I see that I’ve picked up this habit of keeping half finished articles in the backlog. Need to fix that. Anyway, let’s hope this article gets to see the light of day on the internet.

I wanted to write some of my current thoughts on the idea of slow thinking. I’d warn you before we start that none of what you’ll read in this article is a novel thought of my own. Rather, it is an aggregate of the various different books I read in the past three months, many of which pointed me towards this idea. It is just my interpretation of the idea, but I’d like to document it nevertheless.

What is slow thinking?

The way I understood it, slow thinking is the non-reactive way of thinking and responding to a situation. When presented with a situation that sets off strong emotions — especially negative ones like anger, fear or jealousy — the idea is to take a step back and recognize the emotion itself, thereby detaching ourselves from that emotion. It is also handy when dealing with situations that trigger an impulsive reaction, not necessarily a negative one.

From experience, I can vouch for the fact that reacting when in an emotional turmoil isn’t usually the best idea. I’d struggle to find an example of a situation in my life when bursting with anger, screaming at someone, getting violent or very negative brought me any net positive.

Similar, impulsively doing something can sometimes be beneficial, but often, and especially in the modern world we live in, impulses are unwarranted and just a reminiscent of the tribal and fight-for-survival past of humans. Being able to recognize when an impulse is justified and when not can come in handy in many life situations, and the ability to do so can be treated like a skill to hone.

Of course, none of this is to suggest we shouldn’t feel emotions. It is perfectly reasonable to feel sad about some of the world events we’re constantly made aware of, just as it is nice to feel excited about the thought of having a cake or petting a cat. I think the idea here is to recognize the complexities and different parts of the mind that are responsible for different emotions and reactions instead of abstracting it all under the one “you”. The idea is to go from “I’m angry” to “I’m feeling anger” and so on.

The following idea is from Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism Is True. Essentially, one can imagine there to be different modules that keep getting activated and deactivated as we go about our lives, and we live through those modules as long as they are active, like experiencing feelings towards the protagonist in a movie or feeling happiness upon hearing a good news. The modules may be triggered by external stimuli, and as such, we’re not really in control of the orchestration.

Since we’re not orchestrating how exactly we feel or react to a situation, it implies there’s no “you” but a lot of different parts that become “you” depending on the situation and the trigger. Lost a game, the “dejected” module activates. Had a nice time at the park with your partner, the “happiness” or “gratitude” module activates.

Yep, we’re talking in very abstract terms, but that’s okay. There’s no way to comprehend the immense complexities of the inner workings of the mind without spending a lifetime studying the subject like the people whose thoughts I’m borrowing and interpreting did. And like they say, all models are wrong. So as long as this way of thinking helps us better understand why we do what we do, it can be useful.

So how does one slow think?

I don’t think there’s one way to do it. The book I referred to earlier, Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright, suggests meditation techniques that can be put to use to recognize our emotions and detach ourselves from them. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman educates us about the biases that we might not recognize in our behaviors and that knowledge makes us more aware of our cognitive fallacies. Relationships by The School of Life, speaks about many of the inherent complexities in humans and human emotions and why people behave in certain ways from time to time (of course, with a focus on romantic relationships).

I think it doesn’t matter which way we choose to learn to slow think; it could be through mindfulness meditation, or educating ourselves on the topic of cognitive biases, or understanding the person we’re dealing with and recognizing them as humans and their emotions. The end goal is the same: to be less reactive, judgemental and impulsive, and more curious.

In conclusion

I hope this was a useful primer on the topic of slow thinking. I’m looking forward to putting it to use in my life and seeing how it works for me. That’s it for now. I’ll go back to getting entertained looking at all sorts of interesting people and the life happening at Catania airport.

Thank you for reading!

I was going through my phone’s gallery when I spotted a photo of Izma from The Emperor’s New Groove. It took me by surprise, because I discovered the movie just this year and was absolutely in love with it, especially the Izma character. But the image in my phone’s gallery was from 2018 in the form of a meme. Weird internet stuff. Anyway, I digress. So what are we talking about today.

Ah yes, intentional learning.

Growing up, we all have natural interests. Be it art, science, music or dance, or computers (sigh..). We are motivated to learn new things around our interests. And from time to time, we discover new interests. School is interesting in that regard. You’re thrown in between a bunch of other kids with completely different and random interests, and there’s osmosis of interests happening when we see that other kid in the class drawing something or reading a book about the solar system or they see us playing a new game or so.

But that diversity of interests decreases once we enter university. The people we’re with have chosen a similar course and chances are that they had a similar set of interests. There’s still a fair bit of interesting diversity, and it is still possible to meet people from courses other than ours and see what life outside is like.

But for me the biggest difference was getting out of university and starting full time work. Many small to medium sized workplaces hire people of specific types depending on their culture and/or domain, understandably so. Many are open to diversity of thoughts and ideas, but of course not too open so as to not destroy the culture that they’re trying to cultivate in the first place (which, of course, is important but to what extent is a separate discussion in itself). What happens then is that we end up in bubbles of people with similar interests as us.

Of course, like with many things, this isn’t a black or white, good or bad situation. On the bright side, our spiked growth (say a particular hard skill we’re trying to hone) in a field can really skyrocket when surrounded by the right people and mentors. That of course has a very positive impact on our careers and professional growth.

But what I found lacking was exposure to experiences, interests and hobbies that were far outside of my bubble. And since I wasn’t exposing myself to interests and hobbies outside of the ones that already existed, I was also not meeting people who had these drastically different interests or hobbies (or opinions, for that matter).

