Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.

Our thoughts on Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a book that has altered how I approach and think about problems in my life. It builds on the idea that we're Strangers to Ourselves and that we're governed by two completely separate brains; our fast thinking (automatic) brain and our slow thinking (conscious) brains. You'll be surprised which one has the wheel most of the time...

Thinking, Fast and Slow also reminds a bit of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s thinking in Antifragile. It dives into how the mechanisms of human thinking works, and how we're lured into poor judgement, hopeless memory and bad decisions by our fast-thinking systems. Thinking, Fast and Slow reveals when we can and cannot trust our intuitions. We can all benefit from a little more slow thinking.

One interesting insight is that Kahneman ends his books with a conclusion on the importance of improving our decision-making and the role that technology can play for that in the future. Ray Dalio comes to the same conclusion in his incredible book Principles.

If you're a marketer or UX designer, it's super insightful in helping to predict irrational user behaviour.

Our favourite quote from Thinking, Fast and Slow

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

31 recommendations for Thinking, Fast and Slow

31 recommendation for Thinking, Fast and Slow

Book Summary

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A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

— Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow