You’re a slow thinker. Now what?
70 comments
·September 10, 2025zubspace
noir_lord
To an extent it’s a skill you can practice if not learn.
By nature I’m a slow thinker but I can mode switch if I need to but it’s exhausting after a while in a weird way I put it down to working in the trades before switching to programming full time, some of the fastest funniest people you’ll ever meet are tradesmen on job sites (introversion doesn’t mean poor social skills after all though they get conflated).
If you are generally happy as you are don’t sweat it, be a boring world if we where all the same.
ozgrakkurt
I think this is not really a bad trait. If you think about it from the other person’s perspective, they really don’t expect you to make jokes or entertain them
sunaookami
>I guess if you take a long time to do something, people kind of forget that you're there.
This is so true sadly, group conversations are very exhausting to me. It is a constant back-and-forth and if you want to say something you need to do it "quick" or the topic shifts.
>Also, my ‘processing time’ in conversation is slow. So I’ve realised that I’m better off focusing on writing as a way to communicate. Writing to me feels more suited towards slow, patient thinkers.
I feel the same way, I try to avoid arguments (like something political with friends (harmless, don't worry)) because it takes me too long to say what I want to say, and my sentences jump around awkwardly trying to express the point I want to make. I was also made fun of in school due to that... Also I tend to mispronounce some words then which makes it even more awkward. People often think that if you don't respond to an argument in two seconds you "lose"...
This also got waaay worse when I first drifted into burnout two years ago (still have, not recovered).
nuancebydefault
Sorry to hear about the burnout. I hope you are on the right way to recovery. Hang on and take care! I hope my 2 cents as an internet stranger can help.
sunaookami
Thank you, I'm working on it. It's a rocky path and very difficult to find another job.
brazukadev
don't blur the line between a burnout and a shit market tho. The problem is not on you
MattPalmer1086
It also takes me longer to understand things and it takes me longer to get to delivery than many of my peers.
However, I have consistently noticed that the quickness comes at the price of a shallow understanding, and the delivery is also often lacking in those who move fast.
For me, I have to really grok the thing I'm focussing on. I have to internalise it somehow and build a mental model. Once I've done that I am actually faster and more productive than the ones who leap on things quicker.
ptmcc
Me too, the hard part is showing that this slower, more methodical process is more valuable than the flashy, quick shallow approach. And it means I might have to chew on a problem for a bit before delivering anything, even a proposal or design much less a product. But for a longer time scale it does pay off.
Fortunately I've had a few good managers and business partners in my career that recognize the value, but it's far from universal and I sometimes have a hard time communicating it myself in the face of the common move fast agile culture that is so prevalent in most of tech.
el_benhameen
> I’ve had one interview where I had to do multiplications really quickly, whilst shouting my name, and doing such-and-such random thing every five minutes.
I think the whole “I would stand up and walk out of that interview” trope is a little overused but … I would stand up and walk out of that interview. Was that a real situation?
schneems
I’ve never actually done this. But I’ve fantasized about preparing several interview questions for the company I’m interviewing at. They forget that interviews are a two way street.
If I like them (and the process was bearable), I would ask nothing. If I’m mildly annoyed, something “simple” yet patronizing like fizbuzz. If I’m REALLY annoyed then something wildly specific and pedantic.
Interviewer: “do you have any questions for me?”
Why yes, a chicken, fox and sack of flour need to cross a doubly linked list, how would you flip the list inside out from the middle while counting the number of pingpongballs that can fit into 747 VW Beatles.
mattlondon
Never ask nothing if you like them. Always have some keen-sounding questions to ask.
When it comes to hiring decisions if there are tied candidates but only one position it can often come down to candidates A was quiet and didn't ask any questions and seems disinterested, but candidate B had loads of questions to ask at the end and seemed really interested and keen and wanted to know x, y, and z.
Who do you think gets hired in those scenarios.
But yeah it is sometimes tempting to turn the tables :). So far no one has done it to me, but not sure what my response would be. "Haha nice joke! Ok we're outta time thanks for coming!" I guess!
furyofantares
I think asking some intelligent questions about the business or the work is a MUCH bigger advantage than just a tiebreaker.
