SQUIRREL!
A recent reply sent to a friend via text:
“Yes, I did receive your email and I read it while sitting in my car waiting for my son but then he got in the car and asked if I could stop at the grocery store for his favorite meal and then my phone actually rang and my brain is in the middle of trying to write a sermon so… I didn’t respond because…. SQUIRREL!
In other words: I got distracted and forgot.
I’ll go back and check your email and get right back to you with an answer. You should know though that I am currently sitting in my car waiting for a kid so if you don’t hear back from me…”
This is why so many of my sermons are written while I’m in the shower. There are relatively few distractions while in the steamy cocoon except for my German Shepherd who is a bit of a peeping Tom. In the shower my brain’s System 2, as Daniel Kahneman calls it in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, has a fighting chance of paying attention to sorting through my ideas. As soon as I turn off the water and step out of the quiet of the shower System 1, which has been running quietly in the background so as to make sure my hair is washed and my body clean is now bombarded with more decisions and System 2 gets distracted.[1]
Being Wrong
Lately I’ve been noticing that I’m wrong more often than I used to be. This is happening at work, in my home life, and even in conversations with friends. I think I’ve heard something correctly, only to find out otherwise. I am sure I’ve answered an email only to be gently reminded that in fact, I have not. I am convinced my limited capacity of attention is being used up by this doctoral program![2] One cannot do multiple things at once that require the use of System 2 and with so much do to my System Two is on overload!
In her book, Being Wrong Adventures in the Margin of Error, Kathryn Schulz writes, “A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.”[3] I wonder, if this happens because, like me, so many of us are juggling too many balls or moving too fast through life. Our “lazy” System 2 doesn’t even get a chance to wake up as in our haste we are relying on answers based on a heuristic without checking in to make sure that the use of that heuristic is accurate and makes sense. Heuristics, (rule of thumb) help us to answer questions and make decisions as quickly as possible, which in theory is helpful, but when the heuristic is unchecked, we often end up making a bad decision or giving an incorrect answer.[4]
In their book, How to Read Numbers And When to Trust Them Tom Chivers and David Chivers make a somewhat similar claim using numbers or statistics as a “heuristic” for decision making. While their focus is to help readers, “…understand how numbers are made, how they’re used and how they can go wrong, because otherwise we’ll make bad decisions, as individuals and as a society”[5] the point of each of the books, How to Read Numbers, Thinking Fast and Slow and Being Wrong, mentioned above is to improve the our quality of thinking and decision making. If we keep reading books like these I may learn never to trust anyone or anything, especially myself! (Kidding, not kidding.)
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Thinking Fast
When initially writing my NPO I made an assumption, based on my own experience trying to find therapists for myself, family members, and church members, that there are not enough mental health resources in the city of Bend, OR. When I finally interviewed experts in the field I found out that there are actually more than enough resources they are just not easily accessed nor advertised well. Yet another example of me “thinking fast” in an effort to get my NPO finished as quickly as possible.
Conclusion
What I am taking away from this book is that I often make mistakes. Duh. That has been pretty obvious, especially lately. What I found beneficial is the language this book gave me to explain how my brain works, the reasons I need to create space and time for focus, and the permission to slow down!
[1] Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. 1st edition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Location 302 on Kindle.
[2] IBID, location 321.
[3] Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. n.d. Accessed March 2, 2023. https://www.scribd.com/book/163560786/Being-Wrong-Adventures-in-the-Margin-of-Error, 7.
[4] Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. 1st edition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Kindle location 79 & 98.
[5] Chivers, Tom, and David Chivers. 2021. How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 3.
About the Author
Kally Elliott
Mom of four. Wanna-be Broadway star. PC(USA) pastor. Wife. Friend. Sometimes a hot mess. Sometimes somewhat together. Is this supposed to be a professional bio?8 responses to “SQUIRREL!”
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Hey Kally….you bring up a great point–one that we know about but likely don’t think that deeply on (irony!): our pace of life. It would be fascinating if they were able to measure an average person’s brain activity 100 and 50 years ago and compare that with what’s happening in our brains now. My assumption: we have a lot more bouncing around than in previous generations…but I could be wrong (as your post clearly points out!). That’s not to say we’re smarter or have a greater capacity….in fact, the opposite could be true: the pace of life and information overload is contributing to our increased mental health struggles.
