 Hi, everyone. I'm Adam Novus joined as always by Liz Wade. Hello, Liz. Hi, Adam. We are here today to have a real conversation about our program, which I'm blanking on the name of, but it's about snap decisions. What is the name of this program? Can I help you? Yes, please do. It is How Your Quick Decisions Can Change Your Life. Yes. Because you don't know how your quick decisions, you make quick decisions, but you don't know how they change your life. Exactly. You don't even know you make them. So if you haven't listened to this program already, please listen to it on YouTube or our podcast or our website. And at all of those places, make sure that you really subscribe or dive into the website. But I want to take a moment before we get into the program and tell you about our YouTube memberships. We are so excited about YouTube memberships. There's a little button that says Join. Now when you click that button, you're not actually joining. You're not committing to anything. It will just bring you to a page and tell you more about it. But we're offering special emojis, special content, exclusive deals, and just all sorts of fun stuff to take your English to the next level, but also support us and be part of our channel and our community. So if you're on our website listening to this or through the podcast, make sure you visit our YouTube page because there's a lot of exciting things happening there. If you're already on our YouTube page, check it out. We'd love to have you join our community. Right? I miss anything? Yeah. Good. Yeah. You got it all. I got it all. Anyway, so quick decisions. So this program isn't about, like, do you choose red or blue? Do you choose pizza toppings? It's about those decisions we make that we don't think about. Right? Yeah. So you're not purposefully choosing something. It's more an instinct. Yes. You might not even know you're choosing it because of what you've learned, the things you've experienced. There's a very interesting, the program kind of starts out with this idea of this statue that everybody thought was really old. Sorry. I love this story. Yes. It's so cool to me. So this, and they, I think a museum paid quite a bit of money for it. Yeah. It's a very famous museum, a very big museum, and they got this very old, old statue. Yes. And when people, a lot of people saw it, their judgment... Well, not people, but like experts. Yes. So these are like experts in historical art and history. So they're, when they saw it, they thought old and beautiful, ancient, but then someone came along and thought... Well, there were a few who did not think that. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry. Well, I'm just saying there's, so there's one group of people who thought, oh, this is old. And then another people who just had a feeling, their initial reaction or quick decision was that it wasn't. Like this is before tests were run and before anyone was verified, they just knew. You're a little bit wrong on here. No. Sorry. And I, a little bit wrong. So they did actually do tests on this statue. So they did tests on the statue. Experts said that it was old, but like a few people had some nagging feelings. That's what I meant to say. Sorry. I said some tests. Like obviously the museum is not going to do no tests. Anyway. Well, what we're talking about today is those things that you think you know right away, but you're, and you, you might even be sure about. You might even be certain about, but you're actually wrong about. And so this is a fascinating thing because we all do it. It's unavoidable. Right. There are ways we can, we can kind of check ourselves, but it's an unavoidable thing, which is why I think this is one of a very exciting spotlight program. Because no matter who you are, this, this will affect you. Yeah. And I, I do think it's important for us to say that this program is based on a book by the writer Malcolm Gladwell, and he wrote a book called Blink where he tells a bunch of stories like this and how they actually impact your life, how your, how your quick decisions, the, the instinctive decisions that you make without even thinking about it, how they impact your life. So yeah, I think to fin, to finish it, did you finish the story of the, of the. I didn't. No, I didn't say, I didn't say what happened with, if the statue was real. Yeah. So this one scientist, right, he gets this feeling, he looks at the statue and he doesn't, he doesn't, well he usually gets an idea that like a word that comes to him when he looks at a, at an old piece of art, which is like old or marble or heavy or ancient or whatever. And so this time he looked at it and he thought fresh. And so he and some other art experts insisted on more tests and they found out it was a fake. A very fake. He was right. His quick decision was right, his snap judgment. Well in snap, which is a very short, you know, you snap your fingers, that's so a very quick decision. Snap decisions are very important. They keep us safe, right? They tell us sometimes you make decisions about things that help keep you safe, that help, you know, help you navigate just a normal day. But our experience is limited. And that is, all of these decisions are based on our experience. So if we meet someone new, meet someone who speaks a different language or from a different culture, wearing different clothes, we make immediate decision or immediate judgments about them. Right. And they're not usually correct. Because if until we have a lot of different experiences, those decisions are based on fear or a small sample of experiences. So Liz, I don't know if you've ever had this where you've, do you think you've ever changed your mind about something because of experience? I don't know if I could come up with a specific example where... I do, actually. So I don't know if this exactly counts. But when I was in eighth grade, so this is a long time ago, right? Okay. There was a new girl who started riding our bus. And I thought when she first got on the bus, she's not very nice. She, like, looks mean. I'm not going to talk to her. I'm a little sad about that now, right? And so I didn't give her a chance. I just made a snap judgment that she wasn't a person that I wanted to be a friend with. But then as we rolled the bus together, I mean it's not like she sat next to me or anything. But as we rode the bus together, I do remember thinking further on in my eighth grade year. Like, I really made a wrong judgment about her at the beginning. I mean, it's not like we were best friends, but she was a nice person. And I enjoyed talking to her. And, yeah, she was a nice person. And