The importance of slowing down our thinking in a fast paced world

I've had the good fortune of speaking at a number of national events so far this year, and in several of them I've found myself referencing the work of the late, great Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist.

The topic I keep coming back to is the speed at which we arrive at a position or make a decision. In a world built for speed - where information is literally at our fingertips 24 hours a day - we've found ourselves increasingly adopting what Kahneman called "System 1 thinking".

In his award-winning book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman describes two systems of thinking.

System 1 thinking is fast, automatic, effortless, and occurs with no conscious sense of voluntary control. His example is simple: if someone asks you what two plus two is, your brain will almost certainly supply the answer before you've given the question any conscious thought. That's System 1 thinking at work.

System 2 thinking, by contrast, is slow, conscious, explicit, and deliberate. Kahneman likens it to solving a complex mathematical equation. If someone asks you what 126 multiplied by 43 is, for example, most of us would need to engage in System 2 thinking to work out the answer. I say most of us because some people are naturally gifted enough to solve even complex equations using what appears to be System 1 thinking. I'm definitely not one of them!

Kahneman argued that, more and more, we're being programmed to rely on System 1 thinking.

Fast, subconscious, automatic decisions that are often error-prone, made without stopping to consider whether what we've concluded - or consumed, in the case of media and information - is actually accurate.

Kahneman also highlights that our brains naturally prefer to engage in System 1 thinking whenever possible. When we're repeatedly exposed to the same message or task - much like the algorithms that drive social media - that message or behaviour becomes automatic and almost involuntary.

Decades of research show that much of the media we consume is riddled with stereotypes, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and outright lies. As a result, broad narratives about groups of people become pervasive, misleading, and incomplete.

It's this pattern of thinking that is so damaging to society today - and it's happening without us even realising it.

These repeated narratives prime our brains to make assumptions about people based on their race or other characteristics before we've consciously evaluated the evidence.

So what's the antidote? Thankfully, Kahneman offers that too.

It's about intentionally slowing our thinking down.

We need to take responsibility for becoming more conscious of our thought processes. We need to put more effort into reflecting on what we're being exposed to, questioning the conclusions we're instinctively being drawn towards, and taking a moment to evaluate them before forming a final opinion.

We have to slow down and think more critically.

Critical thinking is the objective, disciplined process of actively analysing, interpreting, and evaluating information rather than accepting it at face value. It requires us to question assumptions, recognise biases, weigh evidence, and build logical arguments before making reasoned decisions or solving problems.

Whenever I've spoken about this on the national stage this year, this is the moment people sit up and really start listening. This is the point where cameras come out and slides get photographed because it's the message people want to take away with them.

I think that's because, collectively, we recognise we've reached a point where many of our habits have become unhelpful to the way society functions. The systems we use and interact with every day - particularly social media - are actively reinforcing these unhelpful thinking patterns.

The challenge now is to do the difficult work of unwiring what's become hard-wired: creating space to pause, question, evaluate, and think before arriving at a position.