Just based on the schedules our kids and teenagers keep these days, or more accurately, the schedules we parents keep for our kids and teenagers these days, I’d assume you are correct that we have much more bouncing around in our brains than they did in previous generations. That said, in the 80’s I had a robust schedule of piano lessons, church choir and activities, soccer and swim team…and I had two younger brothers so maybe not. I wonder if the thing that most affects the flitting of our brains from one thing to the next is our cell phones. I know I am constantly being distracted by a text, email, etc.
But I am going back to being part of this doctoral program…I woke up early this morning to get started on a sermon. I began reading and quickly got distracted by the need to answer/make comments on the blog…and here I am. Okay, back to sermon writing for the next five minutes until…
First off, this post was both insightful and hilarious. Thank you for the giggle.
Secondly, you got me wondering how much age, stage of life, responsibility levels, etc have to do with these stages. That’s something I may want to dive deeper into, when I have time, you know, when I’m sitting in my car, multitasking!
Lastly, in your reference to mental health resources in Bend (one of my favorite cities as a Salem-boy), my mind connected to the narrative of Elijah after defeating the prophets of Baal and running from Jezebel. He cried out, “I’m the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me TOO!” The Lord had to point out to him that there were over 7000 others in Israel who were committed to the ways of God. He was not alone.
I’m always ministered to by that passage. When I think no one else is on board, no one is going for it spiritually, no one else is doing the work, etc. etc. blah, blah, blah…God has a way of changing my thinking.
Grateful to the Lord for his provision and his people.
John, First of all, if you get a comment in your inbox that looks like it was to someone else, that’s because it was to someone else and I accidentally replied to your comment.
But now I am replying to *your* comment. (I probably made the mistake above because I was trying to do two things at once and my Systems 1 and 2 were overloaded!)
I definitely think that stage of life could be a major contributing factor to our distractions and quality of thinking. Even when I had young kids I don’t think my brain was as overloaded as it is now that I have teenagers. As I am typing this I also wonder about the expectations that as kids age into their teen years that parents should have more freedom and thus take on more in their personal or work lives. My experience of teenagers though is that while they don’t need me minute to minute as my young kids did, they DO still need me – like to drive them a thousand places and to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to make sure they get home safely or to have a conversation that begins at midnight. And yet, for some reason I thought I could manage a doctoral program along with the normal responsibilities! To be honest, I am really enjoying the program and how it is challenging me in deep ways.
And thank you for that reference to Elijah. That is a super helpful reference that I will store away for later use! Like you, if I am going through something or thinking something I try to remember that I cannot possibly be the only one! As I have dug deeper into mental health resources in Bend I am in awe of the work so many are doing. I thought I was the only one…..
Hi Kally!
I really enjoyed reading your writing.
I’m just wondering when you or others found that your thoughts and decisions were wrong, do you tend to use more system 1 or 2 to correct these mistakes?
I think it depends on the mistake made but more often than not I believe we’d have to move to System 2 to correct those mistakes.
Heavenly Father, Go before all my decisions today. Guide my S1 intuition/feelings them today. Align my S2 thinking in ways that glorify you. Amen.
Hmmm..wondering if my decision to join this program was a S1 or S2 decision.
Kally,
Oh the dread of opening up a text only to see the blinking cursor of the text I “sent” days ago and now sit wondering if they are ignoring me:). I’m wrestling with all that I am trying to accomplish and know in my s2 mind that there is logically no such thing as a perfect time to add to my life, it never fails that things fall apart. Life seems to be a series of picking myself and those around me back up. I guess it’s a lot like the “how to read numbers” by Chivers. We can in the moment analyze what we think the numbers are telling us in how we are doing in this program, and sometimes we are “s1” thinking our way through it. I love “freakonomics” book/podcast. I got the greatest gift from that when I was facing the guilt of being a full-time working mom in an “Evangelical world” where there were always some (and sometimes still are) those who think I’m failing my motherly duties. Freakonomics did a study where they looked at the well-being of children of stay at home mom’s and working moms and what they found was that happy children come from happy parents. So if working full time made me happy and fulfilled, that is what influenced my kids happiness. One can be a stay at home mom, but if she is miserable, than that affected the children more. So I guess this doctorate is part of it, does it make us happy or fulfilled? Does the dream of finishing with that “what seems too big of a project” and we are walking across the stage and getting our hoods sustains us in this semester and this moment, than it’s worth it, right?