It’s Just the Way We Think
Did you know that every time you think about something you engage different neural pathways depending on what you think about?
For example, if you are looking at a photograph of a person and thinking about it, you engage what scientists call the FAST WAY – intuitive and unconscious thinking. Impressions of what is happening in the photograph, and what the person is conveying come to your mind automatically, effortlessly, and instantly.
It’s the feeling that “I totally get it”.
On the other hand, when you’re looking at/or tackling a complex problem, you engage the SLOW WAY – deliberate and effortful conscious thinking. It usually takes time and a lot of attention and concentration.
- The FAST WAY is always on, it’s the default information processing mode of the brain. It requires little energy – that’s why it’s always on. It processes vast amounts of information, but it does it in the background, meaning we’re not aware of what is happening and how it’s happening… (which I will discuss elsewhere).
- The FAST WAY is robust and can attend to multiple “things” at any one time.
- The SLOW WAY, is either on or off and it requires a lot of energy to switch it on. When it’s on, we know it because we often feel the need to get more energy – we need a snack, some food, a coffee, etc. Furthermore, it’s easily disrupted by “bright shiny” objects – things and thoughts that pop into our minds and capture our attention.
- The SLOW WAY is fragile, limited, and can only deal with “one thing” at a time.
The FAST WAY and the SLOW WAY are not totally independent, doing things on their own and ignoring each other… They interact to divide labour in order to minimise effort and optimise performance.
That’s because of Nature’s in-built Law of Least Effort – to achieve a goal, “we” will use the less demanding path to reach it.
When the FAST WAY encounters some difficulty in making sense of the world, it calls on the SLOW WAY at the rescue to overcome the obstacle – activating logic, planning, and rational thinking.
This cooperation works well most of the time and we do make sense of the world and function pretty well overall.
In our brain, there is a constant balance/trade-off between SPEED vs. ACCURACY depending on the task or activity at hand.
- The benefits of SPEED are that it’s quick, it doesn’t use up much energy and it allows us to get on with it and move on to the next thing…
- The drawback is that it’s full of unconscious biases that can dramatically affect the consequences of our decisions and actions.
- The benefits of ACCURACY are that it’s thorough, and meticulous and it gives more depth, precision, and clarity to address an issue and execute it.
- The drawback is that it is time and energy-consuming and it requires substantial conscious effort and discipline.
Why should you care about this?
Well, anything in life starts with awareness of what is happening overtly or covertly. If you want to improve your performance and apply the Positive Change Formula and Performance Formula I mentioned in previous posts, it’s important to understand what is happening under the bonnet – in your brain and what you’re dealing with/battling against…
In Nutshell:
- We all have a FAST WAY and a SLOW WAY to make sense of the world and process information.
- The FAST WAY and the SLOW WAY work together to accomplish goals.
- There is a constant evaluation of SPEED vs. ACCURACY going on inside our brains based on the amount of energy we have available right now.
- Our brain functions according to Nature’s Law of Least Effort.
- Both the FAST WAY and the SLOW WAY have benefits and drawbacks.
To make better decisions and increase your performance, it might make sense to ask yourself these simple yet profound questions:
- If I decide / do ____________, then what will happen / not happen?
- Will this serve me / my family /my friends / my colleagues / my clients / my company?
- How will it serve me personally / socially / professionally?
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