On:
new
Feeling.
Feeling. No home-run expression on the management diamond. »Listen, I'm an utterly rational thinker, a pro!« is what we get to hear pretty regularly. »Right,« we reply, »sure you are. But what kind of thinking do you use, say, while angry? What kind while wanting something dearly?« To be sure: Rational Thinking and Feeling are two perfectly different »techniques«. Like throwing a ball or hitting it (to stay in the world of home-runs). Rational Thinking is slow, Feeling (a.k.a. »Emotional Thinking«) is fast – as Kahneman used to put it*. Emotional Thinking tells Rational Thinking when to stop thinking (or: pondering, to introduce another word for it). Believe it or not (but better do believe): Without Feeling, without Emotion, rational deliberation wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop. Wouldn't come to an end, to a conclusion. Would go on and on and on – till perfect-knowledge-day (this is what is known as »Unbounded Rationality« – and non-existent at that**). Decisions are made by guts, not by brains (again: better believe it). Chance is – you probably being a manager – you don't agree with what we're saying. Now, space is limited here (actually it isn't, of course, but readers' (your) patience is). So let's make a truce for the moment – and a deal: We stop telling you why we think what we say is right. And you start asking us what you get from seeing it our way. Last word, for now: You get a whole lot from it. Very last word: Promised. Very, very last word: Deal?
(* Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize Laureate, »Thinking, Fast And Slow«, Penguin, 2012)
(** Which leads to another interesting phenomenon that calls for some thinking: How is it possible for something to have a name – and still to not exist? We'll reflect on this one some other time, other place.)
New Ways to New Feeling.
A few Ideas and Suggestions.*
(*Give us a little time to let our ideas take shape here. We'll try to keep simple whatever we'll come up with here. As keeping things simple means to keep it easy to try things out. And succeed. But still, however simple it may be in the end, it takes some time to write it down.)
More, soon.
Here’s what the poet says. No wonder: It’s exactly what we think — ahh — feel. ;–)
»The brain is for thinking. [*]
But the heart's for decision, and action [**].«
[*] = rational
[**] = emotional
(Brackets in the text to be ours, not the author’s.)
Louis Stanton Auchincloss (1917 – 2010)
American Novelist
Too good to be not-true: Same thought, same author, slightly different words*:
* As the saying goes (and as you certainly know): Redundancy makes the learning. ;–)