Dancing Into The New Year … And Beyond

Your brain has already won Dancing With The Stars

HAPPY NEW YEAR WISHES AND REFLECTIONS GOING INTO 2024

May your 2024 be one of health, prosperity, happiness, and growth. It is hard to believe that 24 years ago I was testifying before Congress about the potential impacts of the Y2K bug, was on the road educating people about realistic Y2K readiness, and promoting my Y2K preparation book.¹ Young people who weren’t alive at that time are now out of college and working. Time really does fly by!

If you recall Y2K, do you also recall how many believed that it would be catastrophic? There was even talk of the coming Y2K apocalypse? Whew! Glad we missed that one! I believed at the time, as did many others, that Y2K was basically a technology issue that had potential to become a major problem if not fixed, and that it was totally fixable. The world community got the message and responded to the crisis by investing over over $600 Billion² to collaboratively correct it which resulted in Y2K being nothing more than a changing of the calendar date. It became a “non-story” but it could have been a major story if left ignored.

Amazing what can happen when smart, capable folks from around the world come together to solve a common problem BEFORE it happens.³

As we move into the New Year, I want to take a moment to celebrate the uniqueness of each of us and how we individually contribute to the amazing tapestry of life. Embracing our differences while respectfully acknowledging each other’s boundaries is at the heart of the democratic process, and I hope that my newsletter in some way contributes to more productive conversations around the many important issues of our times.

Finally, thank you for subscribing to and reading my newsletter. It means a lot to me that you take a few minutes out of your busy week to join me here.

I would be honored if you invited one other person to join us here in the BizDoctor’s Gazebo for the coming year.

NOW … WELCOME TO 2024 … LET’S GO!

We have a beautiful, elegant dance happening in front of us every minute of our lives, and we barely notice. This dance is happening right now as you read this sentence. The automatic dance partner in your brain is effortlessly reading the letters on the screen, forming the letters into words that then combine to become sentences. The more analytic brain partner is interpreting the words to determine meaning and context, all the time asking: “What is this post about?”, “Is it something of interest to me?”, “Is it worth my time to read this or should I do something else?” We all do it effortlessly.

In the past few posts you were introduced to the automatic processing part of your brain (System 1) and the analytical/decision making part (System 2). We played Where’s Waldo to look at how the two systems interact to perform a simple process like finding a specific image when it is buried in a bunch of other similar images. We saw how System 2 decides where to look and then System 1 rapidly scans that part of the image to see if anything looked like Waldo. How any suspected image was passed to System 2 for confirmation or rejection. And so forth. ⁴

Feedback from a reader asking for more explanation related to this interaction prompted me to offer a few more examples of how this interaction happens.

Let’s start with learning a new skill. Recall back to a time when you were learning something completely new, such as the first time you got behind the wheel of a car as a novice driver. Try to recall what it felt like. Is the seat in the right position? How do you adjust the seat? Where should my feet go? Where is the ignition? How does the key fit into the ignition? Are my hands at 10 and 2? How do I adjust the mirrors? Where is the gear shifter? Is there a clutch? (Yes. I learned a long time ago. Still miss my manual transmission Triumph TR-250 convertible BTW! 😊) Everything was new, and nothing about driving was automatic. Each action required deliberate thought.

Your System 2 was on overdrive (pun intended) and every move had to be considered. If you have any doubt about this, wait until you start teaching a new driver and it will all come back to you. Your teenage brain was so occupied with thinking about these preparation steps, that there wasn’t much brainpower (System 2) available to think about lane changes, turns, etc.

Everything was so new that System 1 could not be engaged to relieve the thinking burden on System 2 because no routine had yet been established. System 1 lives to fulfill routine activities, but it needs System 2 to give it the routine instructions before it can do its thing.

The first few times you drove, System 2 was analyzing everything, evaluating each action, guessing about what to do next, and making choices about the way you like things set up to drive. System 2 was writing the driving routine that it later handed off to System 1.

