Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
Slow thinking HN members, what are some strategies you've use to overcome and compensate for the lack of quick thinking.
E.g. I found I'm great at analysis or putting together elaborate argument but if I'm in a situation where I need to make a quick decision or get in actual argument I lose all of that capacity and usually drop to the level of IQ 85 if I/m to be judged by the outcomes. Nevertheless a slow thinker does have that potential there he's jut not able to tap into it if he falls into my category. In martial arts, rehearsing overcomes a lot of that - what has worked in real life for you?
279 comments
[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 274 ms ] threadTry to be prepared with a decision tree made in advance so you can answer the predictable stuff quickly. And you don't have to think of absolutely everything, but the act of planning will help you be more familiar with the options.
Talk out loud. Take the space and time you need to make a decision, and don't try to hide it.
Also a valid response to being asked to make a decision can be "I'll think about it and get back to you" (but always make sure you do get back to them about it)
The best advice I've got for most arguments is to not bother. If you've reached the point of arguing then egos are involved and people won't back down even if they realize that they're wrong.
2. Bluster while I prep. A lot of quick thinkers are not actually quick thinkers. They are quick responders, using far more words to say just as much, with the filler works frontloaded to give them time. For example:
"Now, correct me if I am wrong, and I may be, and this is something to consider, what if we X?" buys you about 5 seconds of time to think. You can say those words in front of pretty much every argument.
3. Stop caring. Few quick decisions are actually needed. If my Product Owner is going to make me defend my approach, I just concede the argument and allow the other guy's approach, whether or not it has gaping security holes or will fail in prod. Haven't made a case for anything at work in two years and just make sure everyone whos who did make the screw up.
Steve Jobs had that mastered, like in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o
There are quite a few things which are best kept as "fingertip knowledge", even with the assistance of GPT-4.
Many years ago my family was trying to see Letterman in NYC. I wasn’t old enough, and we knew that going in. The night before, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I was going over what I thought I might need to know. When was my fake birthday, why don’t I have an ID, etc. On the day, I was asked these questions by security and gave a quick and natural answer. Afterword my dad commented that I was really quick and good at thinking on my feet, but the truth was that I prepared.
True confidence produces results.
One skill I learned during grad school was spending lots of time going over conversations or presentations or even upcoming meetings in your head. This "warms up" your cache, and helps you play out possible Q&A, so that you have more opinions ready.
And another skill I learned was actually learning to control the meeting to a certain extent. I'd come in with something like a limited "choose your own adventure" conversation tree in my head, and then I'd try to present choices or questions to those I was meeting or talking with, so that I could at least have a fallback.
And finally with experience comes wit. The 10th time you enter a situation you're much more likely to have something to say than the 1st time. And eventually, you'll start to recognize similarities in conversations.
But yeah, lack of quick wit makes social and work situations more challenging. It's just hard to make myself have strong opinions on the spot usually.
I did debating in school and a lot of the prep was like this too — once you have your position sketched out, you put on your 'opposition hat' and start to critique your own position for holes.
Also, where in the HN guidelines it says — Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. — when you're prepping, you tend to do just the opposite: assume that someone _is_ going to attempt to respond to a weaker version that's easier to criticize.
It can help you have a rebuttal on the ready if needed but regardless it also helps you to distill/reframe ideas in a way that's clearer from the outset (which is a good thing in & of itself, even if you don't have someone taking a counter position)
Just wondering.
As a serious answer, just make liberal use of notes.
But the person who could enforce that all meetings must have an agenda probably also uses the lack of an agenda to their advantage, so the status quo continues
If you combine it with empathy skills: "What motivates this person", "What are their goals", "what are their interests/specialities" then you can work out a list of stock answers before hand, and alter them to suit the situation later on.
You still need to listen, as there is a non trivial risk of your mental model being wrong.
If you don’t have an answer at the time just say so and follow up later. Waiting for your turn to talk is disrespectful and painful to watch.
I’m not following… surely you don’t mean interrupt the person speaking?
Politician sticks to his prepared talking points and riffs for fifteen minutes about something else.
Citizen feels disrespected.