It demonstrates a LOT about how well you will work out at the company, how interested you are in it, how much of a self-starter you are.
schneems
Oh for sure. Ask questions, just not annoying whiteboard questions. Also I hate this “ask us anything” part of the interview. It’s so performative.
It should be rephrased as “the jeopardy round” since it’s still about the candidate, but phrased backwards. And it’s not a time for REAL questions, it’s a time to show you’re smart and attentive but not TOO smart, you want the interviewer to feel good about themselves so they can feel good about you.
> what my response would be
I don’t ask candidates to do anything I wouldn’t put up with. It would be unusual but I would be game (if they were serious). Fundamentally that’s what my fantasy is about: a world where interviewer and interviewee have mutual respect for each other.
In the recent past I’ve asked candidates to walk me through code they’ve written. I’m super happy to reciprocate for 15 min and I think the candidate (if they’re working with me directly) would get a lot out of it.
nilamo
I'm sorry, is that 747 different VW Beetles, or one VW Beetle that's scaled up to be 747-sized? If it's scaled up, is it so they have the same length, or area? Neither is relevant (just tell me the area to fill with balls), but I'd like to know, anyway.
Dilettante_
"I...I don't know that!" [Interviewer is violently ejected out of the window]
schneems
It’s a trick question. The number is a distraction. If they don’t ask the model year of the VW Beatle they’re clearly not detail oriented and can’t be trusted. /s
ericpauley
Sure, interviews go both ways, but there’s a major difference in what each side wants from the other. The company wants someone who can deliver software and architecture, which requires substantial vetting. The main thing the employee wants (in most cases) is money, which is far easier to determine the value of (I’d consider “what’s the position pay?” a perfectly reasonable question when interviewing someone).
schneems
The pay question is valid, but not appropriate for a technical interview. If someone asked me I wouldn’t even know the answer. That would be a question for the recruiter or possible engineering manager.
I think it’s 100% okay to ask about pay in an interview but not okay if it’s the only thing you ask about.
For me: I care about the day-to-day of who I’m working with and what that dynamic is like (in addition to money and benefits).
idiotsecant
The employee also wants to understand working conditions like company culture, overtime expectations, etc.theres lots of fuzzier questions you can and should ask in interviews because interviewers will almost never intentionally reveal this information if asked directly.
chc4
They studied math, so it was probably for a quantitative finance job where I've seen (quite a few!) other people talk about similar interviews. Stuff like computing standard deviation confidence intervals or deciding which of two strategies are higher expected value with only mental math and a few seconds of thought.
null
paulpauper
This makes me skeptical of his claim that he is actually slow. I think it's like he felt like he couldn't keep up or imposter syndrome, but this is true of the vast majority of people. Most people find those interviews hard. That is the point...they are supposed to be challenging.
acedTrex
I have to imagine thats an interview for a role where quick maths and approximations are standard part of the role... otherwise wth
paulpauper
I think it's more like coming up with heuristics to approximate an answer quicky, even if the answer is wrong . With option trading, being able to intuit what the option should be priced at.
al_borland
Option trading was my first thought too. I went on a tour of the CBOE years ago with some former pit traders and they setup a mock scenario as if we were in the pits during an active trading day, to teach us how all that worked. I was thoroughly impressed by the ability these guys had to do all this math in their head, and maintain the bottom line of a complex position, all while surrounded by chaos.
adastra22
Maybe he interviewed to be an astronaut? These kinds of psychological tests are done in niche areas, but it is really unusual.
adastra22
You may have ADHD. I’ve never described myself as dim-witted, because I’ve never viewed it so negatively, but your description fits me exactly. Even down to the spatial awareness thing and biographical details like switching from math to theoretical physics in college.
I eventually got diagnosed as an adult with ADHD, and got treatment. Stimulants help me be significantly more “quick-witted” to use your terms. I would rather describe “being slow” as being in a constant state of distraction, which prevents me from being efficient with the task at hand. Stimulants fix this.
