Thinking, Fast and Slow, written by Daniel Kahneman
Book review by Liz Hargreaves

NZ Business Women’s Network Book Club (Business Book Brunch) met on Saturday 16^th February at the Ozone Coffee Roasters in Leonard Street, London. Rachael and Kirsty provided a warm welcome in the funky ‘boardroom’, set the scene for easy sharing and ensured the smooth running of our discussion around the book of the month;

Thinking, Fast and Slow, written by Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and economist, Senior Scholar, Emeritus Professor and awarded a Nobel Prize.

We were immediately engaged, ready to learn, yet the early theme was we generally found Thinking, Fast and Slow to be a challenging read. Off to a slow start we were able to take a ‘deep breath’ thanks to the arrival of our delicious brunch, scrumptious coffee and tea, then we all set back to it… and the inspired conversation started to flow.

This book is the result of many years of research of two friends who are and were arguably two of the world’s brightest psychologists. The Author aims to give us a language for thinking and talking about the mind. He journeys us through Thinking, Fast and Slow by breaking it into five parts,

Part 1 – presents System 1 and System 2, an approach to judgement and choice,

Part 2 – updates the study of judgement heuristics – we take shortcuts which prevent us from seeing the full picture

When you think of a marathon sea swimmer, you probably think the idea of sea-creatures and sharks doesn't scare them, for Tracy Clark, this couldn't be further from the truth. Sharks are one of her biggest fears but "land sharks", the people set to drag you down are what scare her the most.

She’d spent her life surrounding herself with people who didn't support or encourage her. even her father said her childhood dream of swimming the English Channel was a pipedream.

During Tracy's presentation "Avoiding Sharks" we could all relate to Tracy’s idea of encountering these land sharks in their many forms as we face physical or mental challenges in our own professional and private life

Tracy has found that by surrounding herself with positive people who build her up and support her life choice is the key to her success. She also has a support crew who push her to the ends of the earth but equally would never let her put herself in danger.

She believes in "Turning Negatives into Positives", never giving up when you have dreams to achieve and being focused on what you want to achieve. In swimming this has meant never asking "how much further". Repeating two of her biggest supporters’ names, her sons, over and over again with every stroke helps her focus on the end goal and not the pain it takes to get there. Every single swim she has undertaken, whether it be sitting on the banks of the Cook Strait for 3 weeks waiting for the wind to stop blowing, sharing the seas with great white sharks in the Catalina Channel, dodging freight liners in the Strait of Gibraltar or worse yet, dodging rubbish swimming around Manhattan Island, Tracy believes that staying focused on the end goal and surrounding herself with her incredible support team has gotten her through.

After experiencing one university term in the UK, Rebecca returned to her family in Auckland unable to understand why anyone would want to live in London as it was ‘so terrible and boring’. So it is quite ironic that, fast forwarding a few years, Rebecca is known to her many readers as Runawaykiwi and regularly blogs on how to get the most out of London life, including ‘coffee, culture and how to survive this crazy city’.

But that’s only one aspect of Rebecca’s London life – in her corporate life she is a business analyst for The Travel Corporation and she also makes and sells iconic jewellery under the name Zeal & Heart (www.zealandheart.com)

So how did that all come about? Rebecca says she made a ‘questionable life decision’ by studying to be a tax accountant, and after one year in her job, her mum suggested that as she wasn’t happy she might as well try England again.