Without knowing so, I already discussed the topic of ‘system 1 thinking’ in last week’s blogpost when I discussed the western populations reaction to the death of Cecil the lion.
Most recently discussed in the 2011 book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow.’ By Daniel Kahneman, the dual process theory states there are two separate cognitive systems responsible for the way we think. System 1 being the emotional reactive part, intuitive by nature and usually first to kick in. It’s basically our brains reflex to be able to react first and thus get an edge in the situation we’re in. Kind of like our physical reflexes. For instance, when somebody hurls a snowball at your head, your first instinct would be to duck. Not to analyze the trajectory of the projectile before deciding to lean left or right, unless you are Neo from the Matrix that is.
‘System 2’ on the other hand is it’s slower twin. More analytical and cautious by nature it requires reason and effort to activate.
I remember the last time I made an ‘system 1’ error, it was when I was looking for a job and suddenly found myself in a big empty office with a hand full of single use sim cards and a bold man in a suit.
Don’t worry I wasn’t a drug dealer, I was being used for my access to internet from locations my crooked boss didn’t have.
My job was to write a bit of text about small company’s putting them in an excel sheet and signing those company’s up for a YouTube account. The detail is in the last part of the sentence, turns out Google doesn’t like it when their accounts are being sold which I found out when they blocked my IP- address and I was fired within a span of 24 hours.
I knew from the moment he pulled out a box full of these prepaid sim cards something was up, somewhere in the back of my head a voice was screaming ‘This is too good to be true!’ but all I could think of was the amount of money I would be able to make. He kept going on about how he would pay me a whopping 10 euros an hour, how he might set up the same business model in Brazil while I would be ‘managing’ ‘European’ ‘operations’.
As it turned out I was a resource for him, a way to create revenue with an expiration date since YouTube will only allow about 80 accounts to be registered from a single IP-address before they decide enough is enough.
In the end it was a valuable experience since I learned to not just dive head first in business opportunities which sound too good to be true and more importantly, how to spot a backstabber from a mile away. I try to get a minimum of 24 hours of thinking done before I make any big decisions ever since.
The Rational Mindset 