"I’m a disappointing person to try to debate or attack. I just have nothing to say in the moment, except maybe, 'Good point.' Then a few days later, after thinking about it a lot, I have a response" - Derek Sivers (https://sive.rs/slow)

This sounds very admirable to me

Phenomenon also known as Esprit de l'escalier : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier

I suffer from it myself and i'm definitely better at answering by email than in an oral discussion when i'm overwhelmed by thoughts and can't focus on one.

Finally enough, the French expression is “présence d’esprit”.

Only few people in France know about this sequence involving Diderot and the king, and I only know about it because I’ve lived in… California.

Actually, "esprit d'escalier" is indeed used in French, though less commonly, especially outside of literary contexts. It refers specifically to the inability to come up with a timely response or comeback (and the frustration of finding the "perfect" reply when the conversation is already over). On the other hand, "présence d'esprit" has a broader usage in everyday language. It can mean having a quick and witty response (the opposite of "esprit d'escalier"), or more broadly, the sudden ability to judge and react appropriately in a situation.

edit: typo

Just this morning I listened to a radio interview with pianist Igor Levit. It was excruciating. He had to think for seconds before every third word in a sentence, creating awkward pauses, and when he had finally finished an answer, he had only transmitted trivial content. I am sure that if they had sent him the questions a few days earlier, he could have prepared much more interesting and eloquent answers. I felt very bad for him, because I recognized myself. If you ask me a question I haven't thought of, I usually have an answer ready immediately. The problem is that I either don't like the answer, or don't know if the answer is correct, and I would like to have time to refine it, think about it, check it.

Major problems then arise if I have already started to answer the question to avoid an awkward pause, and realize several words in I don't like the answer. Finding a way out of the words you have started then feels like texting while driving along the road with 100 km/h.

I have been in several interview situations in my life (including two on national radio), and the ones that went well were usually the ones where I either knew the questions beforehand, or in which I was asked questions I had already thought of and memorized an interesting answer.

Politicians do mock interviews all the time to prepare. Everyone else expecting to be interviewed should as well. If you put some effort into it you can think up 98% of the questions you might be asked - the only question is what order they will ask and how much detail they want. So you practice someone asking those questions and you responding - sometimes they will ask clarifying questions, sometimes not, but again you know the topic and you have rehearsed everything you want to say. In the end for a 10 minute interview you should have 2 hours worth of answers rehearsed. Not memorized, but rehearsed. You should change the exact words you use, but the ideas you are trying to say are already in your mind and so easy to do.

Remember too that you can redirect questions. They might never ask about your best friend as a kid, but you have rehearsed the story of something you did and that story can be used as an example for 20 different questions. While telling that story you don't really need to think about it so instead you get that entire time to figure out the conclusion where you tie the story back to the question.

Being interviewed is a skill. You can practice it.

You've got it exactly right, and the same technique works well for giving presentations.

Run through your slides in front of your rubber duck, as if they're the audience.

You want to program your brain to work like a soundboard - for topic X, say "Y". I find it helps me greatly to have these prebaked responses ready to go, and I get to choose when I'm talking whether I adlib entirely or just repeat the same script i trained.

Often even during the talk there would be times I'd feel out of it, distracted, or something else. Then you just do rote script until your brain recovers and you can be fully "on" again.

Finally, people LOVE hearing stories. So the more stories you can work into your answers or your presentation, people will stay engaged. This is a common thread from watching many very competent presenters at cons

Yes and: I would expect a show's producers and editors to fix those pauses.

It was live. But I would've expected that they had a conversation discussing possible topics / questions beforehand (large and established radio station with over 2 million listeners). These awkward pauses would've been spotted then already. Maybe they had, and he was more relaxed and eloquent there, or maybe his schedule didn't allow for a pre-interview meeting.

Even if there wasn't time, he should have practiced interviews before and so been comfortable even if the exact topic is new.

