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of the two minds
Have you ever walked into a kitchen, looked at thefridge,
and completely forgotten why you went there in thefirst place?
Or perhaps you have made a quick, emotionalpurchase online that felt right at the moment,
but an hour later you realized it was a totalmistake.
We often think that we are the absolute masters ofour own thoughts and that
every choice we make is based on cold, hard logic.
But what if I told you that most of your life isactually run by a fast, emotional,
and often invisible autopilot?
Welcome to your English Toolbox, your slow Englishpodcast where we train your ears step by step.
I am Martin.
And I am Julia.
Julia, today we are exploring a masterpiece ofpsychology,
Thinking Fast and Slow, by the Nobel Prize winnerDaniel Kahneman.
This is such a fundamental book for anyoneinterested in personal growth,
because understanding how we think is the firststep to thinking better.
In this episode, we will reveal the two charactersthat control your brain,
explain why your intuition can sometimes be yourworst enemy,
and show you how to slow down your thinking toachieve better results in life and in English.
If you stay with us until the end, you will learnhow to identify mental traps before they happen,
you will improve your English vocabulary forpsychology,
and you will discover a secret to making moreconfident decisions in your daily life.
Part 2.
Meeting the Fast and the Slow
Imagine your brain is like a large company withtwo very different employees,
working in the same small office.
That is a great way to visualize it.
Who are these employees, and why don't they getalong?
The first employee is what Kahneman calls System1.
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He is incredibly fast, he never sleeps,
and he makes decisions in a fraction of a secondwithout you even noticing.
He is the one who handles the easy things, right?
Exactly.
When you see that 2 plus 2 equals 4, that isSystem 1 providing the answer instantly.
When you read a person's facial expression,
and know they are angry before they even opentheir mouth, that is also System 1.
So System 1 is our intuition, our habits, and oursurvival instinct all rolled into one.
Yes, but the problem is that System 1 loves tojump to conclusions, and it hates being confused.
And that is where the second employee comes in tosave the day.
Precisely. System 2 is the slow, logical, and hard-working part of your brain.
He is the one you use when you are trying to learna complex new grammar rule,
or calculate a difficult tip at a restaurant in aforeign currency.
But there is a major catch with System 2, isn'tthere?
There is. System 2 is what we call lazy.
Wait. Lazy is a very strong word to use for ourlogical mind.
It sounds like you are saying our brain prefersnot to work hard if it can avoid it.
That is exactly what the research suggests.
Thinking deeply takes a huge amount of physicalenergy.
It actually burns calories and makes your pupilsdilate.
So our brain tries to conserve energy by lettingSystem 1 handle almost everything on autopilot.
Exactly. We think we are making logical choices,
but often we are just following the first fastthought that pops into our heads
because System 2 is too tired to check the facts.
Part 3. The Storytelling Trap
W-Y-S-I-A-T-I
One of the most fascinating and dangerous thingsSystem 1 does is create stories to explain the
world. We are natural storytellers, aren't we? Ithelps us make sense of the chaos.
We are, but System 1 wants the story to becoherent and simple more than it wants the
story to be true. Kahneman has a special acronymfor this. W-Y-S-I-A-T-I
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That sounds like a strange word. What does itstand for in plain English?
It stands for What You See Is All There Is.
It means our brain takes the tiny amount ofinformation we have
and builds a complete certain picture of reality,ignoring everything we don't know.
For example, if I meet a new person and they arewearing a very expensive suit,
my System 1 might decide they are very intelligentand successful.
Even though I have absolutely no evidence of theirintelligence or their professional background.
Exactly. That is a classic example of the haloeffect.
Because you like one visible thing about them,your brain automatically decides that
every other invisible thing about them must begood too.
I can see how this is a huge trap for Englishlearners.
If a learner hears a native speaker talking veryfast with a perfect accent,
they might assume that person is smarter or moreeducated than they are.
Their System 1 creates a story of inferiority thatcan be very damaging to their confidence.
But if they engaged System 2, they would realizethat speaking fast is just a habit,
not a measure of intelligence.
Yes, but System 2 is often taking a nap,
so it just accepts the fast story from System 1without questioning it.
