Basement Whatever

Daniel Kahneman wrote Thinking Fast and Slow, a foundational text about the various ways humans make decisions. This post summarizes a few of his strategies for improving thinking. One stood out, because I think it would apply to better hiring decisions:

Delay Your Intuition: At 22, Kahneman redesigned the Israeli army’s interview system. The old way relied on gut feelings about recruits, and it failed badly. His fix: make interviewers score six specific traits separately, write each score down, then after completing all six scores, close their eyes and give an overall intuition. The interviewers revolted. “You’re turning us into robots,” one complained. But when they tested the new system, it worked dramatically better. That “close your eyes” instruction survived in the Israeli military for 50 years. Most people form an impression in seconds and spend the rest of their time confirming it. The best wait for all the information before letting their intuition speak.

Read the whole thing here.