I'm in the same shoes.
I just avoid people and organizations that doesn't understand the value of deep vs quick thinking.
Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
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Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#12Some of it is practice and training. I was always a "slow programmer" in the short term. Before I ever practiced algorithmic coding I could do say, fizzbuzz and two sum, but it might have taken me a good ten to fifteen minutes to really think it through, write out the code, and identify any bugs.
After I decided to really dive into DS&A and do some interview prep, I really focused on speed and I got so much faster.
Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#13[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#14Avoiding situations in which I need to think on the fly. If I'm playing a game, I play a turn based game, not a real time game. Why do what you're bad at and will never be great at?
Sadly one of the places where quick wittedness is most essential is face to face social interaction so at some point you just have to bite the bullet and do things you're worse at than others.
Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#15Slow thinker here.
When asked a question, I can give a great answer 10 minutes; an hour; a day later. It's not a full day of active thinking, but time is needed to "stew" in my mind for a while. So I give my best answer in the moment (which might be "I don't know"). Then I follow up with my awesome answer whenever it comes.
Slow thinking makes conversation more difficult. Anything beyond 1:1 conversation usually means the conversation flies faster than I can think. I'm OK with that and just enjoy listening to the conversation and occasionally contributing. On rare occasion this makes other people uncomfortable. However I have generally surrounded myself with people who accept my quiet nature.
Also slow thinking comes with its advantages. Embrace those. Despite being a slow thinker, my client repeatedly tells me that I deliver high-quality output really fast. He's always asking how I come up with these amazing ideas.
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Derek Sivers says he's "a very slow thinker:"
> When someone wants to interview me for their show, I ask them to send me some questions a week in advance...
> People say that your first reaction is the most honest, but I disagree. Your first reaction is usually outdated. Either it’s an answer you came up with long ago and now use instead of thinking, or it’s a knee-jerk emotional response to something in your past.
> When you’re less impulsive and more deliberate like this, it can be a little inconvenient for other people, but that’s OK. Someone asks you a question. You don’t need to answer. You can say, “I don’t know,” and take your time to answer after thinking. Things happen...
HN discussion:
Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#16Anki, believe it or not. Anki and sticking with the same small bag of tools. There are quite a few things which are best kept as "fingertip knowledge", even with the assistance of GPT-4.
Can you please share a couple of examples on how you use Anki?
Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#17At work, you can buy reasonable time: "let me get back to you"
Outside work, people remember/invite people who are empathetic and/or fun to be around, not those who win arguments. In fact argument winners tend to annoy people more.
There are very few high-stakes situations where quick thinking is crucial. What most people mistake for quick thinking (say averting a mishap during airplane landing) is trained muscle memory, which comes from long prep.
Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#18Knowing this about yourself and accepting it is already a great win.
Lots of good advice here so won’t repeat it. Only thing I have to add is, allow yourself some time to think in front of people. Be ok with a long pause and be assertive in making other people wait for your answer.
In a slightly competitive or confrontational situation, typically at work, I go as far as telling people: “hang on a second, let me finish.” Or “you’re bouncing around so much I don’t know what’s actually important” because often someone will keep pushing their agenda and/or cut me off and win social credit from onlookers. So I rebalance that power dynamic.
But a softer approach also works of course. “That’s interesting and I have lots to say about it, let me get back to you”
Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#19I've found that people who appear quick-witted are either external processors (they like to "talk out loud" and steer their thought process by group reaction) and/or they are deeply prepared for this exact challenge from past experiences. It's exceedingly rare to meet a true polymath who can contribute quickly and meaningfully on just any random topic.
Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?
#20Sometimes what people think is quickness is actually extensive prep. I had a 30 minute meeting the other day to ask a team to do something I didn’t think they would want to do. It ended up going really smoothly and they just took my word for it, but had they not, I spend several hours preparing for that meeting, gathering data, preparing charts to illustrate the data, thinking of the possible objections and responses…
Yep, in other words it's called true confidence, having genuine experience in the task at hand. It's something that can't be faked.