Think Slower, Do Better

Four criteria to focus your critical thinking

           Why do we sometimes make mistakes when we shouldn’t?

One answer arises out of some recent research. Nobel Winner Daniel Kahneman, in his landmark book, Thinking, Fast and Slow ⁽¹⁾ uses the terms System 1 and System 2 to explain the two ways our minds work. 

“System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort, and no sense of voluntary control.”

“System 2 allocates attention to the difficult mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. ^“(2)

For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to refer to Systems 1 thinking as Fast, and Systems 2 as Slow.

Fast thinking

Fast thinking is the simple, almost intuitive responses that get us through most days. For example, if you are confronted with this situation:  1 + 1 =  ____,you would rely on Fast thinking and come up with the answer quickly and mindlessly.  You wouldn’t have to think about it at all. The response would be immediate.

And that works for most simple situations.  However, when the situations become more complex, Fast thinking is often wrong.  Fast thinking draws from a database of past experiences, responding out of our biases, our emotions and the lessons we have learned, even if they are not accurate.  It produces a quick approximation of an answer or a solution.

So, if you are an employer, making a decision about who to hire, and instead of doing due diligence, you make a decision based on how you ‘feel” about the candidate, you have will have used Fast thinking. There is a great probability you’ll be wrong.  The unconscious data-base that you used to come to a conclusion contained your experiences and prejudices and applied that set of ideas to the issue.

Slow thinking

If you were confronted with the problem:  2 X (26 X 14) -33 =____.  you would slow down, think through a process and then work that process.  That’s Slow thinking.  Note that Fast thinking was fine for simple, relatively inconsequential decisions.  When we are confronted with a sophisticated situation, we’ll do better if we slow down and follow a process.  

Back to our hiring example.  Instead of relying on what ‘felt right”, supposed you determined to have the applicant take an aptitude assessment, checked his/her references, talked to previous employers, and had someone else interview him/her other than you. In other words, you would have created a process and methodically worked through that process.  The likelihood of making a better hiring decision was dramatically improved because you chose to slow down, create a process, and think through that process.

Slow thinking requires us to slow down and think deeply, utilizing tools, tactics principles, practices and processes.

A common thinking mistake

These two examples illustrate one of the most common thinking mistakes:  We use Fast thinking to handle problems that should be attacked with Slow thinking. That’s easy to understand.  Most of the situations we encounter are easily solved with Fast thinking.  It becomes our unconscious default approach to almost everything. And so its easy to respond to every situation with Fast thinking.

And that’s why we make mistakes.

Recognizing slow thinking projects

The solution is to recognize those situations that are best handled with Slow thinking.

           1. Is the project complex? In other words, is it composed of a number of sub-tasks?  So, if you are a chef, creating a four-course meal is a complex project, and calls for some good thinking before you begin.  Eating that meal is not nearly as sophisticated.   

           2. Is this an ongoing or recurring project?  In other words, the same project should present itself over and over again.  So, if you are a wedding photographer, taking pictures at weddings as a fee paid service is an ongoing project.   Creating a process to do it well rises to the level of deserving of good slow thinking.  If, however, you are a guest at the wedding, taking pictures with your cell phone, that probably won’t happen regularly, so it doesn’t require good thinking.

           3. Are you passionate about this?  Your high degree of passion may be a strong enough force to cause you to treat the situation as a thinking project.   Is there something about this project that touches your heart and excites you?  Are you some how strongly attracted to it?

           4. Is it significant?  While that can mean many things to many people, let’s define it as something that has the potential to impact one or more person’s life in a important way. The consequences are deep and lasting. Deciding to start a restaurant with your spouse is definitely an important decision, while eating out in that same restaurant is not.      

With that, we’re going to introduce an acronym: COPS is how we refer to a weighty situation that calls for better thinking – complex, ongoing, sophisticated and passion-evoking. When we identify a decision or a task as COPS, it’s time to think better about it.

Using this simple acronym will help you recognize the weighty situations in your job and life that call for disciplined thinking and thereby reduce your mistakes and improve your outcomes.

Instead of relying on fast thinking, take a moment and apply the COPS criteria.  If the situation fits, you’ll create far better outcomes by taking the time to think slowly.