Heuristics — Mental Shortcuts
More often than not, when I mention the word “Heuristics” I don’t get lots of head nods, but it is actually quite simple. Heuristics can be understood as the mental shortcuts your brain takes when making decisions, your gut feeling, the sense of intuition. It’s main purpose is to reduce your mental load so that you can actually focus on the decisions that you have not encountered before, or those that have important consequences.
Look up “System 1 and 2 thinking” or “Fast and Slow thinking” and you will find lots of resources describing this in detail, made popular by Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.
The definitions are:
System 1 (Fast) Thinking: Intuitive, Pattern-recognising, Emotional
System 2 (Slow) Thinking: Analytical, Deliberative, Logical
Heuristics rely a lot on past experience — something you have experienced personally, or read about, or what your parents or culture has taught you. Inherently this means that there can be many biases built into it.
However, I think slow thinking is not exempt from the same biases, simply because it is more analytical. As a data practitioner we often say “garbage in, garbage out” as a description that your output will only be as useful as your input is clean and representative. Similarly, if the inputs to your analytical thinking are biased (basically how Propaganda works), you will get a biased outcome.
One interesting thought I read was that going into lockdown was difficult for a lot of us because it meant some of our most frequently used heuristics were thrown out the door and we had to make a lot more decisions slowly. The more decisions we have to make, the more fatigued we get, and the harder it is to make the decision!
As usual, I’m thinking of how to apply it in my life:
- Be thankful for heuristics, it makes our lives easier.
- Be aware of our own mental biases, especially when they are not serving us well. It’s the fast changing world and some heuristics can lose relevance.
- Feed ourselves good and a wide variety of inputs to refine our heuristics. Seek out reliable, expert views that are from different angles from our own.
- (as a product manager) Take advantage of common heuristics to build more intuitive products.
- Spending large portions of time working on decisions that require slow thinking takes a huge mental toll, spread these out if possible. Take a break and do something less mentally exhausting, like taking a walk or going for a swim.
What else would you add to this list?
