emotional vs rational

I watched Before Midnight. While this is watchable on its own before going through its prequels (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset), now I want to go back and watch the other two once more. This has fast paced dialogues, lot to think about. One particular part is below.

Jesse: So this is how you now want to be spending this evening? I mean, this is what you wanna do tonight?

Céline: Well, you started it.

Jesse: No. You are the one who will not shut up about it. But if you want to talk about it, I mean, really talk about it. I would prefer to have an unemotional, rational conversation. I mean, do you think we can do that? Would that be possible?

Céline: Here we go. Unemotional, rational. You always play the part of the one and only rational one and I'm the irrational, hysterical, hormone-crazy one because I have emotions. Yeah, you sit back and you speak from your big perspective which means everything you say is level-headed and true.

Jesse: I don't always do anything.

Céline: The world is **ed by unemotional rational men deciding shit, alright? Politicians going to war for no reason, corporate heads deciding to wreck the environment, Cheney, Rumsfeld - very rational men.

Jesse: Cheney and Rumsfeld? Yeah, okay.

Céline: The final solution? Very rational thinking behind it.

I have used this argument in similar way like Jesse did (now I realize it may have been just when it suited me) as well as it was given to me in reverse as well – to be rational and not emotional. But is that just an excuse to ignore the humane side of the issues, rather than going levels deeper into issues, ignore the nuances and make a sweeping generalization – is rationalization a crutch for that? Heart decides better in some situations than the brain. Or in other words trusting intuition in some cases leads to better/faster decisions than the analytical reasoning. Or what happens in cases where rational and cunning leaders stoke the fires to get a mass to act on their raw emotions and ignore reason – that’s even more devious. Better alternative is to balance? – cases where emotion, intuition, gut and muscle memory guides decisions and it is ok vs cases that need to weigh options, conduct analysis and research, get new knowledge and then make a decision. Goes back to System 1 / System 2 of Daniel Kahneman. Best not to use this theory in a heated domestic dispute anyway – emotions need to be addressed.. 😊

change thinking

14 ways to change thinking

1. Exercise – exercise releases endorphins and dopamine and it makes you feel good. When you feel good, you can think better.
2. Put your brain in debugging mode (@naval) – “catch and debug your thoughts as it streams by, catch it when it goes into past regretting or future planning, make it stay in the present”
3. Read unconventionally – multi disciplinary thinking can give us more ideas, like something that works well in medicine can be applied in software engineering etc. Read widely.
4. Follow people who read widely – to get filtered new good reads – like @farnamstreet, @naval, @brainpicker, @morganhousel, @paulg and more
5. Listen to podcasts – for new ideas, for listening to people from different domains - @timferrissShow, @farnamstreet, @Radiolab and more
6. Quit harmful social media – pull the plug and quit facebook, whatsapp groups, occasionally unfollow everyone in twitter and start from scratch, avoid echo chambers where same ideas and ideologies reverberate without anyone challenging it
7. Quit news – cable news and print – there is responsible long form journalism, find some for real nuanced treatment of world events
8. Write – because “Writing is often the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about.”
9. Sleep – because brain under good sleep can create new neural associations and fresh awake brain can think better
10. Eat right – because vitamin deficiencies can amplify anxieties – break the cycle  
11. Break routines, form new habits – change habits, try new routines, change the systems – to trick the brain to let go of some muscle memory and inertia
12. Movies, music and fiction – expose the brain to new visual and auditory experiences, about other people and lives, about sounds and sights other than what we see every day, different languages, cultures, countries – make new favorites
13. Listen deeply – “seek first to understand, than to be understood"
14. Travel - helps to break routines, experience new cultures, new sights and sounds and make new associations 

topics to read

These are some topics I need to read up and research further.

• How to work with irrational people more effectively and get things done? What to use when logic fails? Sometimes we prepare perfectly logical arguments which we think should be understood and accepted by people and we will get the logical outcome, but it doesn’t happen that way. Egos, prejudices and biases creep in and it goes haywire. After one or two steps, logical outcomes may become impossible to achieve.
• What makes some people more thoughtful, disciplined and achieve consistent outcomes? I see people with years of experience produce sloppy outcomes in some cases and execute some things well? What drives perfection? Is it possible to change?
• What makes people lean to left or right of political spectrum? Is it nature or nurture? Is it their brains or upbringing?
• What is the limit of nurture? Inherent talent and intelligence vs acquired expertise – is the gap insurmountable?
• How to mentor introverts and extroverts differently? What are the limits of both and how / where to use their skills and nature most effectively? I started reading “Quiet” by Susan Cain, need to finish and find some answers to this.