We use our brains to think.
Everyone understands that, there’s nothing new or ground-breaking in the above statement. Except it seems evolution hard-wired our brains to do anything and everything we possibly could do instead of thinking. The brain is less of a thinking machine – more a thinking avoidance machine. How so?
Our brain requires oodles of energy to function. Our grey matter uses 20-25% of our total calories burnt every day. So in our former hunter-gather times, when Homo Sapiens went days and days without food, our brains were trained to run in eco-mode. Less decision time = more down time = less calorific requirement. Less thinking, more thinking avoidance.
These days, understanding how our brain works has become increasingly important when it comes to many challenges including investing. We process so much information in a day that our brains cannot think about it all. It goes caveman more often than we realise
How does our brain do this? The brain creates short-cuts. Instead of considering the problem and burning more precious calories, it efficiently creates an answer based on our memory of past experiences. Before it ponders the new problem it simply jumps to an answer it previously had. It has efficiently therefore avoided thinking.