Nothing but hot air.
I should have been more clear, its more of a template, than a stock answer. Having a cache of information is not the same as "not listening". You still need to listen and respond to the subject at hand.
For example, you are having a meeting about door handles. You know there is a problem about the placing, but also one person is keen on changing the material because they like brass more. However brass is more expensive, so the team needs to agree a threshold at which it becomes practical to change to brass.
Now, if you had fresh in your cache a list of reasons why brass might be useful, and why its not, you can be prepared to counter or boost "that one brass Guy"'s point of view.
You don't go in and say "brass is shit yo" the subject might not come up.
That and also there's no rule that says a person who is generating responses ahead of time has to stick to exactly one possibility. When preparing for conversations it's important to walk down multiple paths at multiple branch points.
To the point you've been raising in this thread it is about being prepared to be sharp in a conversation, not to railroad the other person and/or come across like a politician on the Sunday AM talk shows.
I think you missed this part of the parent comment.
Doing it well is like playing live jazz. You can practice the song, but if you don't listen to what your bandmates are doing, your awesome rehearsed solo is going to be bad.
Nothing against failing as both outcomes are good learning scenario, though I think, def favor preparing for the most interesting failure is probably the best outcome.
Nobody likes you more because you won the argument. "Yes, and..." is much better tool. Even when dealing with socio-paths because saying one thing and doing another is also useful.
What I mean is that what works for me is to realize that my deficit is social skills. The solutions are negotiation and forbearance, not violence.
Good luck.
That's still allowed outside of improv!
> my ability to socialize, memorise things and general mood has improved exponentially
But that does sound like a good outcome of your improv experience, definitely.
Using it instead of the the-problem-with-that-is I was raised on has improved my life as well.
If you have a culture of async communication, that helps.
It is trainable because I was HORRIBLE at it, and now I can say I'm average/good, and I deliberately practiced.
Also, if you are in management, you must exercise this more. Sometimes, you must make decisions quickly, and postponing them has consequences. One example that comes to mind is if a report misbehaves, you can't just let it go, you need to let them know about it (in private) quickly.
One tip that helps is to think strategically: what are the first 3 steps? Or the most important 3 steps you could think of?
Of course, your answer will have plenty of holes, but a good enough answer is typically good enough for those situations.
You can train this daily with your other or family; talk with them, and instead of saying what is comfortable (the next token in your brain LLM), you try to say something better or more enjoyable.
That will prompt you to think fast about a new solution.
Like with blitz chess, if you want to improve at it, you need to play more using the fundamentals you know from the "slower" chess, which is what you already do now. It isn't as complex as you think, just more practice practice.
I just avoid people and organizations that doesn't understand the value of deep vs quick thinking.
After I decided to really dive into DS&A and do some interview prep, I really focused on speed and I got so much faster.
Sadly one of the places where quick wittedness is most essential is face to face social interaction so at some point you just have to bite the bullet and do things you're worse at than others.
To find better between bad and great.
Because being good at things is not the be-all and end-all.
When asked a question, I can give a great answer 10 minutes; an hour; a day later. It's not a full day of active thinking, but time is needed to "stew" in my mind for a while. So I give my best answer in the moment (which might be "I don't know"). Then I follow up with my awesome answer whenever it comes.
Slow thinking makes conversation more difficult. Anything beyond 1:1 conversation usually means the conversation flies faster than I can think. I'm OK with that and just enjoy listening to the conversation and occasionally contributing. On rare occasion this makes other people uncomfortable. However I have generally surrounded myself with people who accept my quiet nature.
Also slow thinking comes with its advantages. Embrace those. Despite being a slow thinker, my client repeatedly tells me that I deliver high-quality output really fast. He's always asking how I come up with these amazing ideas.
---
Derek Sivers says he's "a very slow thinker:"
> When someone wants to interview me for their show, I ask them to send me some questions a week in advance...
> People say that your first reaction is the most honest, but I disagree. 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.
> When you’re less impulsive and more deliberate like this, it can be a little inconvenient for other people, but that’s OK. Someone asks you a question. You don’t need to answer. You can say, “I don’t know,” and take your time to answer after thinking. Things happen...
