{"id":333,"date":"2020-02-25T08:59:30","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T07:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonealler.dk\/?p=333"},"modified":"2020-02-25T11:35:34","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T10:35:34","slug":"to-come-off-autopilot-slow-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/?p=333&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Come off autopilot – press “pause”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was recently reminded by a colleague, of Daniel Kahneman<\/a>\u2019s classic – the amazing: Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em> (2011), summarizing research conducted over decades; cognitive biases, happiness and prospect theory among other things. Daniel Kahneman is recognized globally as a true leader in the field of psychology, and the list of honors bestowed upon him is long and glorious, with the Nobel Prize in Economics (the only non-Economist ever to receive this) sitting prominently in 2002. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A favorite,\ninspirational for a lot of people including me, recognized for his ability to\ntranscend his own field of research and for his determination to make the\nscience of psychology relevant and useful to everyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kahneman talks about\nour thinking to occur in two brain systems: the deliberate, sophisticated handling\nof self-control, forward thinking, abstractions, anything unfamiliar. This\nsystem is brilliant and creative, but slow; and it has a bottleneck: working\nmemory, consuming loads and loads of energy and getting worn-out and tired through\nuse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the\nautomatic, short-cutting, spam-filtering fast processing system, relieving the slow\ndeliberate system of its hard work but inevitably, also leaving you with blind\nspots: it needs to base its processing on what is known as heuristics, mental\nshortcuts or rules-of-thumb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heuristics will be\nindividual and learned over time. Your personal autopilot, driving you safely to\nwork following a complex route which you don\u2019t have to even think about. Helping\nyou get on and off the escalator without falling over, without pausing to look for\nthe steps. Opening doors with your primary hand. This is true for all human\nbeings; we are all experiencing the world through the lens of our learned heuristics,\nnobody is \u201cfilter-free\u201d. Reality is subjective, and the good news is that no\nmatter how hard a situation seems, there is always a different perspective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We learn through the “Slow” system, spending all the time and effort, and once the learning becomes automated, it is managed and perpetually reinforced by the “Fast” system. Very efficient! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, be aware of the impact of this design on decision-making; in the eyes of the Fast system, the most obvious option is always<\/strong> the best option. And the most obvious option may be a behavioral feature of yourself you\u2019d like to change: a bad habit you\u2019d like to stop, a new behavior you\u2019d like to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To change \u2013\nwhether it\u2019s something you will<\/em>, you won\u2019t<\/em>, or you want<\/em> \u2013\nmeans disrupting your heuristics and slowing down the fast system. Otherwise it\nwill drag you around, like the tail wagging the dog. Choosing which kind of restaurant,\nyou want to go to for lunch may be ok to automate; choosing which country to expand\nyour business into may not. Your brain will want to automate both (\u201cItaly!\u201d),\nsince it\u2019s really more convenient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The very simple,\nfail-safe method to intervene in your brain\u2019s auto-piloting is: to pause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pause, if only\nfor a second or one breath, will bring you off autopilot and mobilize your\nslow, deliberate brain. You will be able to think, to remember your goals and\npositive motivation. If pausing is a challenge in itself (and it is, for everyone,\ndon\u2019t be shy), this is a skill in its own right, meaning it can be trained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try the following\nsimple \u201cpower-pausing workout\u201d: for the rest of today, open all doors with\nyour left hand. <\/em>(or, right hand if you are left-handed like me). This tiny\nlittle change will stop your fast system in its tracks, forcing you to think\nabout why you\u2019re doing this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exercise every day for a week, and your ability to pause will have improved massively, to be leveraged across any autopilot function you\u2019d like to disrupt. Pressing send on emails too quickly? Forgetting to say \u201cplease\u201d to the staff at the canteen? Having a second glass of wine for dinner? Wanting to be more intentional about meeting planning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no limit, really, so don’t be perfectionist about it. Smaller objectives are always better; it’s the way we learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was recently reminded by a colleague, of Daniel Kahneman\u2019s classic – the amazing: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), summarizing research conducted over decades; cognitive biases, happiness and prospect theory among other things. Daniel Kahneman is recognized globally as a true leader in the field of psychology, and the list of honors bestowed upon him … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Come off autopilot – press “pause””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,47,49,50,48,43,44,37,12,46,24,10,45],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coaching","tag-autopilot","tag-change","tag-deliberate","tag-habit","tag-mindset","tag-pause","tag-psychology","tag-research","tag-thinkingfastandslow","tag-values","tag-willpower","tag-workout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonealler.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}