Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
How We Think And What It Means
Let’s think about this.
We have not one but two thinking systems in our heads. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in economics, dubs them System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast, automatic, energy efficient, subconscious, and always on. We don’t think about it; it thinks for us. Some observers claim that System 1 makes 95% of our decisions. We merrily mosey along, not even aware that we’re making decisions.
We are, on the other hand, aware of System 2. When we think about thinking, we’re thinking about System 2. It’s our conscious self. It’s where we consider ideas, weigh evidence, and reach conclusions. Unfortunately, System 2 is an energy hog so we use it sparingly. Like other forms of exercise, System 2 requires effort, practice, and discipline. It’s hard.
We get by most of the time on System 1. Usually that’s fine – System 1 makes a lot of good decisions. But not all the time. System 1 produces biases like stereotyping, temporizing, risk aversion, and unbridled fear. If we don’t have an effective, well-tuned System 2 to overcome those biases, we can do a lot of damage to ourselves and others.
Maria Konnikova (pictured), in her lovely book, Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes, compares System 1 to Watson and System 2 to Holmes. System Watson represents “…our naïve selves, operating by the lazy thought habits … that we’ve spent our whole lives acquiring….” On the other hand, System Holmes, represents “… our aspirational selves, the selves that we’ll be once we’re done learning how to apply his method of thinking to our everyday lives and, in so doing break the habits of our Watson system once and for all.”
System Watson comes to us naturally. System Holmes needs to be learned, practiced, and mastered. As Konnikova notes, “…to break from that autopiloted [Watson] mode, we have to be motivated to think in a mindful, present fashion, to exert effort on what goes through our heads instead of going with the flow.”
David Brooks, in the Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, describes our bias towards the conscious mind (System 2): “The conscious mind writes the autobiography of our species. Unaware of what is going on deep down inside, the conscious mind assigns itself the starring role. It gives itself credit for performing all sorts of tasks it doesn’t really control.”
Brooks compares the conscious mind to ”… a general atop a platform, who sees the world from a distance and analyzes things linearly and linguistically….” The unconscious mind, “…is like a million little scouts [that] … careen across the landscape, sending back a constant flow of signals and generating instant responses. They maintain no distance from the environment, but are immersed in it. They scurry about, interpenetrating other minds, landscapes, and ideas.”
For Brooks, the individual is the star in the “outer mind”. In contrast, “… the inner mind highlights the power of relationships and the invisible bonds between people. If the outer mind hungers for status, money, and applause, the inner mind hungers for harmony and connection….”
From Kahneman, we learn about the native biases of System 1 and an important implication: we’re not rational when it comes to economic matters. This is the insight that won the Nobel Prize. From Konnikova, we learn how to observe and deduce. The implication: with sufficient motivation, we can indeed learn to overcome our biases. From Brooks, we learn that System 2 is an individualist while System 1 is a collectivist. The implication: this duality is an important source of tension in the body politic.
What else can we learn by comparing System 1 to System 2? Let’s talk more about that tomorrow.
Thinking Under Pressure
Thinking is hard.
Thinking is hard. It’s even harder when you’re under pressure. Stress lowers your IQ. When your boss is yelling at you, and your ears are pinned back, it’s hard to remember to think rationally. It’s hard to think at all – mainly you just react.
So, I always encourage my students to keep several go-to questions in their heads. These are simple, memorable questions that are always available. You can go to them quickly in an emergency. Why would you go to them? Perhaps you want to clarify the situation. Maybe you need more information. Or maybe, just maybe, you need to buy a little time.
In class the other night, I asked my students to write down their best go-to questions. They had been thinking about critical thinking for seven weeks so I assumed that they had some pretty good questions on the tips of their tongues. I was right.
I looked over the questions and realized that they fell naturally into five categories. Here are the categories with the most frequently asked questions. You might want to carry some of them around with you.
1) Gaining Self-Control – first things first: you can’t manage a situation if you can’t manage yourself. My students focused first on assessing their own situation, with questions like these:
Am I breathing effectively?
What’s my posture like? How can I change my posture to present myself more effectively?
What am I feeling right now? Are my feelings rational?
How can I engage my thinking function?
What is the other person’s purpose? Why is he behaving this way?
2) Clarifying the facts – once you’ve calmed yourself and cleared your head, you’ll want to establish what’s actually happening, with questions like these:
What are the facts? How do we know they’re facts? How were they verified?
