Are you a slow thinker?

In my view, there are two types of people. Fast thinkers and Slow thinkers.

Society has trained us to be fast thinkers. These are people who hear of a problem and immediately come up with 20 different solutions for it. Usually this is beneficial for our day to day activities. And it’s fun. We enjoy quickly coming up with solutions.

But sometimes, we need to become slow thinkers and marinate on a problem for years. Because not all problems are easy and can be solved quickly. Some problems are ridiculously complex. Problems like the broken healthcare system in the United States or the drug trade are big thorny problems. And they require lots of time and brainpower to come up with an elegant solution.

As fast thinkers, we don’t train our ability to think slowly. We don’t see the need on a daily basis. There are too many distractions that we can focus on, now.

But slow thinkers move the world. Slow thinkers are people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Or Angela Merkel, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Oprah. They think deeply about any problem before they come up with a solution.

Einstein said that if he had an hour to solve a problem, he would spend 55 minutes thinking about it. And then he would spend the remaining 5 minutes thinking about the solution. Think of that: He spent 92% of his time thinking about the problem. How often do we spend 92% of our time concerned about any problem?

So here’s my suggestion: Get engrossed in a problem. Pick one and stay with the discomfort and ambiguity for a few weeks. Ignore the shallow solutions and wait for the deep ones to bubble to the surface. It is the only way to get better at this key skill.

Are you a slow thinker?