However having grown up scatterbrained, some aspects of it are now architectural in my brain and aren’t changed by slightly modifying the brain chemistry. I now see that as a superpower through, as it gives me a different perspective for seeing problems, and is great for strategic thinking. Stimulants just give me focused control over it and the ability to turn it off and on as the need arises.
tptacek
Given the whole point of the article is that this person's thinking style isn't dysfunctional, in fact seems to be working out just fine for them, why wouldn't we just look at this and say "this is a normal way for a human being to operate" and refuse to pathologize it? Why drug your way to a different thinking style?
brohoolio
Everyone is on their own journey and there are so many reasons a person might think a particular way.
The comment you are responding to is just trying to explain their own situation and say the person who wrote the article might want to investigate a similar experience compared to their own. I read the article as one where someone is exploring and ADHD is would be exploration. I would specify that ADHD inattentive type is the one that it reads most like to me.
I don't see why you'd want to knock someone's choice of treatment for a particular condition. You might not see a need for a particular treatment option, but many folks get relief from anxiety or other things such as RSD while being medicated for ADHD. They can make their own decisions.
nxobject
I don’t think that’s what the parent is describing it at all, not at the end. It’s a framework for understanding OP’s style of thinking, and connecting it to the research literature - sluggish “cognitive tempo” is the clinical jargon.
Quekid5
> why wouldn't we just look at this and say "this is a normal way for a human being to operate" and refuse to pathologize it
I don't think it's so much about that... it's more that having a label for a common set of behaviors/symptoms can be a shorthand to explain things more succinctly.
Btw, would you say the same thing about clinical depression? Why/why not?
> Why drug your way to a different thinking style?
Because ADHD (and other things) can be crippling when it comes to actually getting IRL shit that needs doing... done. "We live in a society" is a meme, but there's actually a lot of stuff that can present non-trivial hurdles for neuro-divergent people IRL ... like filing taxes, going to an unemployment office, etc. etc.
(Also, that's not quite what the drugs do if you have ADHD, but I digress)
idiotsecant
Parent post clearly explained the advantages and disadvantages of stimulant use and how they are useful in different situations. Nobody is saying it's dysfunctional. This isn't reddit, you don't need to always be searching for something to be outraged about.
godelski
I think I wouldn't be so quick to conclude ADHD or suggest stimulants. I have ADHD too, and I know exactly what you're talking about. Those alarms in your head going off. Where everything is an emergency so nothing is. I'm not so sure it is being "scatterbrained" as much as it is over-parallelism.
But the OP's points have more complexity than they think (in my main comment[0] I mention depth being missing). Let's take the quick math one for example. They made the assumption that a calculation was being made. This seems reasonable, but if you're doing a lot of those calculations you'll memorize them. I interestingly have experimental data on this. After my undergrad I had to get an EKG done and the tech asked me to do some basic math questions to get some readings. Problem is, I could answer her questions but she got almost no signal. They were just too easy for me because I was so familiar with them. You don't need to calculate what's in the cache. So we moved to 2 digit multiplications and signal was mixed. Good correlation with being able to leverage previous calculations. So then I had her and my dad pick 3 random numbers and I would multiply those in my head. That did the trick and she said it light up like a Christmas tree (I do this visually, so it really was using more parts of the brain than she was likely used to seeing).
My point is, there's more nuance to this. Your brain isn't just a computation unit, it has various levels of storage with different speeds and capacities, it has different accelerators and processing units that can be leveraged if programmed in the right way. The problem with the OP's assessment is they've measured output speed and assumed this is enough information to calculate FLOPS, but a slower processor can win that race if it just is pulling from cache. A slower processor can win in aggregate if it has more parallelism. The problem is that they're measuring something different than what they think they're measuring, even if it is right up to a first order approximation.
throwuxiytayq
“May have” doesn’t indicate conclusion - you’re the one being quick. That said, the article really does seem to describe the symptoms of inattentive ADHD with a breadth of cues and close precision.
As to the rest of your comment, not to diminish your experience, it’s really difficult to tell what you’re trying to say, and how that has to do with any of the very specific symptoms and experiences mentioned.
drooby
This absolutely resonates with me.
I have always felt that my verbal recall skills and the size of my lexicon do not correspond strongly to the quality of my ideas.
Which is unfortunate because I believe most people over-index on these attributes. folks with extremely high wit and low/average critical thinking, I.e Russel Brand types are extremely persuasive due to their ability to be so _accurate_. But accuracy doesn't matter if you're not shooting at the right target. We confuse accuracy with truthfulness. It is some sort of cognitive fallacy our brains short circuit to.
