Book excerpts - Ch2(E19): Thinking Slow, Fast!

Accelerating Mindfulness: Harnessing 'Things To Be Done' for Enhanced Fast and Slow Thinking.

Lacunas generate frictions and tensions around choice points. Mindfulness and attention release tensions and conflicts. And the Things To Be Done approach helps identify frictions and meditate on stresses more easily and clearly.

Using Things To Be Done, we can quickly achieve the quality of slow and reflexive thinking and guide our insights, intuitions, and engagements better and faster.

First, by looking at things differently - Not through the lens of "what we need to do", but rather through the contemplation of "what needs to be done".

And then, using three simple thinking exercises, we can quickly and methodically address obstacles such as lack of awareness, evidence, or communicative clarity.

According to Daniel Kahnmann¹, we use two forms of thinking to generate insights, conclusions, and decisions. The first system of thinking is fast, intuitive, and spontaneous. And the second system of thinking is slow, analytical, and meticulous. Unfortunately, despite the advantages and disadvantages of each system of thinking, system one thinking tends to override system two thinking, especially in stressful situations.

When the cost of thorough thinking exceeds our cognitive availability, we will default to system one thinking and delay system two thinking.

Things To Be Done enables us to achieve system two reflexivity and insights through system one intuitiveness and cognitive load.

Using Things To Be Done, we can quickly articulate unintuitive insights and make unhabitual choices. And by enhancing our capacity to articulate obstacles, identify causes, and guide solutions, we streamline the connections between our intuitive reactions and our analytical knowledge creation, which lead to system two reflexivities in system one condition.

---

Things To Be Done allow us to draw transformative roadmaps and constrain insights quickly and thoroughly. And articulate specific interactions in conditions that otherwise would remain general and blurry. For example, drawing the GAPs (causal necessities), acknowledging PRICE issues (obstructing lacunas), and clarifying the direction of attention (to relevant stakeholders) and transitions (from one state to another) - help us determine precise creative vectors and decisive transformational roadmaps. And as long as lacunas are critically articulated and their intensity is evaluated, stuckness stops being arbitrary.

Well-defined challenges are the most potent catalyst of effective solutions, creative capabilities, and lean prosperity. Because When obstacles are clear and easily communicative, we constitute system one conditions even for system two thinking.

Mindfully attending lacunas relaxes the inconveniences of addressing obstacles or pockets of resistance (both personal and ideological). Continuous and decisive exploration of lacunas creates the necessary clarity to attend to constraints more effectively and efficiently - Or consciously forfeit them If the intensities of lacunas and subsequent obstacles are insurmountable.

The three Things To Be Done thinking exercises are designed for quick and intuitive use and attentive and detailed drill-downs. TTBD liberates us from attaching to a particular form of reasoning. Instead, it allows us to mindfully identify what form of reasoning we apply and consciously switch between them. With some Practicing of TTBD thinking exercises, identifying and overcoming constraints becomes less cognitively straining and effortless.

When faced with an obstacle, confusion, or disagreement, we can intuitively draw a GAP sketch (and analytically observe it for PRICE issues) or intuitively draw awareness towards related PRICE issues (and analytically validate them using a GAP sketch).

The same goes for clarifying critical observations regarding our creative value chain components. For example, we can intuitively assume accounting and accountability issues and then draw GAP sketches to validate them. Alternatively, we can draw a GAP sketch and count differences in awareness of PRICE issues.

The Things To Be Done approach, constantly evaluates agreements on differences. It does so both intuitively and analytically. It allows creative stakeholders the freedom from restricting analytic approaches and the liberty to switch between abductive, inductive, and deductive reasoning.

Whenever we get stuck, we can evaluate agreements or differences in two ways: intuitively, by assuming PRICE issues, or analytically, by (intuitively) drawing a GAP sketch and analytically observing it to identify PRICE issues.

Once we clarify the level of agreements or disagreements around perceptions of change and constraints, we can drill down and identify precisely where and what adjustments are needed. Again, by intuitively determining what sort of changes we need to achieve for each stakeholder or operational component of our creative value chain.

To think slow, fast, we need to expedite our exploration of problems and stress-testing solutions. Using The Things To Be Done, we can perform both tasks at significant adjacency. And even more.