What it looks like from their side

There's a finding that explains why charging feels reasonable while it's happening and stops feeling reasonable the moment you imagine being them. Nicholas Epley, Kenneth Savitsky and Thomas Gilovich showed in 2002 that observers who could easily imagine being in an actor's position moderated their harsh judgements of that person. When the observer could picture the situation from the inside, the character verdict softened, because the situation became visible.

What this means for the charge is simple. The charge exists because you're standing outside their slip. From outside, a two-day silence is a decision. From inside, it's a phone in a pocket and a Tuesday. You have the inside view of every slip you've ever made, which is why your own slips seem innocent, and the outside view of every slip made to you, which is why theirs seem aimed. The difference isn't in the slips. It's in where you're standing.

So the single most useful move, before any of the method chapters, is to move. Take the slip and imagine you did it. Not a better version of you. You on a bad Thursday, with the day you actually had last Thursday. You read a message in a shop. You were three sentences behind in a meeting and blurted. You sent the figures email at 5.55 with your coat on. You forgot the date because the date was on a calendar you hadn't opened. What did you mean by each? Nothing. What would you want the other person to think? That it was a Thursday.

This isn't a trick for making yourself feel better. It's the only accurate view available. You genuinely know more about what slips mean from the inside than from the outside, and the inside view says they mean very little. Standing there for ten seconds, before the charge sets, does most of the work this book is asking for.