Your first reaction is outdated
When considering an answer to a question, it’s OK to answer slowly and ignore the initial automatic response that comes to mind, because that initial response is either cultural conditioning or your best thinking from the past. It is not your most authentic and current thinking, and that’s what both you and the person who asked the question deserve.
“Fast thinking” is often just shallow thinking. So, don’t feel the need to respond immediately, the social pressure to respond will produce an immediate answer, but if you’re mindful a better answer will come.
From a Derek Sivers blog post in 2016: Your first reaction is usually outdated. Either it’s an answer you came up with long ago and now use instead of thinking, or it’s a knee-jerk emotional response to something in your past.
Seneca For this is what makes us wicked: that no one of us looks back over his own life. Our thoughts are devoted only to what we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future always depend on the past.
Source:
https://sive.rs/slow
Graph:
- 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated to 126.010 Decision Making - Make up your mind slowly and calmly
- 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated to 116.047 Life Lessons - He who best defines the problem usually wins
- 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated to 119.068 Communication - Lincoln didn't argue directly, he just delayed
- 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated to 132.002 Change - Slow to learn and slow to forget
- 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated to 116.053 Life Lessons - Postpone every subconscious decision
- 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated to 126.013.09 The Questions - 9. Think 2 steps ahead
- 116.127 Life Lessons - Your thoughts become your reality to 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated
- 126 Decision Making to 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated
- 126.013.09 The Questions - 9. Think 2 steps ahead to 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated
- 126.014 Decision Making - Refine your opinions over time to 126.012 Decision Making - Your first reaction is outdated