He should always be prepared to talk about his first interest in music. His first time touching a piano. Why he choose piano (which may have been his parents forcing it at first). What other instruments he plays. What is favorite music is. Details about whatever piece is performing now (maybe spoilers on what he is practicing but not yet performing). Ideally he should listen to modern music so he can connect to kids by talking about something popular today (maybe even play a piano arrangement of it).

Those are the basics that he should have an easy time talking about. If he unexpectedly wins an award he didn't expect to be in competition for he might be speechless, but for the above the answers should be easy.

...if he wants to be good at giving interviews. He can also be happy being a pianist who isn't good at giving interviews.

But then he shouldn't have granted an interview in the first place. He should also expect that because he isn't self promoting like that he is soon passed over for piano playing positions (despite how good he may otherwise be) and has to find a non-playing job (teaching is common). His current job requires him to be good at interviews. If he wants to keep this job he needs to get good at it fast - it may already be too late.

Now if he decides giving interviews isn't what he wants to do and thus switching to a different job where he doesn't have to give interviews (and also will not play publicly much) is the right choice I will not fault him for that. It is his choice and his alone.

> His current job requires him to be good at interviews

I see. I had no idea that was a requirement of being a professional pianist. This all read as incredibly pointless with me thinking that interviews were a side thing for a pianist.

Many people fail to understand thair true job. the real job in cases like this is to promote the show. That means interviews or other activities. Talent playing is a requirement of course, but there is plenty of talent around.

> the real job in cases like this is to promote the show

What, the piano show he performs? Why would that be the pianist's job? Wouldn't that be the venue's responsibility?

Edit: I had to look him up. Quote Wikipedia:

> Igor Levit is a Russian-German pianist who focuses on the works of Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt. He is also a professor at the Musikhochschule Hannover.

So it's not like he's taking gigs in dive bars. Do renowned classical musicians typically shoulder the burden of promoting their own performances... through radio interviews?

Interview might be live. But yes, ideally producer would have caught this before a live interview.

The key thing here is reflection. You can look at your speech again and ask: am I more anxious about saying something I don’t like, or about this? I also was a slow-speaker, which in my case was actually anxious-speaker. But at some point I said “f… it” cause no one really cares deeply about the perfect form of a fine structure of your message. Literally anything is better than your awkward stumbling.

Be wrong and say stupid things. You will be corrected or correct yourself. Accept the correction and move on. If you feel very wrong, turn it into a question? Instead of feeding back to anxiety you’ll feed back to speech.

I’ve always been this way. It turns out that it makes for incredibly boring conversation, because all I can say is “oh wow that’s cool” but have nothing else to offer lol. It’s also terrible in interviews.

If it were intentional, I could see it being admirable. But I do wish I could think a bit more on the spot in some situations.

"deliberate" is an excellent point. I often have gaps in my conversation trying to think of just the right word(s) to describe "thing". I dislike filler umms and aahs so I just wait until the right word comes - deliberately. Thoughtfully.

And when it's come out how I want it to, it's understandable to the third parties. Deliberate equates to clear and intelligible.

Note: Some of us spend way to much time "playing chess" with problems, particularly people, and many times, the quick responses I have are because of that. It doesn't mean I'm set in my ways or making irrational choices, but like someone studying a chess position, sometimes all you're waiting for is the next move.

But, externally, no one's gonna see this shit so it's just something one has to get comfortable knowing about themselves but not other people. We often advise people a "lowest common denominator" type of logic because philosophically, it's impossible to know what the actual fuck.

yes, I think you both agree with each other. good thinking is an inherently slow process.

the way to get fast is to do some caching, if you already explored the domain and stored the answers for it you can just remember the information.

the problem is when the caching is done wrong. you explored only a subset but thought you explored everything.

the other kind of fast thinking is when you go bullshiter route and act like an LLM you fast interpolate between known data-points without system2 validation and give plausible looking answers with full confidence, you'd be amazed by how many people get fooled by this.

