Everything is urgent now — except the things that matter. The inbox is a toddler with a drum. The news shouts like a market hawker. Meanwhile, the decisions that define our next five years are sitting quietly in the corner, hoping we’ll notice them. Here’s my modest rebellion: slow thinking with fast tools.
The open loop is practical: in a minute I’ll give you a decision “pre-mortem” you can run with AI in 12 minutes flat. First, the case for slowness. Slowness isn’t dithering; it’s depth. It means we define the question before we chase the answer. We sketch multiple futures before we marry one. We pause not to be dramatic but to be thorough.
Grab your AI and say:
“Facilitate a 12-minute pre-mortem on [decision]. Step 1 (3 min): help me define the real question (ask 5 clarifiers). Step 2 (3 min): generate 3 plausible future headlines if this goes well, and 3 if it goes badly. Step 3 (3 min): list 5 risks and 5 countermeasures I can enact this week. Step 4 (3 min): propose a ‘minimum reversible step’ I can take in 48 hours, plus a short announcement I can send to involved parties. Tone: British, calm, no hype.”
Run it. Answer briskly. The magic isn’t the AI; it’s the timer, the structure, and your willingness to imagine failure before it arrives feeling clever. When you picture the headline “Neighbourhood Archive Project Collapses Over Permissions Row,” you naturally add “get written consent early” to tomorrow’s list. That’s slowness paying dividends at speed.
Pair this with a “decision log” — not grandiose, just a page where you write: What did we decide, why, what will tell us we’re wrong, when will we review? AI can maintain it; you just feed it updates. In six months, you’ll be the rare adult who can say, “Here’s how we got here,” without waving at the horizon.
There’s a joy to this. Not the dopamine joy of a fresh notification, but the satisfaction of clean lines in a workshop. You chose. You recorded. You moved. The world can keep thundering. Your corner hums.
If you want my pre-mortem prompt pack and a tidy decision log template, I send them to subscribers first. Join free → https://substack.com/@theoldgreythinker