HN discussion:
- https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/35039358
- https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/17694306
This is a very good point that's worth, uh, pointing out.
Being able to quickly reply is not necessarily a good thing. I've caught this in myself - making some witty response to a situation and then immediately realizing, "I haven't examined that opinion in years. I don't like it or believe it anymore. I wish I hadn't said that."
But without vocalizing that introspection, it may just appear that I'm witty and, depending on the listener, a bit of an asshole. Actually I'm less of an asshole than I used to be, but sometimes you're getting old data which hasn't been cleaned up yet.
"The first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think, what you think next defines who you are."
Outside work, people remember/invite people who are empathetic and/or fun to be around, not those who win arguments. In fact argument winners tend to annoy people more.
There are very few high-stakes situations where quick thinking is crucial. What most people mistake for quick thinking (say averting a mishap during airplane landing) is trained muscle memory, which comes from long prep.
Lots of good advice here so won’t repeat it. Only thing I have to add is, allow yourself some time to think in front of people. Be ok with a long pause and be assertive in making other people wait for your answer.
In a slightly competitive or confrontational situation, typically at work, I go as far as telling people: “hang on a second, let me finish.” Or “you’re bouncing around so much I don’t know what’s actually important” because often someone will keep pushing their agenda and/or cut me off and win social credit from onlookers. So I rebalance that power dynamic.
But a softer approach also works of course. “That’s interesting and I have lots to say about it, let me get back to you”
* I write everything down on calendars, to do lists, planners etc. * I have a smart speaker in every room so I can capture pieces of information as soon as I know about them. * I use many different kinds of timers to remind me of tasks, or to switch tasks from one to another. * I use checklists to help complete daily processes.
The best thing you can do is acknowledge your weaknesses, reflect on situations where you struggle and find specific techniques or processes that improve the outcome for you. It won't happen overnight. Good luck!
But it still has merit as another psychological test battery you can do to determine areas in which you may struggle to process information.
My working memory sucks [compared to the standard for my age range and demographic]. I've had access to stuff like RBANS (Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status), through psychologist friends working in memory clinics. IQ tests correlate that finding, and are much more readily available (ie. free and not locked behind institutional firewalls).
Sure, the most thorough IQ tests are paywalled, but as a concept it's readily available online, though tests will yield you huge variation in scores.
We can choose not to treat IQ as a tool to compare ourselves to other people, but rather as a tool to identify our own strengths and weaknesses within different areas of the test. Ignore the single score at end of test, think on what felt hard, and performance in the score breakdown.
I would love to see more (better designed, statically rigorous) neuropsychological assessments become open and free to access. It would definitely have helped me growing up as an unknown AuDHD kid, to understand I really wasn't "a bright kid just making excuses for things I don't want to do".
Reading comprehension tests test end-to-end ability to process that test and those questions in this circumstance. What comes next? tests test your ability to understand and solve a particular set of puzzles: they're a decent proxy for pattern-recognition skills if you share cultural context with the test author and can handle the administrative overhead of that style of examination. And so on. It's nonsense to give yourself some overall score at the end (though this can make sense for populations), but that doesn't mean the tests are worthless.
It's not.
Would highly recommend a watch https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY
IQ tests are hilariously predictive of success if you’re doing a task which is similar to taking an IQ test like academics. They strongly indicate certain mental disorders. Low IQ is more predictive of success than High IQ. Maybe people take the difference between scoring a FSIQ of 110 vs 140 entirely too seriously, but the difference between somebody with 60 vs 90 is staggering.
I'm curious what you meant by that. Could you please explain?
Thanks.
Additionally, the IQ of second generation Asian immigrants will revert to the mean. Not only that, but the advtange decreases rapidly as they age, while the academic advantage grows. And the advantage to begin with is very small - average Asian IQ is only about 2.5 points higher than for Whites, even looking at all generations together.
