In the June 27th, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal, the Dutch social psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis was quoted as saying, “The idea that conscious deliberation before making a decision is always good is simply one of those illusions consciousness creates for us.” In the decade since he began researching our unconscious thought, Dijksterhuis tested and confirmed what he calls the ‘deliberation-without-attention’ hypothesis – essentially validating his idea that unconscious thought is better for complex decisions than conscious thought; whereas the reverse is true for simpler decisions.
I debated this notion for many years, especially within the financial realm, but after internalizing Rolf Dobelli‘s brilliant work, The Art of Thinking Clearly, I came to the realization that thinking is actually a skill, but one we hardly hone. While we may never live error-free, we can certainly manage our thinking biases by following this type of checklist ——