The best folks in our position can do is find work that allows our results to speak for us. And yes, write. Find the time to write. Strategically position yourself such that the battleground is async written text.
an0malous
That’s tough in an age where nobody really reads anymore
kaffekaka
I have thought of myself as a slow thinker but have shifted to the view that it's more about myself putting a higher value on the thoughts that inherently take time to reach.
Other, "quicker" people are satisfied with superficial ideas and sometimes don't even care about factual correctness. But when I finally form my opinion, it is always very considered. When quick people are questioned it's often evident that depth is lacking.
So I am slow only because I do alot more processing, simply put.
b3kart
True depth of thought is often achieved through exposing your ideas to others. It’s scary and uncomfortable, but ultimately you might spend months refining an argument that the first other person to look at will find a flaw in. We don’t see our own blind spots (by definition).
al_borland
I went through an autism assessment about a year ago. Part of that was getting an IQ test. I scored well in Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Reasoning, but struggled more in Processing Speed. This was accounted for by giving two scores, the Full Scale IQ, and the General Ability Index (GAI). The GAI deemphasizes the processing speed, as raw speed to an answer usually isn't that important these days. I was told the having a larger gap between these numbers is one indication that autism might be in the picture.
kwakubiney
I resonate highly with this. Especially when brainstorming ideas with my manager. He's very quick with suggestions, and I am always saying ehhh I don't know let me think about it. I have realized that him giving me ideas quickly to iterate on is beneficial because I am always able to refine it. I still do think it is a deficiency in some sense as I would have loved to be one of those guys who could just grok stuff instantly and contribute quicker
b_e_n_t_o_n
I feel like a simpler explanation is that the author is roughly average in most traits, and comparing themselves to others who are above average in certain traits.
I doubt it's about thinking speed. At times I've thought I was fundamentally deficient in some way, only to realize later that I was catastrophising about a poor performance in something and generalizing that across my entire life.
There is also a lot of variation in our abilities, mostly due to practice. When I've holed myself up in my room working for weeks I lose the ability to socialize in general, let alone make witty comebacks. But once I'm in a social environment for a while I can banter with anybody.
godelski
I think it can be an error labeling people as "fast" or "slow". I had similar self doubts to the OP during my PhD, where so many people around me would say they "got" a concept and I was just feeling behind. But a few years in, while desperately trying to "catch up" I realized a good portion of the time I was just misinterpreting. Even those tasks aren't as well defined as the OP suggests.
There's another dimension that often is not acknowledged: depth. People have different thresholds at where they're comfortable talking about a topic or saying they "understand". I also don't think there's a strong correlation with the person's intelligence, if anything, a slight bias towards "slower" people being smarter.
- Dumb people might have low thresholds as they are unaware of depth.
- Smart people will have low thresholds because they do better thinking out loud or are just saying they think they have enough to launch off of.
- Dumb people might be slow because they haven't thought about the thing very much.
- Smart people might be slow because they are considering different depths.
We all think fast and slow at times (intended), and we're all 4 people in the above list on different topics. I think we should just make sure we're judging people at the right race. The trouble is despite standing in front of you, talking face to face, you don't know if in that time they've run a few meters or a few kilometers. I think we'd all do better if we worried a little less about speed. If your destination is nowhere, you get there in the same time regardless of your speed.
Havoc
I find that small variations in lifestyle also have a massive impact in perceived sharpness. Sleep, exercise, booze etc.
I also thought about this a lot. Some things about slow thinking are great. I truly believe that it helped me thrive as a software developer.
But social interactions are awkward. I can't really come up with things to say easily and lots of times I can't respond in ways to keep the conversation going. Only after the fact I get lots of ideas of what I could have said. I'm truly impressed about others who can just come up with interesting or funny things to say on the spot.
I'm a tad older, so I stopped caring about it and just accepted my slow thinking. But I'm sure that I also missed out on a lot of opportunities regarding friendships or work. I still think, that others perceive me as awkward or just not fun and it's hard to just ignore that.
Funnily my wife is completely opposite to me and we have the greatest time.