In memory of Daniel Kahneman — died on 27 March, 2025, aged 90.
Daniel Kahneman, economist and psychologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his pioneering research on human judgement and decision-making.
In a popularised form, he explained his findings in the book “Thinking, Fast and slow” which I highly recommend (published in 2011 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux). In it, he provides new insights into how our lives can be very positively affected if we have a good balance between two types of thinking: 1. Fast, intuitive, emotional, impulsive, 2. Slow, reasoning, analysing, consequence calculating.
And vice versa: how the quality of life can be negatively affected for those who are too weak in either of them. We need to develop both of these cognitive functions to cope with our daily lives. And there are mental training methods to become more proficient in each of them, and to become better at recognising what kind of thinking you are currently doing, so that you can consciously switch when you have got it wrong.
For most of us, it is type 2 that fails. You can get a real boost in life by getting better at recognising in time when you have slipped into the fast, emotion-driven, impulsive train of thought in situations where you should stop for a few seconds, consider the options and think about the consequences. Our human brain has a built-in simulator that we can train and use more effectively so that we can visualise both what we can do, how we should do it and how the outcome occurs. In a grossly simplified form, this is sometimes referred to as goal image training in the mental training literature, but this concept is easily misunderstood and misused. If you think this sounds interesting and want to learn more, please send an email to clas.m@clasmalmstrom.se and I will send you in-depth information in the form of a compendium with practical tips on how to get started with this branch of mental strength training.