Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman

Shall I introduce the book or the turtle first??? 🙂

I was reading Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman this morning when this turtle turned up to say hello! The turtle was friendly and as you see he (or she?) enjoyed the little snack I gave him.

Anyway, the book-turtle connection for myself is huge and I’ll explain to you why.

Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, said that we have two systems in our brain: System 1 and System 2.

Imagine these two systems as two friends with different personalities who live in your head and advise you every time you need to make a decision. System 1 is your intuitive friend who loves throwing quick guesses at you, whereas System 2 is your thoughtful friend who refuses to give an answer until he has carefully done all the calculations.

There is a reason we have two systems! The quick System 1 doesn’t consume that much energy to come up with simple everyday life decisions. So, if we’re faced with trivial everyday decisions, our clever brain first consults System 1. You don’t want to use System 2 to drive to work every day as you would arrive exhausted at the office!

The problems start when people tend to over-rely on their quick-guessing friend and over-ignore their thoughtful friend.

That’s the main concept of Kahneman’s brilliant book but besides that, the author goes really deep into how humans make decisions, intuition, psychological biases and more. Definitely worth reading (if you haven’t read it already).

For some reason, when I first read about Kahneman’s two Systems, I associated the fast System 1 with a hare and the slow system 2 with a turtle just to help myself understand and remember the concepts.

More importantly, the turtle for me is a symbol of patience. The turtle puts in the work every day. The turtle doesn’t talk much. The turtle is the master of habit formation. When it comes to entrepreneurship, when it comes to creating an online business, you want to be that winning turtle!

PS: For more turtle stuff and habits, read this one.