Where did the information come from? Was the source credible?
What are our assumptions? Are they reasonable?
How did we get from the facts to the conclusions? Were there any logical fallacies along the way?
Why is this important? How does it compare in importance to Topic X or Topic Y?
Who wants to know? What is her purpose?
3) Clarifying the other person’s position – the information you have may be accurate but you also need to make sure you understand the other person’s position regarding the information. Here are some useful questions:
What’s your take on this? How do you see this?
Why do you say that? What makes you believe that?
Can you explain it in a different way?
What does “xyz” mean to you? How do you define it?
Can you paint me a picture of what you’re seeing?
Why are you so upset?
4) Clarifying the decision – you now know the “facts” and the other person’s interpretation of the facts, but you still need to figure out what decision you’re trying to make.
What outcome do we want? What’s our goal? Why?
What outcomes are possible? Which one(s) seem most fair?
Is there more than one solution? Are we trapping ourselves in a whether-or-not decision?
What if the outcome we want is not possible? Then what will we do? Is there another outcome that we might aim for?
What’s the timeframe? Are we thinking short-term or long-term?
Who else do we need to include?
How will we know when/if we need to re-visit the decision?
5) Fixing the process – when a problem arises, most organizations aim to fix the problem. They often forget to investigate the process that created the problem. Don’t forget these questions. They may well be the most important. But don’t aim for blame; this is a good time for appreciative inquiry.
How did we get here?
How can we improve our decision-making process to avoid this in the future?
What were the root causes?
How could we make a better decision in the future?
Should You Trust Your Gut?
Gut Feel
When my students in critical thinking start to separate logic from emotion, they often say things like:
“I used to get tangled up between thinking and feeling. I now realize that I should ignore my feelings.”
“Emotions don’t help me think clearly. I’m not going to pay attention to them any more.”
These students have swung from one end of the pendulum to the other. On one end, thoughts and emotions are indeed tangled up. On the other end, thought reigns supreme; emotion is banished. Is that good? Should we really ignore our emotions?
Actually, no. Our emotions tell us something. They may warn us of dangers that we’re not aware of consciously. They may also be flat out wrong. It’s a System 1 issue. We use shortcuts – heuristics — to get quick answers. Many times those shortcuts produce the right answer. Sometimes they don’t. Wisdom is knowing the difference.
Here’s my advice on when you probably should and probably shouldn’t pay attention to your emotions:
Probably should – when something feels wrong, but you’re not sure what. You feel ill at ease with a new acquaintance but you don’t know why. You’re thinking about investing in a company that seems to have good prospects, but something feels wrong.
Your System 1 is always scanning the environment, alerting your subconscious to useful (and not so useful) information. It spots the pothole and guides your foot around it. It may also spot “potholes” in that company with good prospects or in your new acquaintance.
In situations like these, it’s good idea to step back, look around, and switch on all your observational tools. Above all, slow things down. Your System 1 is warning you that something needs further investigation. It’s a good idea to investigate.
Remember, however, that your System 1 can be overly protective. It doesn’t like novelty. It’s crotchety. It doesn’t particularly like strangers – especially if they look or act or talk differently. If you always listen to System 1 warnings, you’ll miss out on a lot of interesting people and adventures. So, when System 1 tells you to investigate further, it’s a good idea to do exactly that. But keep an open mind.
Maybe/maybe not – retrospective dot connection. We all make up stories about why things happened in the past. I can tell you a very clearheaded story of how and why my career evolved just as it did. For the most part, I’ll be wrong.
We find it very hard to accept that things might happen randomly. Perhaps there’s no rhyme or reason to it at all. That’s emotionally unsatisfying. It means we have no control. So we make up stories that seem logical but may be completely untrue. It’s called confabulation.
Unfortunately, we don’t realize that we’re doing it. The story sounds logical so we assume it’s true. We assume that the little model of reality that we build in our heads accurately reflects the reality that’s “out there”. We also assume that other people have the same view of reality. It’s not true.
It’s hard not to build stories. You’ll probably continue to do it. Just be aware that you’re doing it and that your stories are (probably) wrong.
Probably not – anything statistical. As Daniel Kahneman and others have pointed out, we’re naturally terrible at statistics, even if we’re trained at it. We assume that there are patterns where there are none. We assume that we can predict future outcomes based on past performance. We can’t.