With each new time you drove, System 1 became more sophisticated because System 2 kept adding more detailed instructions, and over time the driving mechanics became simpler (more routine).⁵ You started to focus more on the thoughtful aspects of driving such as estimating the speed of the cars around you, determining if that red Toyota is going to change lanes or not, estimating whether you have enough room between you and the car in front of you to stop in time, evaluating conditions for black ice, etc.⁶  Your actions related to driving the car became, in time, automatic thanks to System 1 which allowed your System 2 to focus its limited analysis capacity on the critical aspects of driving a car safely in traffic.

System 2 analyzes, creates, and then delivers its carefully considered procedures to System 1 which will efficiently and automatically follow those procedures. It is important to remember that System 1 must first have a procedure to follow which is the System 2 domain.

We could not effectively function without this amazing interaction between these two systems, and this interaction has been used to model many different areas of our lives. For example, when I was a manufacturing engineer working for Plantronics, the production line would efficiently build products to meet a design, but it was my job as the engineer to define the design and the processes that manufacturing would follow for the build. For this rough analogy, I was System 2 and the manufacturing floor would be System 1.

Computers have dedicated subroutines that perform specific functions with high levels of efficiency, similar to System 1. But they will usually have some type of interrupt⁷ built in to signal to the computer’s higher functions that something does not match the subroutine expectations. The interrupt flags the problem and asks for instructions on what to do next, similar to System 1 and System 2.

Back to our driver education example, over the years you likely have a highly developed procedure that you follow when you get into your car. Today, your System 1 takes over and runs the setup routine, mostly without you consciously thinking about it. You automatically put your foot on the brake, put the key into the ignition and turn it, check your mirrors, and attach your seatbelt without really thinking about it.  If you have any doubt about this, think about the many times you have gotten into your car, started it, and drove off talking to a travel companion or on your cell phone, or while intently thinking about something else. All those things that would have completely occupied your thinking during your first few times behind the wheel now happened automatically. That is System 1 doing what System 2 told it to do, but only after System 2 had established the routine through analysis, trial and error, and decision.

To close out this analogy, think about what happens should your mirrors, for some reason, not be in the correct position? How could this be? You are the only person who drives this car, so the mirrors should not have moved. Notice how System 2 now becomes engaged! The incorrect mirror positions did not fit the expected System 1 routine, so System 2 takes over the investigation, perhaps choosing to not drive at all until the problem is solved. Notice how everything was being done automatically by System 1 until the unexpected mirror placement engaged System 2 to investigate. If the mirrors had been in the correct position, you would already be on your way, with System 1 happily driving the car as you think about where you plan to eat lunch!

#System1, #System2, #DanielKahneman, #DecisionMaking, #Influence #ThinkingFastAndSlow

FEEDBACK REQUEST
Would you like more explanation about the fundamental interactions between System 1 and System 2, or would you like me to move on to additional related topics? Your feedback and guidance is appreciated. You are collectively like my System  2 telling me where to go next. 😊

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1. SAMS Teach Yourself Y2K Survival In 10 Minutes. ISBN: 978-0672316357

2. For an overview of Y2K check out this Investopedia location. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/y/y2k.asp

3. This Time article does a nice job of explaining how remediation efforts done in the decade leading up to Y2K kept it from becoming the disaster if could have been. https://time.com/5752129/y2k-bug-history/

4. This explanation is based on the work of Daniel Kahneman.. Thinking Fast And Slow goes into extensive detail about the interaction between the two systems, which takes over 400 pages to cover. My intent here is to present core concepts as simply as possible to make them most useful to you today.

5. Routine for our purposes in this post is defined as “a regular way of doing things in a particular order.” https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/routine

6. According to Britannica, “a thin layer of ice on a paved road that is very difficult to see. https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/black-ice

7. See https://www.linkedin.com/advice/0/what-advantages-disadvantages-software-interrupts for more information on software interrupts.