{"id":29313,"date":"2022-10-28T21:30:01","date_gmt":"2022-10-29T04:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=29313"},"modified":"2022-10-28T21:30:01","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T04:30:01","slug":"basketball-fast-and-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/basketball-fast-and-slow\/","title":{"rendered":"Basketball, Fast and Slow"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Kahneman\u2019s Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em>, he speaks to the two systems by which our thinking operates. System 1 (thinking fast), \u201coperates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control\u201d[1]<\/a>(20). System 2 (thinking slow), \u201callocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.\u201d[2]<\/a>(21) Even further, Kahneman says that our ability to think is limited by our ability to \u201cpay attention\u201d. Arguing that each of us is limited by a \u201cbudget of attention\u201d that we can \u201callocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail.\u201d[3]<\/a>(23)<\/p>\n

One area that my mind used to illustrate Kahneman\u2019s ideas was, oddly, my experience playing basketball. When I started playing in college, I was very bad. I understood the point of the game, but was still unfamiliar with the mechanics and the nuances of the game. I would go out and play games of one-on-one to 11 with my roommate at the time. The first few times we played, I couldn\u2019t score more than one or two points at most. Being bad bothered me, so I asked him to play every day it was sunny. We lived in La Jolla, CA. I don\u2019t think I won a single game for the first 4 or 5 months.<\/p>\n

Losing didn\u2019t deter me. I loved the opportunity to get better and took every such opportunity to improve my dribbling, shooting, and other skills. As time passed, I found that I started to think less about the mechanics of the game when I was playing. I could look up when I dribbled the ball and I didn\u2019t have to think about which foot I was jumping off of for my layups. These actions that Kahneman would have described as \u201ceffortful\u201d were becoming more like second nature to me. I was in a sense recognizing that I wasn\u2019t good at basketball because I was operating entirely out of system 2. Every thought and action was taking too much effort, so I either couldn\u2019t process all that was happening or I did it too slowly. As I was able to build repetitions, I found that I was able to move system 2 thoughts and actions in to system 1 through the development of skills.<\/p>\n

In many ways, I think this is how I approach my life. I find that I\u2019m equally driven by two motivating factors: first that I\u2019m competitive, and secondly, I\u2019m lazy. At first they seem at odds with one another, but Kahneman helped me to realize that they are not. His assertion that while \u201cthere are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action\u201d[4]<\/a>(28) is spot on. But I don\u2019t think this type of laziness is a bad thing. If I have more of my attention budget free, I can allocate it, along with my effort, more efficiently. Continuing my basketball metaphor, if I\u2019ve developed foundational skills, I can free my mind to play the game within the game of creating moves and counter moves, reading my opponents (or in Kahneman\u2019s words understanding what others are capable of[5]<\/a>), and analyzing whether my plan of attack really is going to work. It seems like there might be an optimal allocation between using our two systems of thought: one that helps us to operate as quickly and efficiently as possible while allowing room to consider different possibilities.<\/p>\n

In terms of leadership, I think this is an interesting idea. Leadership is often thought of as the optimization of output and productivity. As a result, everyone is specialized and becomes extremely efficient in a narrow subset of skills. The problem, as Edwin Friedman puts it, is that we begin to lack adventure.[6]<\/a> We\u2019re so focused on getting more done with the least amount of effort that all we can do is answer the questions that already exist. Or even worse, maybe \u201cwhen faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.\u201d[7]<\/a> There is a need to consider the balance between working efficiently by developing skills that broaden our use of system 1 while simultaneously allocating part of our attention budget to consider different (or the right) questions through system 2 thinking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011). 20.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid, 21<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid, 23<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid, 28<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid, 260<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (10th Anniversary, Revised Edition) (Church Publishing, Inc., 2017). 14.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Kahneman, 48.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Kahneman\u2019s Thinking, Fast and Slow, he speaks to the two systems by which our thinking operates. System 1 (thinking fast), \u201coperates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control\u201d[1](20). System 2 (thinking slow), \u201callocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.\u201d[2](21) Even further, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2347,2052],"class_list":["post-29313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp01","tag-kahneman","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29314,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29313\/revisions\/29314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}