Thinking, Fast and Slow

Based on scientific arguments, this book shows how strongly incorrect drives are stuck in our brains, causing us to think that we are making a logical decision, while this is not the case.

The best example I tell everybody: Look at your attic that you want to clean out. You empty your cupboards, and almost always, a large part goes back into the cupboard because it is a waste. But if you are offered the same stuff for free, you usually don't want it.

The message of this example: Your brain finds it difficult to get rid of something you… show more.

I found this book fascinating because it helped me understand how our brains work, especially when to trust gut-driven judgments and when to question them. This informed writing I was doing on pattern recognition and its importance in strategic thinking.

Leaders have to make judgment calls quickly, but it's important to know when one’s thinking isn't reliable enough. Learning about the two contrasting thinking systems helped me be more thoughtful about my own choices and how to advise the leaders I coach and educate about making better decisions.

What I like about this book is that it digs into the cognitive processes that help explain our behaviors and how we come to understand the world.

The big takeaway from this book for me is that people don’t always think through their choices, and that is hardwired into our brains. It’s really important to understand that when you start thinking about how to get people to change their behaviors.

I found this to be both a provocative and extremely useful book. Kahneman describes two very different human modes of thinking and decision-making.

Slow thinking is analytical and more objective, but it takes a lot of mental energy—and humans are essentially lazy animals. Fast thinking, by contrast, is fast, intuitive, and grounded more in experience and emotion.

Based on this dichotomy, Kahneman explores the different kinds of biases we are prone to unless we’re very careful. I found the author’s concepts applicable to a wide range of situations, including investing and business decision-making.

This book reminds me of why I majored in psychology as an undergraduate and why I was drawn to the program of research I ultimately developed in my own career (the role of stereotypes in workplace discrimination). 

Over the course of his research career, Daniel Kahneman has made the case in many and varied ways that human cognition is limited and can lead to biases in judgments and choices particularly in unpredictable situations (a hallmark of many organizations). Understanding these limitations is the first step toward understanding how to work with them and around them to improve decision making in the… show more.

Danny Kahneman is a colleague (now emeritus) at the Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University who has been instrumental in creating the field of behavioral economics and finance – along with Amos Tversky and others.

Professor Kahneman has written numerous and well-cited papers and books on the topic of systematic biases when rendering decisions under uncertainty.

This bestselling book provides a delightful survey of these tendencies and approaches for helping individuals overcome their biases. It behooves every investor to become familiar with these natural tendencies when implementing strategies to maximize the probabilities of attaining their investment goals.

While this is not per se an investment book, I include it in my list because it teaches you how the mind works.

I believe this insight can lead you to be a better investor because so much of our decision making process is based both on logic and emotion. The more aware you are about what drives your decisions (which ultimately impact your results), the better your decisions over time (and the better your results). 

This book has helped me explore the way we think and make decisions.

By highlighting the cognitive biases that can impact our decision-making, it provides practical insights and strategies for making better choices. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the book is relevant not only for individuals but also for larger group entities.

It has helped me objectivize my thinking processes and to think more critically and to be less impulsive. It has also been useful in how I go about trying to form better habits while minimizing detrimental ones.

Managers tend to think that the key to managing people is understanding how their subordinates consciously respond to the situations in which they find themselves at work. 

This book, summarizing decades of research by the Nobel-winning author and his colleague, Amos Tversky, shows why no less importance must be paid to employees’ more automatic responses.

This book got me to think about how pay transparency (and other pay-related factors) can impact employee behavior in ways that employees may not even be consciously aware of, and what management must do in order to take these automatic responses into account. 

On spotting an unidentifiable object on the African Savanna, a human ancestor would have been better off assuming it was a cheetah and escaping.

The alternative—staying in place while pondering whether it was merely a rock—could have killed him. Nobel Laurette Kahneman’s easy-to-read bestselling book argues that unsurprisingly, the modern human brain has evolved to “think fast” most of the time (“System 1”).

However, to make sense of the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) modern world, humans must engage their thoughtful System 2 brains so they can “think slow.”

Aspiring leaders who don’t master these widely accepted ideas from… show more.