so I do have a very clear memory of that in eighth grade where I remember thinking back, thinking I made the wrong decision about her and that wasn't fair. Wow. Well, that's impressive that even when you were in eighth grade, you were able to reflect on that. I think a lot of people just stay in their own idea of, you know, I've had it with some, I think, trying new foods. Or visiting new places. But I also think maybe you and I have traveled more than other people. And so when you travel, when you have a general posture of, oh, the world is an interesting place. It's more complex than I would think. You generally have an openness to your snap, to like fully landing and thinking that you actually know what you know. Right. Well, I was thinking of this as you were talking about it a few minutes ago. I was thinking of taking it even a step back. So, like, for example, when, you know, we have known each other for, I don't know, a couple of years, more than a couple of years. I don't know, however many years. But I think if I made, like, if you, maybe if we met for coffee, right, and I was at the coffee shop and I saw you walk in, I might have a snap judgment about you. Like, Adam looks like he's had a hard day. Or Adam looks really happy for some reason. And I would be able to have an accurate or a good snap judgment. Because we have that relationship. So you would be able to, your judgment would be more likely to be accurate. Right? That's what you're saying. Yeah. Right. So I think it's an interesting, like, the people that you know, when you have a snap judgment or a quick decision, an instinct about someone that you are close to, maybe your child or your mother or father or, you know, a close aunt or uncle or something, you might have a good snap judgment about them. But then if you think about that for the other way, like when you encounter a stranger, when you meet a stranger, when you have a snap judgment about them. Yeah. That's not right. Because you don't know them. So here is an even more complicated. So one of the difficult things that I think would be to have the people you know, let's say you walked in and I think, I can tell Liz is having a bad day. Okay. Two things could happen. One, if I just say, oh, Liz, you're having a bad day. Maybe you are having a bad day. And maybe you, but maybe I've just taken away the value of you getting to say that. Or you getting to tell me that you had a bad day. Well, you don't have to, like, say, are you having a bad day? You could just maybe say, you know, like, how are you, which is something you'd normally say. Right. That's my point. My point is we still want to, I think what it does is it helps us prepare to receive, to better prepare ourselves to receive what they're going to be. But it doesn't mean that we need to not let them say what they're going to say or not let them express what they're going to express. Because maybe we're still wrong. And that can be really hard when, because I've been married for a long time and I still misread my wife from time to time. And she's like, oh, that's not what I meant. Yeah. And that can be really hard. So sometimes it's with a stranger, it's actually easier to say, I don't know what they're thinking. So you stay open. But with people you know. And why is it open to not knowing what they're thinking? Because sometimes, you know, if you have a quick decision, you know, I will say we have been doing this series on 10 ways to fight hate. And a lot of these problems with hate, not liking someone just because of who they are, that really does come from a lot of these prejudices or these snap decisions that are not based in reality. Exactly. So staying open is just a great way of, you know, to individuals but also groups, also just experiences. And I think that is one of the things that you can't avoid snap judgments, but that's the big thing you can do to kind of make sure you like, am I making a snap judgment? Can I pause in second and think it a second time? Can I ask someone else, hey, this is my judgment. Can I, you know, who are the people in your life who you can trust? Right. Well, okay, so I want to ask a question and then I want to bring up another point. Okay. So I think it would be interesting to ask if any of our listeners, if you're listening to this, leave a comment below. Like, have you ever made a snap judgment or a quick decision that was right or wrong that you found out? Or has someone made a snap judgment about you? Yes. Oh, yeah, that's an interesting one, too. The next one, the thing I wanted to bring up is I thought was really interesting in this program. It brings up the fact that doctors, like especially maybe emergency doctors, depend on their snap judgments in order to do their work. Right. So they need to have those snap judgments. So we've been talking about snap judgments in kind of a negative way, right? Where we have an opinion about someone before we've really met them. But they are actually important in some specific areas. Right? So these emergency room doctors, they might have a feeling of what is wrong with you or what they can do to help even if they don't have all of the information yet. Or even some doctors, if you come presenting something that's wrong with you but nobody can figure it out, they might have a gut feeling. Yeah. Ooh, that's a good question. Do you trust your gut feeling or not? Yeah. Yeah, because that's essentially what a snap judgment or a quick decision is. It's a gut feeling, right? And that's an interesting idiom, too. Like a gut feeling is just sort of a feeling that you have. Does it come from your stomach? Yeah. Well, sometimes you can feel it down there. You get like clenches up. Like it's like, ooh. Yeah. Yeah. You feel it in your body rather than like, well, I think it this way. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. So, yeah. Talking about the jobs that have to, maybe you are a person who has to make snap judgments in your work. I'd love to hear about that, about what you do. That's great. So, put that in the comments on this video or on our website. Wherever we're on social media, you can send us a message through Twitter or Facebook, whatever works for you. We try to be there and be available. But again, join us for, if you subscribe on YouTube and you'll join us for our next conversation. We try to do these at least once a week and we have fun doing them. And yeah, hit that little bell so you don't miss out on all our content. And Liz, it's been a pleasure as always. And it's you, Adam. Thank you. And so until next time, we hope you listen, watch, practice and learn. Spotlight out.