"Avoid 'quick decision' situations"

That's a great way to hear god laugh. Jokes aside - if the quick decision can be "walked back" or is not detrimental if you decide wrong then it doesn't matter and you should probably decide quickly to get through the "maze of life"

quite helpful advice, i like the term "deliberate". i am actually starting to see my relative slow thinking as a sort of super power. i can chew things over and think hard about something before coming to an opinion. its not always the best opinion but at least i know ive given it a good shot

People usually think we’re slow, but I believe is exactly the opposite, when in a meeting or in a group discussion I almost always know what others will say, and how everything will go on including outcomes and failures, but since it’s obvious for me, I think it is for everyone so never say anything unless directly asked.

In response to OP, to me the exercise that helped me the most is to put myself into situations where a quick decision is needed but in case of a mistake the consequences are not that bad, just like in drama theatre you get better at improvisation by not having a script to follow.

This is all great advice. One thing I would add to this is to deliberately steer your team to avoid making big decisions on calls or in meetings. Instead, make it so that your team prioritises asynchronous communication methods to discuss the lay of the land, and only make decisions after everyone has had time to contribute to the discussion.

I've found that creating a shared document or flowchart can work wonders if key team members engage and build upon it. And once everyone has said their share you can then have a meeting to discuss how to progress. I've found this method to work well as you can take your time to reply to suggestions and comments and research them better. It also removes and element of emotionality from the decision making: everyone can see the suggestions and counter points, but the conversation is often less defensive and more considered as people have time to second guess themselves. So by the time you hold the meeting the benefits and drawbacks of the contending options in meeting your goals are clearer.

If you have a say in it, get the meetings and calls to be about providing input, bouncing ideas around, discussing the background, building a paper trail. NOT about making the decision. Certainly not in the first meeting about it. Then accept still more input over email. Then let the (ideally one) decision maker make the decision.

Sometimes the meeting or call is about an emerging urgent situation. Even then, the decision is probably not needed this minute. Not before there is what input there is to find. That first meeting might then be more about figuring out what input or data might be available.

> Finally, do your best to avoid situations where a "quick decision" is needed; this is good advice even for "quick thinkers". Fast decisions are often poor ones - the counterpoint to that is dragging something out over many weeks or across many meetings - but putting yourself in a situation where the unknowns become knowns or the scope of the landscape and weight of the decision can be properly assessed is important. What's better is that you will likely be able to have a better paper trail for this.

If you have to make a 'quick decision', one of the pieces of advice I've heard is to try to make the smallest possible good decision that will move the ball forward. Often getting started is enough to provide more information needed to make a better long term decision, but making the best possible, smallest decision will rarely get you into trouble.

It's a fair point but I'd caution that making the "smallest possible good decision" really needs emphasis on good and not smallest or this results in just delaying. And there's a ton of people that cause delays. Especially in the corporate world.

I think delaying is the point. You delay the “immediateness” so you can form a nuanced opinion without urgency.

I know we can’t always change the world we live in, but we can at least acknowledge it. In the corporate world people really like to pretend there is a fire, when few things are truly urgent. If you can keep the sky from falling down with a quick and small scoped decision, you free up time to make big and long term decisions slowly.

This seems like it is tapping into the same risk management strategy as in Agile methods? Essentially allowing for more frequent course correction. I assume "small" here blurs together cost and latency .

The tradeoff of this kind of incremental planning and execution is that it becomes more reactive and myopic. You can end up stuck at a local maxima or worse, just executing a random walk.

I think a large part of becoming "quick" in an effective way is to improve your triage skills. This is a meta-decision process where you quickly estimate the time-dependent risks and priorities.

> making the best possible, smallest decision will rarely get you into trouble

It's like gradient descent for humans

It also potentially traps you in a local maximum

Wonder if you really "have to" make that decision "now". Sometimes you may have to get the ball rolling because of time constraints there specifically but the decision itself can wait. For example it might be fine to get funds moving so they are ready, even if the later decision means they are not needed anymore.