So, if your intuition tells you that the number 24 is “due” to come up on the roulette wheel – it hasn’t been seen in over an hour – just ignore it. You’re wrong, you’re a lousy statistician, and you always will be.
System 1 And The Credit Card
I’ll eat your card now.
We went to the airport the other day and realized that we were out of cash. I stopped at an ATM, pulled out a credit card, and froze. I rarely use that particular card at ATMs and I had completely forgotten the personal identification number. I stared blankly at the ATM screen for a few minutes and then slowly started to walk away.
A few seconds later, the number popped into my head: 2061. I’m used to having things pop into my head as I “give up” on a problem. When I focus on a problem, I block out information. As I start to unfocus, useful information pops back into my head. I find that I’m much less creative when I’m intently focused. (Recently, for instance, Steven Wright popped into my head.)
Pleased that my mind was working so effectively, I returned to the ATM, inserted my card and the digits 2061. Wrong. Hmmm … perhaps I transposed some digits. I tried various combinations: 2601, 2106, 1206, and so on. Nothing worked.
So again, I walked slowly away from the terminal. As I did, I noticed that I was standing next to an airport conference room. The number on the door: 2061. My System 1 had picked up the number subconsciously. It wasn’t a useful data point so System 1 didn’t register it with System 2. Then my System 2 broadcast a message: “We’re looking for a four digit number.” At that point, System 1 produced the most recent four-digit number it was aware of: 2061.
Unfortunately, it was the wrong number. But I was convinced it was the right number. It popped into my head just the way I expected it to.
Was my mind playing tricks on me? Not really. In David Brooks’ phrase, my “millions of little scouts” were out surveying my environment. One scout sent back some information that might be useful, the number 2061. The little scout was trying to help. Unfortunately, he led me astray. System 1 is usually right. But when it’s wrong, it can get you into big trouble. Like getting your credit card cancelled
Let’s Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow
History teaches us nothing.
What does it mean when the entire country is talking in the past tense? For me, it means I’m worried and dispirited.
As the Greeks taught us, arguments in the past tense are about blame. We’re trying to find out who did what, when, and how. That’s important in a judicial process when we’re trying to assess guilt or innocence. Otherwise, I’m convinced that arguing in the past tense is useless. We learn nothing. We solve nothing. We change nothing.
Politicians, of course, are eager to lay blame. Blame leads to anger and anger leads to votes. It works and has always worked, so politicians will never change the basic formula – blame the other guy, fire up the base, and garner some votes. It’s not about logic or even hope for the future. It’s about pandering and identity.
Some people argue that we can learn important lessons from the past. I’m wondering when that will happen. We make the same mistakes over and over. The mere fact that we think we’ve learned lessons from the past may actually make us more dangerous. We think we’re all the wiser; we couldn’t possibly make those mistakes again. We grow self-satisfied and egocentric. Egocentrism is the reason why every person has to make her own mistakes. We don’t realize we’re egocentric until it’s too late.
Other people argue that things happen for a reason. If we can only divine those reasons, we can understand the arc and thrust of history. But there are so many possible reasons for any given action, we can marshal evidence for virtually any argument. What caused the Civil War (or was it the War Between The States)? It was slavery. No, it was industrialization. No, it was Lincoln’s perfidy. It was the North’s fault. No, it was the South’s fault. In the end, do we really know? Are we any wiser? Perhaps we just look for the “facts” that we already believe. It’s confirmation bias writ large.
Mark Twain said it well, ““In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has.” We can write history any way we want. We have a near infinite number of ways to interpret a story. We see this in fiction regularly. Just watch The Affair on Showtime. Or read La Maison de Rendez-Vous. Or watch Rashomon. Perhaps history is just a branch of fiction in which we use real people.
So, what’s the cure? First, let’s stop thinking about the past. Every good financial analyst will tell you not to consider sunk costs as you make decisions about future investments. Sunk costs are just that – they’re sunk. So is history. No use crying over spilt milk.
Second, let’s take a cue from design thinking. Instead of analyzing the problem, let’s analyze the solution. Let’s look forward and imagine a solution. Then let’s ask, how do we get there? It won’t work perfectly. In fact, it may not work at all. But at least it has a chance. History doesn’t. As they say, let’s make better mistakes tomorrow.
My Social Media
