How Are We Doing?
Everyone wants to know if they’re doing okay. The problem is, that’s a really hard question to answer.
In his best-selling book Thinking Fast and Slow, the Nobel Laureate and behavioral economist Danny Kahneman writes that our minds function as if they’re running two simultaneous operating systems. One system is fast, but sloppy. It gives us rapid decision-making, based on past experience, pattern-recognition and simple heuristics. This is the system we rely on most of the time, and it usually does a pretty good job.
However, some situations call for a more careful, methodical approach. For those instances, we have a slower system that can weigh and analyze all the evidence, and consider all the complexities and paradoxes that difficult problems pose. Booting up this system is a big investment. It pulls our attention away from anything else we might be doing, and uses up all our bandwidth. Given the choice, we’d much rather go with the quick and easy solution--and that’s where we get into trouble.
When presented with a difficult question that really requires our slow system, we sometimes substitute an easier question and answer that one with our fast system instead. The switch happens seamlessly, without any awareness on our part. Consequently, it can affect our lives in ways we never really notice.
“How am I doing?” is not an easy question. When we ask it, what we really want to know is, are we worthy? Are we kind, and ethical, and making good use of our time on this earth? Are we earning the love and trust of others? Are we living with passion? Do our lives have meaning? But most of the time, we’re so scared to ask those questions--really ask them--that we avoid thinking about them altogether. We trade them in for easier questions, with fast answers that won’t make our heads explode.
“How much money do I have?”
“How many possessions?”
“How many credentials?”
“How many ‘likes’ on Instagram?”
Sure, we can answer those questions, but where will they lead us? Where will we end up if those are the guardrails that define our path?
I started out by saying that we all want to know how we’re doing, but the truth is we’re also scared to find out. The kind of questions we would have to ask require a level of vulnerability that most of us avoid. But if we don’t ask them, we can’t know the answers. Knowing how we’re doing is the first step to figuring out what needs to change.