Given the impact of early childhood environment on IQ, and the huge disparity in academic effort across cultures, esp. those that constitute Asian immigrants, it's pretty clear that the idea that the disparity in Asian achievement cannot be explained by an inherited intelligence advantage. All the data is much more consistent with a culture that just drives students to study far harder.
This does make the argument that affirmative action is harmful even stronger, actually. There is no need to fall back to terrible science to do it. The idea that IQ isn't terribly useful is because it isn't terribly useful, except in very rare cases for diagnosis. The current scientific consensus is consistent with an even stronger argument that AA unfairly discriminates against Asian students.
You're welcome to make substantive points thoughtfully, of course, whatever you're for or against.
This correlates with ADHD.
As others have mentioned "pre-thinking" or preparation will be the solution whenever possible.
If you suspect a language processing issue, get it confirmed so that you can plan around it.
Also, I try to never fire off a reply to an email without 1. writing a first draft, 2. thinking about something else, then 3. revising my draft.
I hope this is something I can train away though, because thinking slow in-front of others is kinda embarrassing.
People fill voids and awkward situations by saying stuff, even if that stuff is wrong.
It's OK to be quiet. It's also OK to say 'Let me think about that'.
Lose some arguments.
And unless the situation you are in that requires a quick decision is life or death, it probably doesn't need one.
Great advice. Nothing shows confidence more than asking a question and then waiting for answer. Let the awkward silence sit.
And when you do speak, keep answers short and to the point. It also conveys confidence.
Anytime I see/hear someone rambling in email/on meeting, I know they are not confident in what they are saying.
I'd argue its far better to say something like, "Good question. I need to think about that for a minute" rather than just sit there saying nothing at all after being asked something. I know a few engineers who do that and while their answer is normally fine, the awkward silence makes me and others question their social skills. Not their intelligence.
I know other engineers who do the same thing but say, "Let me think about that for a minute" and I've never heard of anyone questioning their ability to think quickly or social skills.
What you are suggesting is not wrong, its just a bit.. rude? awkward? Why impose that feeling on others when a clarifying sentence can prevent it?
Nobody paid attention to that interviewer, but they're probably not the only one in the panel to have that (wrong, in my opinion) reaction -- just the one to voice it.
When you are the answerer, yes, do what you suggest but try not to ramble.
The best impromptu speakers, who can carry debates and thrive on off the cuff arguments, in my experience were full of shit. When I critically look at what they said, it usually boiled down to: (a) if you're not with us, then you are against us (b) you just need to believe, work harder, and stop complaining.
Well then you are dismissing people unfairly. You won't hear a peep out of me if I don't know the answer. On the other hand, if I have mountains of data that proves my point, or if the problem is nuanced, you'll hear all of it.
I'm working on getting better at distilling that data into short, actionable points for people like VPs (because I'm now at the level where these people read what I write).
But if you were to assume that I'm not confident, based on my inability to boil it down, you'd be drawing the wrong conclusion. You should listen to me because I'm nearly always right, and when I'm wrong, I'm usually the first to identify that fact and provide a solution.
Also I am autistic, which certainly impacts my communication.
I wouldn't consider this rambling. There are many people who just talk to fill space. Their point was made in the first 10 seconds and then they just keep going. IMO, that's very different than going over all the data or explaining a nuance.
I tell people "I don't make decisions on the spot," or "I need to consider it, I'll respond by end of day," etc.
- stop thinking of yourself as slow thinker/fast thinker
- decide if you want to be able to think fast or not and either avoid situations where you have to think fast or seek such situations to practice and get better
1) Prep/rehearsal
2) Delay ("I'll have that for you on [later]")
3) Snark ("If it doesn't matter let's just flip for it")
4) Silence, then spend the next 8 weeks mentally rehearsing and regretting and beating myself up
If it's literally just "quick wit", sometimes I have it, sometimes I don't, my wife always destroys me and I can only acknowledge greatness.
For myself, outside of prep/rehearsal, I generally only have "quick answers" if it's a situation where I either have a heuristic I trust ("Budget for that department needs to be 20% of top line revenue in most situations"), or a value that makes the decision for me ("We can 10x our profits if we poison these 17 children, should we do it?" has a quick "No").