Part 4. Anchoring and the Illusion of Value
Let's talk about another trick our brain playsthat marketers love to use. Anchoring.
I have heard of this in business negotiations. Itis about the first number mentioned, right?
Exactly. Kahneman showed that the first piece ofinformation we receive
acts like a heavy anchor in our minds.
If you walk into a boutique and see a watch thatcosts $2,000 and then you see one for $500,
the second one feels like a massive bargain.
But if you had seen a $50 watch first,
the $500 one would seem incredibly expensive andoverpriced.
Our brain doesn't look at the absolute value ofthe object.
It only looks at the relative value compared tothat first anchor.
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So our environment is constantly priming ourbrains to think in certain ways without us
even realizing it.
It is happening every single second. The words wehear, the music in a shop,
even the temperature of the room can pull ouranchors in different directions.
This is why it is so important to be intentionalabout the
English environment we create for ourselves.
If you only listen to news reports about howdifficult and impossible English is,
your anchor for your own potential will be verylow.
And you will feel like you are failing
because your brain has accepted a negative anchoras the truth.
That is a very powerful point, Julia.
By slowing down and choosing slow English,
you are setting a new, realistic, and positiveanchor for your brain.
It allows System 2 to feel comfortable and safe
instead of constantly stressed by high-pressureanchors.
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Part 5. Loss Aversion
Why We Fear Change
Now we come to perhaps the most famous discoveryin the book.
Loss Aversion
This is the idea that the pain of losing is muchstronger than the joy of gaining, isn't it?
Precisely. For most humans,
the emotional pain of losing $100 is twice aspowerful as the joy of finding $100.
Evolutionarily, that makes a lot of sense.
Losing your only food was a death sentence, whilefinding extra food was just a bonus.
It was a perfect survival strategy for the jungle,but
it can be a disaster for personal growth in themodern world.
How does this specifically affect someone tryingto improve their life or their English skills?
It makes us risk-averse. We stay in bad jobs orkeep using inefficient study methods because
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we are terrified of what we might lose if wechange.
Think about a student who is afraid to participatein a group discussion in English.
They aren't thinking about the gain of practice.
They are only thinking about the potential loss oftheir dignity if they make a mistake.
Exactly. System 1 is shouting
danger because it perceives a mistake as a loss ofsocial status.
And since System 2 is lazy, it doesn't step in tosay,
hey, making a mistake is actually the only way togain fluency.
We have to consciously reframe these situations
to trick our brain into seeing the gain instead ofthe loss.
Kahneman also explores a very strange internalconflict
between what he calls the experiencing self andthe remembering self.
Wait. Are you saying we have two differentversions of our own identity living inside our
memories?
In a way, yes. The experiencing self is the onewho lives strictly in the present moment.
That is the self that feels the heat, the cold, orthe joy of a conversation right now.
Exactly. But here is the truly shocking partdiscovered in the book.
The remembering self is the one who makes all ofyour future decisions.
That sounds very unfair to the version of us thatactually has to live through the experience.
It is unfair because the remembering self followsa very specific rule called the Peak End Rule.
I think I have heard of this in psychologyarticles.
It means we only remember the most intense momentand the very last moment of an event.
Precisely. You could have a two-week vacationwhere 13 days were absolutely perfect and full
of sunshine. But if you lose your passport on thevery last day, your remembering self will label
the entire trip as a disaster. Exactly. Itcompletely ignores the
long duration of the happiness and focuses only onthe painful ending.
This explains why some people have one badexperience in an English class
and decide they hate the language for the rest oftheir lives.
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Their remembering self has created a negativestory based on one peak of embarrassment.
They are ignoring all the small wins and the hoursof successful learning they had before that
moment.
We need to be much more kind to our experiencingself by reminding our memory of the good moments.
We do. We need to realize that the stories ourmemory tells us are often
biased and missing the full picture. So we shouldintentionally celebrate
the end of our study sessions to create a bettermemory?
That is a brilliant practical application for ourfriends listening.
Always end your English practice with somethingyou enjoy so your remembering
self wants to come back tomorrow.
Why do we believe some things are very commonwhile we think others are very rare?
Is it because we have looked at the statistics andthe data like a scientist?