For this very reason, I am trying intentional learning. The basic premise is very simple. Find a new skill, hobby or interest and just learn to get good enough, what ever that means, but not perfect. So far this year, I’ve worked on my Chess skills, learned some German, learned a couple of songs on Ukulele, tried my hands on sketching and painting and picking up some photography basics now. Of course, the goal is not to become proficient or professional in any capacity, but just experience the joy of being a complete novice in a new field and seeing how far I can take it.

The side effect is that the curiosity and learning muscles stays in good shape for when one has to learn something new (which proved to be useful when studying for a certification exam recently). The other side effect is becoming more conversationally accessible to a wider part of the population, sharing interests with more and more people. Yet another side effect is that it makes one more empathetic and open minded. Playing chess isn’t any more worthy than making memes or playing guitar or learning programming. Sure, some skills are valued more in the world we live in due to a multitude of reasons, but it takes effort to build any skill and as such nothing can and should be dismissed as unimportant or unworthy of pursuing.

The real joy, however, is in the process of learning; going from not being able to do something to being able to, building muscle memory, watching amateur and pro videos of people doing it on YouTube and being able to talk to someone or join communities with the same interest.

And instead of looking at people who’ve honed that skill their whole life and getting sad that you’ll never reach there, find joy in the fact that you can instead get good enough at it and then move on to hundreds of new skills and hobbies, getting a taste of the different ways to be alive, to exist. You’ll also retain this phase of your interest in your memories, which will feel nostalgic when long time from today you encounter this skill or hobby in some form or the other or meet someone embarking on their journey into it.

In closing

I hope that was interesting to read and motivates a few of you to pick up some random new hobbies or learn something totally different, unrelated to your work or life and see how it goes. I am convinced it has some real merits over the demerits. From my perspective, the biggest demerit is that we end up spreading too thin over a bunch of thing, while not mastering anything. Personally, I’m okay with that right now. But depending on where you stand, it may or may not be. But having said that, it isn’t black or white and leaves a lot of room in the middle to play around and see what works best.

Thank you for reading. Following is a personal message unrelated to the article.

I took a long break from writing, but it is good to write something again. If you visited this website in the last four months anticipating a new post, apologies for the delay and thank you for being a super-reader of my blog. Until next time!

Humans are fragile creatures. The illusion of stability and control we have in our lives is comical. Our mind seems to have mastered the art of separating itself from the world events. We almost know it. It is hard not to if you spend any time on internet social medias or any form of conventional news sources. Unfortunate things happen, lives end or get ruined for reasons so trivial that’d make you not want to believe it.

Yet, when it comes to our own lives, we’re fairly certain about our timelines. There’s career, that promotion, getting a house, getting married and so on. There’s always the end of life to be content with what we have; be grateful. Now’s the time to be at unrest, to complain and wish for more, to hustle. And not like it is our fault. The society is truly designed to make you feel exactly this way, discontent at every single stage of your life. Get good grades or you’d not get into a good university, study hard or you’d not have a good job, work harder or you’d not get that promotion, don’t plateau in your career or you’d not be able to afford a house, keep working to be able to enjoy a happy retirement and so on.

And what if you’re still not able to enjoy your life finally at 65? Oh those are just the guidelines, too bad it didn’t work out for you. Guess what, it is called 1% for a reason. Try again in the next one. And of course, thank you for your participation in the rat race.

So, what’s my point?

The point that I’m trying to make is that if something is important enough to you, do it without waiting for some special phase of life to come by. No one knows how tomorrow will look like. If this entire pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we have no control over the future, not tomorrow and much less months or years in the future. The present is the only thing we have for certain, so why not make the best of it; by treating it like it is the peak of our health, wealth, social skills and so on.

And how do we do that?

By being grateful for what we have. It is only when we consciously  recognize how lucky we are to have all the things that we do, do we start valuing it. Being able to move around on your own, see, hear, talk, travel, read, write, meet friends, drink coffee, enjoy a sunset or snow; little things that many people might not have the good fortune to experience.

The world is like a nasty slot machine. Luck plays a huge role in almost everything we do, and it starts right at the moment you’re born. We are the product of our circumstances. There’s not much we can do about that, except that we recognize our privileges and act accordingly. Have a chance to do something good for someone? Do it. Realize your actions might’ve caused hurt? Apologize. Have people that pull you back? Filter.

Time really is the only real currency that we have. While it does seem like a tragedy to not know how much more of it do we have left, I think it is a blessing in disguise. Think of the last time you had a deadline for an assignment. Did you wait for the very last moment to do it? If you’re like most people then probably yes. That’s probably what would happen if we knew exactly how long we have to live. We would procrastinate everything until the last moment, wasting away most of it. Fortunately for us, we don’t, and each day can be lived as if it is the deadline for that life’s assignment, doing the things that matter the most to us.

So to summarize, there probably will never be a better time to do certain things, and that’s if you’re lucky to live a full life without many problems. If you’re in your teenage years, you probably have the time to learn something thoroughly, spend time with friends and family, have fun, see clearly if you’re into that. If you’re in your twenties, you have the best balance between intelligence, energy, time and maybe some money too. Later in life you get better with relationships, your emotional intelligence grows and the life experiences you accumulate make you wiser while you’re getting rusty physically. Basically, we live through different interpretations of ‘peak’ throughout our lives, and there’s no one big peak that’s going to solve all your problems and make you happy.

So make the most of your now; make memes, draw comics, write code, learn music, dance, sing, make someone’s day, be vulnerable, be nice, prioritize yourself, talk to random strangers and share stories, gift without a reason, sleep, cry, hug, do whatever you have to. But make your now count.

Thank you for reading!