All great advice. Avoiding the situations that require the "quick thinking" is not always possible, but this advice holds in a general case as well.

More that anything else I agree with a) taking the time, and b) keeping an option to avoid the answer altogether.

I don't know if I qualify as a "slow" or "fast" thinker - I actually think that no one qualifies as either and it all depends on your experience in the topic at hand - but I have my share of situations where I cannot get my thoughts together. With --age-- experience I taught myself to feel comfortable with taking my time (reasonable amount, though) or just saying "let me think of it and come back to you later" (if I feel the pause can become unreasonably long). Most people I am surrounded with understand and accept it well.

As someone that falls on the "deliberate" thinking side of the spectrum, I found that it helps to ask questions in the moment rather than proffer ideas. When presented new information, I try to understand the following:

1. How can I tell if this information is true ie what else would need to be true if this is correct?

2. If this is true, what are the implications of this new data ie what has changed in our plans?

3. Given these implications, what do I need to do different?

I find that questions around these help me (and the rest of the audience) better understand the issue very quickly and help me get up to speed quickly.

> most of that sharpness comes from either having a few pre-known responses to ideas or anxiously revising situations in my head ahead of time

That's not that cause for me. I just grasp things quickly.

> Avoid using the word "slow", use "deliberate" instead.

That sounds inclusive but isn't what Kahneman meant. Slow thinking is when you leave it to your subconscious, so the only deliberate thing would be to give it time and put your conscious mind elsewhere. So in that way the two terms wouldn't be interchangeable in a 'Thinking fast and slow' sense.

> Finally, do your best to avoid situations where a "quick decision" is needed

I find this easier said than done. I dislike most meetings because I don't think quickly enough to keep up and contribute to the discussion. That often means that others will make decisions that I could have contributed usefully to before I've had the chance to think deliberately about the question.

Same here (Took me 1 day to think of this reply)

Can you request the slides be sent ahead of time so you can think of ideas?

To add to this, in a work setting, you can request that the deck being presenting is sent in advance to give time for people who think like this time to think and make the real time meeting much more productive.

> First, "slow-thinking" is really just a different way of expressing your thinking and you should begin by leaning into it rather than leaning away. Take time, allow yourself to pause to collect your thoughts. People often interpret quietness (not filler) as intelligence and maturity (because usually it is). Alternatively not answering is also valid.

From experience, it doesn't work, especially in a group setting. People usually end up trying to guess what you want to say, or add on to what they said, or move on, or something. But they very rarely just wait patiently for me to think things through.

This is definitely true in Asia

Can you give an example of this? Even if you say something indicating that you need a moment, they will just ignore you?

> Second, as a person who is generally regarded as quick-witted and sharp, most of that sharpness comes from either having a few pre-known responses to ideas or anxiously revising situations in my head ahead of time. This is, generally, a bad thing because it means I have made decisions on how I will respond to things without all of the information (as some will come over during conversation).

I'd challenge that. I think that being both quick and sharp comes from having an accurate mental model of what kind of information is important for the decision. When new information comes in, you don't discount it, but you have an intuitive feel for how much it should affect your priors.

For example, say that your team works on a minor page of a major tech product, say something that only gets 0.1% of traffic. Your TL reports back that a change they made to an ads widget on the page drops conversions by 20%. The change was done in service of a visual design consistency effort across the company. Normally a drop in conversions by 20% would be an immediate no-go, but knowing that the page only gets 0.1% of traffic, you can run the math and figure this is a 0.02% decrease in revenue, almost imperceptible.

Now imagine that the news was that 3 other key products in the company are dropping the visual consistency effort. The right move here is probably to cancel the project, because if you go ahead with it but others don't, you actually make the consistency worse. You can't know that without knowing the context and reasoning behind the initial decision. Normally, when an unrelated product cancels a project, it doesn't matter to you.

Deliberate is a much better word.

There are problems that legitimately must be sat with for months if not years.

Furiously responding to potential ways to solve a problem might just use a lot of energy.