Almost never. It is usually because of a shortcutcalled the availability heuristic.
That is a very technical term for a podcast.
What does it mean for a normal person in theirdaily life?
It means that if you can remember an example ofsomething easily,
your brain decides that it must be very important.
This is why people are often more afraid of flyingin a plane
than they are of driving a car to the supermarket.
Exactly. A plane crash is a loud, dramatic, andvivid story that stays in your memory easily.
While car accidents happen every day and arerarely reported as big, dramatic news stories.
Because the plane story is more available in yourmind,
System 1 assumes it is a much bigger risk.
I see this happen with English learners when theythink about their mistakes.
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They remember that one time they used the wrongword and someone looked confused.
That memory is so available and loud that theythink they make mistakes
every time they open their mouth.
Even if they have spoken perfectly for the lastthree hours,
that one loud memory dominates their thinking.
We are essentially victims of what is most vividand emotional in our minds.
So we have to use System 2 to look at the actualevidence instead of just our loudest memories.
Yes, we must ask ourselves if we are rememberingthe truth or just the most dramatic story.
Part 8. The Planning Fallacy and Overconfidence
Have you ever noticed that a project at workalways takes twice as long as you originally
thought?
Every single time. I think I can finish a task inone hour, but it always takes three or four.
Kahneman calls this the planning fallacy, and itis a symptom of our natural overconfidence.
We are very bad at predicting the future becausewe only look at the best-case scenario.
We ignore all the possible delays, mistakes, andinterruptions that are guaranteed to happen.
This is why so many people give up on their goals,like learning a new language or starting a fitness
routine.
They plan based on their System 1 excitement,which tells them they can be fluent in three
months.
And when reality doesn't match that fast story,they feel like they have failed personally.
If we use System 2 to look at how long it actuallytook other people,
we would have much more realistic expectations.
But looking at data is boring and slow, so weprefer to listen to our own optimistic illusions.
We also suffer from the sunk cost fallacy, wherewe keep doing something just because we have
already invested time. Like finishing a terriblebook or staying in a class that isn't helping us
learn at all. Our brain hates the idea of wastingwhat we already spent, so it forces us to waste
even more time. It is so important to recognizewhen we are just throwing good time after bad
time.
Sometimes the most logical thing to do is to stopand start something new.
Part 9. Creating Friction for Better Decisions
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So the big question is, how do we actually startthinking slower in a world that is moving so fast?
It sounds like we need to create some friction inour decision-making process.
That is the perfect word. Friction is what slowsdown a car and we need it for our brains.
One way to do this is to simply wait before youspeak or make a big purchase.
Kahneman suggests that we should always questionour first impressions.
When you feel that sudden gut feeling or strongcertainty about something,
that is your signal to stop.
Ask yourself, what would happen if the opposite ofthis thought were true?
This forces system 2 to wake up and start lookingfor evidence in the real world.
Another technique is called the premortem,
where you imagine a project has already failed inthe future.
That is brilliant. It allows you to see the risksbefore they become real problems today.
It turns your overconfidence into a useful toolfor planning.
And finally, we should accept that we will neverbe perfectly logical creatures like computers.
We are humans and our biases are part of ouridentity and our history.
But being aware of the machine is the first stepto mastering it.
Every time you pause to think, you are exercisingyour system 2 and becoming a more intelligent
learner.
Julia, it has been an incredible journey throughthe mind of Daniel Kahneman today.
I feel like I am walking away with a much clearerunderstanding of why I make mistakes.
We hope this episode helps you recognize the twocharacters living in your own head every day.
Remember that thinking slow is not a weakness. Itis a sign of wisdom and mental strength.
By giving your logical mind the time it needs,
you are opening the door to better relationshipsand better learning.
Do not be afraid to be the person who stops andsays,
let me think about that for a moment.
That one simple sentence can save you from yearsof regret and frustration.
Thank you for spending this time with us in theEnglish Toolbox.
We are so proud of the progress you are making bychoosing to listen deeply to these concepts.
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Keep practicing, keep questioning your autopilot,and keep moving forward step by step.
We will see you in the next episode for moreinsights into your world and your English.
Thank you for listening.