Thinking, Fast and Slow

This Nobel prize winning economist writes about the two basic types of thinking and how to use them to achieve success.  I find Thinking, Fast and Slow to be useful when teaching students how to make decisions under stress.I am currently in a graduate certificate program in executive leadership, and in my class on decision making the Professor also highly recommended this book.  The author in THinking Fast and Slow taks about the two types of thinking Type 1 and Type 2.  Type 1 is the instinctual constant low level thinking we all do.  How to walk, tie our shoes, the gut feeling of I like this person, or I don’t like this situation.  Most of your decisions are type 1 thinking.

Type 2 always follows Type one, it is the monitoring level of deeper thinking.  When you first started driving and had to think about steering and braking, and the mechanics oif it all you were in type 2 thinking.

The neat thing is that you can train yourself in a subject until it becomes type 1.  That is mastery.

I discussed the OODA loop and the color code system with the the pHD teaching the course but she had no frame of reference.  Luckily the Grad Student assisting her used to teach firearm training at the Federal Law Enforcement Academy, so that lead to some great discussions about how those defensive tactics concepts worked within the academic framework.

If you want to get a little deeper understanding of how your brain works under stress – or especially if you teach how to work under stress then Thinking, Fast and Slow is a book you should consider reading.