idea is expensive and time-consuming. It’s often wise to at least consider a shoestring competitor, for example, regarding whether to get a Ph.D, it's expensive and time consuming. Shoestring competitors include job-shadowing, on-the-job training, a certificate or master’s program, or independent study. If those prove to be a cost-effective way to achieve an adequate version of the goal, great. If not, the Ph.D. approach isn’t going away.

Redistribution. Policymakers and the media don’t like to use that unvarnished term, but every time we raise taxes to pay for programs for the poor, every time we make a service available to everyone without regard to whether they pay (e.g., Medicare for All), it’s redistributing from society’s haves to have-nots independent of merit. In developing your own policy beliefs and voting decisions, it’s wise to view such issues, not sugar-coated but unvarnished. Redistribution is the unvarnished term.

Iterate. The first plan that my clients and I develop often is sub-optimal. So I routinely ask, “So what do you like and not like about the plan?”The answer helps us develop version 2. We repeat until the client says that the plan rates at least a 9 on a 10 scale. That process is called iteration, incremental improvements. It applies obviously in writing. It's wise to get a draft done, then reread making obvious improvements, reread again, which with the earlier problems fixed, makes other problems more visible.

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Good point, nice job, etc. There’s a tendency to withhold praise. After all, it can appear judgmental—If you praise something, you might next criticize something else. so you’re not the accepting person that many people crave. Or you fear that issuing praise will encourage entitlement: “Oh good. Now I can get away with something or ask you to do something for me.” Or you might withhold praise because it implies you feel inferior and you prefer to keep your insecurity private.

Yes, consider the downsides of praising, but on average, err toward more “good point.” Not only will it make the person feel good and probably like you more, praising a behavior makes the person more likely to repeat it.

Responsibility. Rather than “the pursuit of happiness,” consider making responsibility primary: responsibility to yourself, your family, employer, and society. A related term is “contributory”— It’s worth thinking about whether you’re sufficiently contributory. Alas, thinking about it is far from achieving it. That requires another word that's worthy of wider use even though, since the let-er-rip ‘60s, it’s become out-of-fashion: discipline.

HERE, I suggest words you might want to use less often.

I read this aloud on YouTube.