Recency Bias and Rosy Retrospection

Recency bias is the tendency to reach for more recently occurring events and ideas1, while neglecting those things that have happened in the past. I'm far more likely to cite a book I've read recently than one I read 5 years ago. To combat this in my note taking and thinking process I use a random note workflow to help surface parts of my notes that are no longer top of mind. I think that any good note taking or writing process spends time looking back at previous thinking to see how it relates to current thinking. More insidious than than reaching for recent ideas though is our tendency to view the past more favourably than it really was. This happen for the same reasons as we cling to more recent ideas. We remember that bad things that have happened recently more easily than those that happened in the decades before. Grafton Tanner says this tendency to recency breeds nostalgia which is the uncanny ability to wrench people from the present into an idealized moment in the past2 that…