A few days ago, around 2nd December 2019, my apartment door started giving me trouble. The lock is a bit old and I didn't give it much thought, except that soon after I could only open the lock after some intense struggling with it. I didn't like the prospect of spending 10-15 minutes every time I wanted to unlock the door, so I started thinking and eventually found a solution.
Greasing the lock with cooking oil did bring temporary relief but the lock soon reverted back to its old behavior, or that's how it felt to me. My initial mindset was that the lock is opposing me and thus I have to subdue it through force. That's when I decided just gently wiggling the lock as I was turning the key, and to my great surprise, that was the perfect solution.
Instead of spending time on trying to force the lock or grease it up so it cooperates with my forceful attempts at entry, I simply used the least amount of power. This seemed impossible at first but I soon realized it makes sense – if you choose a bad solution, adding more power to its implementation aka. doubling down will make it even worse. If it's a good solution, it will work without you having to exert any kind of power, let alone double down.
I find it hard to explain why doubling down seems to be our default go-to solution for everything from door locks to dealing with teenage kids. As I think back to how my father and brothers treated me when I was a teenage kid, it's quite clear they also doubled down whenever questioned, challenged or opposed, leading to a senseless struggle that just engendered conflict.
I think doubling down is a survival mechanism meant to give us greater survival chances when wounded or endangered. It's a brief burst of energy that shuts down mental faculties, leading to an adrenaline-fueled frenzy. It stands to reason then that the only time when we double down is when we feel our life and limb are threatened.
I'll term the opposite of doubling down "halving up". It means that, whenever some solution isn't working, you should try something that requires half the time, energy and effort. If that doesn't work either, you keep halving up until you either start ignoring the problem or solve a part of it to the point it no longer bothers you. In this way, you are setting a cap on how much time, energy and effort you're willing to spend on any given problem and avoid adrenaline release that's at the core of stress-induced fatigue.
I was actually inspired by doctors, who have to deal with critical cases and can only provide cursory attention to everything else, to come up with halving up. If nothing works, you simply ignore the problem and move on. It's funny that I would actually go visit a doctor for something that seemed a critical case of skin disease only to get shrugged off and told to rub some Panthenol on it. What's fascinating is that Panthenol, basically a vitamin ointment, actually worked in that case, prompting me to reexamine my thoughts and behaviors. Why did I go to the doctor for such an easily fixed problem?
An interesting implication of the doubling down phenomenon is that our mindset determines the actions we're about to do and the manner in which we will do them. If you're feeling threatened, you'll constantly try to double down and overexert yourself to the point of forcefully implementing bad solutions that will cause you stress and fatigue.
I believe this feeling of threat that leads to incessant doubling down is the cause of pervasive stress that's suffusing the entire world, causing adults to flip out and teenagers to shoot up their school. As I looked back to how the skin disease made me feel, I was shocked to discover I did feel threatened, as in, my life was at stake because of a rash or a spate of acne. The ultimate cause of this feeling was an environment filled with danger and dangerous people, such as criminals and the mentally ill.
The lock on my apartment door is working better than ever, causing me to not have to spend more than 5 seconds unlocking it. Actually, it feels like it's getting smoother over time but now I realize it's no magic but the trick of the mind that sees what it wants to see and creates a narrative to fit its own perspective.
If you feel threatened, you are bound to double down when encountering a problem, and since doubling down stems from the part of brain obsessed with survival, you will choose an immediate but bad solution that will only get worse as you keep doubling down trying to implement it. Try to articulate your feelings and address the feeling of threat to your life and limb before returning to the problem and halving up to solve it with minimal investment.