Daniel Kahneman

Me and my book club

I’ve been member of a book club for four years. Book club has eleven members and they are also business professionals of various discipline and industries. We gather once a month or every other month. The meetings are standardized. We have the same procedure and standard questions. This time I took a challenge. I would make written notes of the book, not just underline interesting topics. I also decided that I would document my analysis. So here we go…..

About the book

In the age of Twitter a book that has nearly 500 pages must be worth the time. While this a book that requires your full attention, it is in the same time intellectually rewarding and also fun. I could sometimes hear Kahneman giggle. For example his equation about martial stability – “frequency of lovemaking minus frequency of quarrels. You don’t want your result to be a negative number”.

How was the actual reading of the book?

Sometimes writers with a position in the academia have a cumbersome way on expressing themselves. That is not the case of Kahneman. He has forgotten his discipline and is writing in plain English. Secondly he lures readers on thinking different what-if –scenarios. For example when explaining how System 1 or 2 operates he let’s us test ourselves with different tests. Thirdly it is quite difficult to come up with negative comments of the contents. Sometimes he get’s carried away with his statistical analysis, but that happens fairly seldom. And sometimes the describing of the designing of different tests are less interesting. But nevertheless he carries readers easily through those parts also.

What are the key learnings of the book? 

I will skip all the key lessons and dive straight into learnings. Key learnings are: 

• Want to be well-being?
  • Goals are key into well-being. Think about your goals before dreaming being satisfied and well-being.
• Don’t want to regret anything?
  • Know you loss aversion and create a risk policy.
• Want to be realistic?
  • Legitimize doubts
• Would you like to be optimistic?
  • Sorry, the optimistic attitude is inherited

How should we change according to the book? 

Actually Kahneman points out in the last page of the book an elegant answer to this. Firstly organizations make less errors, because they can think more slowly and the way of working is organized. Secondly organizations have read their “Checklist Manifestos” and they do have checklists. Organizations can do forecasting. Last, but not least. Organizations are deploying premortem – analysis of failure.

What should I personally do? 

This is easy. Set new goals. 

Summary

Thinking, fast and slow by D. Kahneman is one of the TOP3 business books I’ve read so far. The crip of the book is intense and will not let you down. Every page is worth turning, because you cannot wait the findings Kahneman has made. It’s intellectually challenging. It’s well written. One can easily imagine how to use the learnings. And would also argue that the wealth of the wisdom of the book might be everlasting?

The book in six words – top three business book of our lives.