Book 15 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title - What you see is all there is!

Book - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Book Description - Thinking Fast And Slow shows you how two systems in your brain are constantly fighting over control of your behavior and actions, and teaches you the many ways in which this leads to errors in memory, judgment and decisions, and what you can do about it.

My Reflection: One of my favorite books of all time!!! This book blew my mind the first time I read it and still continues to do so to this day. It opened my eyes to showing me how blind I was to the tricks that my mind plays on me everyday. To be clear, I still am blind, but this book at least gave me some glasses to try and see a little better. It is so funny to see how often this book and Kahneman's work is quoted throughout so many other writers work. I come across it almost every other non-fiction book I read in some ways. Hell, I talked about a few things in my own book (www.icantimaginethebook.com) about my daughter (which has nothing to do with economics or psychology on the surface).

Our brains are remarkable, and our system 1 brains (automatic processing) are the real star of the show. We can do some extraordinary things with our minds that we have no idea what we do and how we do it...we just do it. This is the way we evolved, and it is complex and beautiful at the same time. However, this naturally leaves some blind spots in our existence that system 2 needs to act in order to right the ship. That is why the phrase that Kahneman repeats throughout the book, "what you see is all there is", has stuck in my mind since the first time I read this book. It is the ultimate reminder that we don't know anything and to always question everything. This world will play tricks on you if you let it. I for one would rather at least be aware that I'm being tricked and just maybe over time train my elephant to avoid some of these gaps in judgement.

Question: What are some areas in your life that might change if you took the blinders off?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? - An Introduction YOML Podcast Discussion - Thinking, Fast and Slow

YOML Bookstore - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman