Most product failures aren't discovered in user testing — they're discovered when someone finally admits they built something for their imagined user rather than the real one. The 11th-century Jain philosopher Hemacandra described a cognitive trap he called *mithyatva* — roughly, the distortion that comes from confusing what we *wish* were true for what is actually there. It isn't ignorance exactly; it's a kind of motivated vision, where the self's investment in an outcome quietly reshapes the evidence. What makes this sharper than ordinary confirmation bias is Hemacandra's insistence that the distortion isn't intellectual — it's *identity-deep*. You defend the roadmap not because you've reasoned your way there, but because the roadmap has become you. The corrective he proposed was *anekantavada* — the practice of holding a claim from multiple genuine standpoints simultaneously, not as devil's advocacy but as epistemic humility baked into your actual belief structure. Saturday is a good day to ask whether the conviction you'll carry into Monday's planning session is knowledge or investment.

In the last week, which belief about your work did you treat as settled — and what would you have to give up about yourself if it turned out to be wrong?

Drawing from Jain Epistemology (Anekantavada tradition) — Hemacandra (Yogaśāstra, c. 1160 CE)