What a book about decisions changed in how I run projects
Book Title, by Author Name
The idea that stayed with me was not about thinking better. It was about noticing which mode of thinking a situation deserves.
Replace this entry with something you have actually read. The structure is what matters here: what the book argued, what you took from it, and what you now do differently.
The argument
The book's central claim is that we operate in two modes. One is fast, intuitive and nearly free. The other is slow, deliberate and effortful, and we avoid it whenever we can get away with it.
Most of the time the fast mode is right, which is exactly why it is dangerous. It is right often enough that we stop noticing when we are using it.
The problem is not that intuition is unreliable. It is that it feels identical whether or not it applies.
Where I recognised it
Technical estimates. Almost every bad estimate I have given was produced in the fast mode: a number that felt right, arrived at in a few seconds, and defended for weeks afterwards.
Hiring, too. And any decision made at the end of a long meeting, when nobody has the appetite for the slow mode.
What I changed
Two things, both small.
- For decisions that are hard to reverse, I now write the reasoning down before saying the answer out loud. Writing forces the slow mode in a way that talking does not.
- For estimates, I give a range and the assumption it depends on. If the assumption turns out to be wrong, the conversation is about the assumption rather than about my credibility.
Neither makes me a better thinker. They just make it harder to use the wrong mode without noticing.