Are you answering the right question?
Breaking down the most popular quote from Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The most popular quote from Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a concept that every product manager should know.
Kahneman is a legend in the field of psychology and won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on decision-making. Thinking, Fast and Slow is his most famous book, and it's massive (almost 500 pages!), so I won't try to summarize the whole thing here, but let's talk about the most popular quote, which has 50,000 highlights on Kindle. (That's a lot!)
Here's the quote:
"This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution."
— Daniel Kahneman
Confused? 🤔 No worries, I was too, so let's break this down.
You know what intuition is, like when a doctor sees a patient and immediately knows what's wrong, even if they can't articulate how they knew. It sometimes feels like magic, but it’s not.
"Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition."
— Herbert Simon (quoted by Daniel Kahneman)
Intuition is a form of fast thinking based on a lot of past information and experience. We only call it intuition when people are likely correct.
Heuristics is also fast thinking, but it's more of a mental shortcut we use when we don't have enough information and past information to make a decision that's likely right. This is where things get tricky because if we can't articulate why we did something, it's hard to know if our decisions are based on intuition and likely to be correct or if it's heuristic, and our brain just jumped to a conclusion that might be very, very wrong. Are we full of experience or something else? This is where we all, even the most intelligent people, run into problems.
Here’s an example: You've heard of recency bias, also known as an availability heuristic—it leads us to make decisions based on how available or recent the information is in our heads. That's why ads work. You might not even remember seeing an ad or realize you're hungry, but suddenly, you feel like a Snickers bar because of that availability heuristic.
Heuristics manifest biased decisions, good or bad. In the book, Kahneman tells the story of asking a Chief Investment Officer why he invested in Ford, and the executive replies that he recently went to an automobile show, and "Boy, do they know how to make a car!" This is also an example of another heuristic, the affect heuristic, where the executive based his decision on his feeling of liking Ford rather than reasoning about the value of the stock—big mistake. Knowing the actual value of stock requires a lot more information.
"The question that the executive faced (should I invest in Ford stock?) was difficult, but the answer to an easier and related question (do I like Ford cars?) came readily to his mind and determined his choice. This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution."
— Daniel Kahneman
In the example above, the executive answered an easier question (the heuristic question) instead of the original, more challenging question (the target question). The heuristic question was easier to answer because he could apply a heuristic to it, and his brain could quickly arrive at an answer using fast thinking.
This example might sound silly. When I first read it, I thought, “What a bad investor! I'd never make a dumb decision like that!” but then I realized I've definitely made this same mistake when deciding what features to invest in as a product manager. Have you ever been asked a hard question like, should my team invest in building this feature? (the target question) and subconsciously answered a heuristic question instead: how excited am I about this feature? 😬 I'm willing to bet we all have made this error at some point in our product careers. 😅
What's fascinating about this substitution process is that people don't notice when they make these substitutions and, as a result, are confident in their decisions. We don't notice that we've answered a different question, and we might not even recognize that the target question was difficult because our minds quickly came to an answer.
“People are not aware that it happens and it is a source of many intuitions that don't come from expertise and they are much less likely to be correct than the intuitions that do come from expertise but they come with equal confidence.”
— Daniel Kahneman (from a talk at Google in 2011)
This is an important concept for anyone to know, especially people who have to make lots of decisions at work, like product managers. We need to make important decisions every day. We're often the final decision-maker for our products, and we constantly deal with ambiguity, so decision-making is often hard. To excel in our jobs, it's critical to know how to make good decisions and to understand the ways that our minds might trick us into making poor decisions.
So, are you facing difficult questions or answering easier ones instead? Here are some things you can do to improve your decision-making:
When faced with a difficult decision, stop to ask yourself if you're answering the target question.
Be rigorous in your product discovery methods to validate the problems and solutions you work on.
Practice dealing with ambiguity and collecting evidence to help you make hard decisions.
Ask colleagues for feedback when making important decisions to check your thinking.
You got this!
If you're looking for more product management lessons, here's how I can help!
📚 Product Management Foundations course. My 9-week training program will set a strong foundation for your product career. It is self-paced and includes optional one-on-one sessions with me.
📺 PM Crash Course (free) is a fun, free playlist of videos that introduces the basics of product management.
📖 Product Influence course. Learn simple influence principles and frameworks to take your product career to the next level.
❤️ Develop Products People Love course on Skillshare—a beginner class on product development for entrepreneurs.
🙋🏻♀️ 1-on-1 coaching. For personalized coaching, book a one-on-one call with me. You can also book time with me on Skillshare!
Referenced in this post:
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Book)
Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | Talks at Google (YouTube)