In his book The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight fame) uses an analogy of hedgehogs and foxes to represent different kinds of thinking: “The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Nate brings up the fox or hedgehog in the context of forecasting socio-political events, but I want to delve into what they mean as a philosophy for approaching life problems.
A note: when I say “life problems,” I’m talking about life-spanning problems. How do you be at home with your body? How do you make peace with your inner demons? How do you find fulfillment? These are the problems that greet you when you wake up and keep you company when you can’t sleep.
The Hedgehog and the Hammer
As Nate puts it, hedgehog thinking focuses on “Big Ideas – governing principles about the world that behave as though they were physical laws and undergird virtually every interaction in society.” Or in other words, a hedgehog has a hammer, and everything looks like a nail. In terms of approaching life problems, hedgehog thinking looks like searching for a single technique to solve the problem.
The hedgehog mindset is most apparent when someone is waiting for a big change – a partner, a job, a house – to turn their life around. Sometimes, the mindset can be a bit more subtle: If you find yourself discarding options because none of them are good enough, you might be holding out for a hammer.
The major limitation of being a hedgehog is that you can spend years waiting for your hammer and quietly (or not so quietly) suffering. Hammers are challenging to find, and searching for a hammer takes time and attention that could be dedicated to applying partial solutions. If you’re waiting for a partner to make you happy, you might not look for all the ways you can be happy right now.
The advantages of being a hedgehog are that using a hammer is simple and once you find a hammer, you get lots of practice with it. When you’re trying to solve big problems, simplicity is a boon. The simpler your tool is, the more inclined you will be to use it. And by using one hammer over and over, you see how it works in different situations and learn how to apply it creatively.
Not to mention the fact that occasionally the solution really is as simple as one big change. On a personal level, I’ve found 30-day trial runs of habits to be an excellent hammer. We’ve all known friends who have found specific practices that revolutionize their lives – whether that looks like religion or therapy, meditation or support groups. And the nice thing is, you usually only need one hammer per problem.
The Fox and the Toolbox
Fox thinking means working with a variety of theories, and getting comfortable with nuance, uncertainty, and complexity. If the hedgehog has a hammer which they use to address their big life problem, the fox as a toolbox and will test out different tools to solve different parts of the problem. Building up a toolbox usually involves a slow acquisition of tools over time as you figure out the best places to deploy them.
I unintentionally began thinking like a fox during the past year, picking up tools for emotional regulation (walks, naps, meditation, making jokes with myself). When I named the transition from hedgehog to fox, it gave me clearer expectations for my tools. As a hedgehog, if your hammer fails too much, it is not a very good hammer. As a fox, if a tool works only in one type of situation (but does so reliably), then it’s great to keep in your toolbox.
I haven’t run into many pitfalls with fox thinking yet, but one I have encountered is the perpetual hunt for new tools. You can always add another tool to your box, but at some point you just have to buckle down and use them. Sometimes a hammer is all you need, and solving the problem is more about diligent hammer application than amassing tools. For example, if you want to take care of your body, you have to have a decent diet and there’s no way around that.
I can already see some of the benefits of being a fox: I’m more flexible and spend less time waiting for the perfect solution. Parts of the problem get solved and that makes my life a little better, which, in turns, gives me more bandwidth to spend on the rest of the struggle. Not to mention that finding tools that only need to be effective in a few places is much easier than finding a tool that needs to be effective everywhere.
Hedgehog or Fox?
I am a lifelong hedgehog. I love silver bullets and skeleton keys, even as they remain elusive and unlikely. But, I’m excited about trying to be a fox. It opens up whole new avenues of problem solving. While some areas of life have well-known hammers (thanks to sports, there’s a lot of research on how to take care of our bodies), others are more about building toolboxes (offering care and support to friends requires different tools for meeting different needs).
You can even be a fox at one level and a hedgehog at another: take the diet example. Say you want to switch to a whole-foods plant-based diet. “Whole-foods plant-based diet” could be a hammer – one tool to address problems ranging from cholesterol to energy levels. But then maybe you’re a fox about how you get yourself to adopt the diet: set up treats and rewards for sticking to it, get excited about exploring recipes, roping a friend in to cook together.
More than picking a style based on the problem you’re trying to solve, the real value of understanding the two styles is identifying which you lean towards, and knowing that there’s something you can switch to if you hit a wall. It wasn’t until I’d tried both that I saw how my unwavering focus on hammers was holding me back. As I learn how to switch, it’s been gratifying to make more full use of the tools I come across, whether they become a new hammer or simply go in a toolbox.
Thanks to Early Readers: Erin Rosenfeld
Further Reading: Hammers and Nails – an essay about the relationship between problem solving strategies (hammers) and problems (nails)
The Pragmatic Philosopher 