Thinking Fast and Slow Examples: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Thinking Fast and Slow Examples, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Practices that may help

1. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Made Usable
   Daniel Kahneman describes two modes of thought: System 1 is fast, automatic, and intuitive; System 2 is slow, effortful, and deliberate. Better decisions usually come from noticing when a problem deserves System 2 and deliberately slowing down — though some popular claims from the book (notably certain priming studies) failed to replicate.
2. Slow down for high-stakes, irreversible decisions
   Match deliberation to the cost of being wrong: spend System 2 where reversal is hard.
   Thinking, Fast and Slow, Made Usable
3. Recognition-speed drills
   Flash configurations briefly to force pattern recognition rather than analytical reconstruction.
   Chunking: How Experts See What Beginners Miss
4. Notice which system is driving
   Before deciding, ask whether this is a System 1 (snap) or System 2 (effortful) problem.
   Thinking, Fast and Slow, Made Usable
5. Distrust easy fluency
   Treat "this feels obviously right" as a flag to check, not a signal to proceed.
   Thinking, Fast and Slow, Made Usable
6. Write the answers rather than running them in your head
   The exercise only counters emotional distortion if the three answers are externalized and visible.
   The 10-10-10 Rule
7. Trust Self 2 — give the body an image, not instructions
   Set the target in vivid sensory terms and then let the body execute without conscious direction.
   The Inner Game: Quieting Self 1
8. Override recognition and deliberate when the situation is genuinely novel
   Flag situations that don’t quite fit a familiar pattern and switch from intuitive to analytical processing.
   Recognition-Primed Decision Making
9. Work at a dramatically different speed
   Do the stuck task ten times faster or ten times slower — the speed change changes the output.
   Oblique Strategies, Made Practical
10. Keep verbal and visual channels separate
    Avoid presenting spoken narration and dense text at the same time.
    Working Memory: How Your Brain Holds Thoughts in Play

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I rush the big, costly decisions the same way I rush picking lunch→
• I can eventually figure out what I’m looking at if I get to sit and analyze it, but when the clock’s running I’m far too slow→
• An answer pops into my head instantly and feels so obviously right that I just go with it, and only later do I realize I never actually thought it through→
• There are things I’m sure are true mostly because I’ve heard them a hundred times and they go down so smooth and familiar→
• I run these long-versus-short questions through my head and always end up doing what I already wanted→

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.