Stop dancing like that. it looks like you're about to be eaten by a lion." How does this make sense? And the explanation is really nice. "It is important to be the first in the room to take the risk because it will be easy for others to imitate. "It is important to dance with others and have a ball." Wow! If you haven't read the book, you should. It's really fun, with dancing, food, friends, music, the countryside. And there are really cool quotes in there. And this one in particular is by Einstein: "Only the person who risks nothing gets in the place worth being." So, in fact, if you don't take risks, you get nowhere. Do it right, then you get somewhere! [Pause] OK, now that I've finally been given some freedom, let me talk about the other subject that I've had an interest in for quite a long time: The subject of "thinking fast", how you can teach people how to think. Because it's important that I speak about something that's not only related to programming: How do you teach people to think? Do you think it's possible to do that? Like, maybe someone just doesn't know how to do it. Maybe someone just doesn't have the ability to do it, so... But OK, I'm going to teach you. I've been teaching people for years how to think, and then I'll share my results. Because it's something that has to do with programming, but it has to do with how we think in general. Because if you don't think properly, you're going to do bad stuff, like get into bad situations. You've heard this before, haven't you? You've heard that when you're doing programming, you have to be calm, like, because that's the way you're going to get better. Of course you're going to get better. The problem is that when you're not calm, you get into situations that are bad. But it's exactly the same with thinking. When you don't think properly, you get into situations that are bad. When you don't think well, you start doing bad stuff. And also you feel bad, which is something that's not good for me! (Audience laughter) Because, of course, in these cases, I prefer not to feel bad. Because feeling bad would make me want to act differently. And I'm here, for example, today, to talk to you about "thinking fast." And that's really important. Because we all can think a bit faster, and, because of that, we can solve the problems that we need to solve. It's really important. Now that we're on that subject, I can tell you, I don't have to tell you, because it's the same for everyone. We all want to be more intelligent. That's great! But it's not something that happens overnight. It doesn't happen in a second. [Pause] OK, so there is someone here with a serious question for me today, a big-time question, about which I'm going to tell you something. That's a person that was once my manager. The person sitting in front of me right now. His name is Peter S., Peter Schäfer, the guy who's just sat down. And he asked a great question, something that I had a question for today: "What I want to know is if I'm going to get this job done at the end of the day?" If I had to find a job right now to do it quickly. You don't need a lot of time, but you need to do it quickly. It's important for your company to find it quickly. So what I want to know is: "Is there some way that we can think fast?" What do you think, Peter? Do you know a way to think faster? [Silence] No, there's no way to think faster. Because "thinking fast" is doing things in one second. If you're thinking properly, you're thinking in the one second. You can't think faster than in one second. If you think in more than one second, that's not thinking faster. So Peter, in fact, this is what we have to learn: We need to learn to move faster in our minds, but it's not because we're thinking faster than other people. It's because we need to take fewer decisions. Now, Peter, I think you can guess, the real answer I'm going to tell you, but you can be sure of one thing: The faster we can think, the better. But the reason why I want to give you all this thinking time today, and not give you answers, is that it will take a little time to see how we can actually do this. I'm not saying that I can teach you to think, and that's all you need to do, because it's not possible to think that much faster. We're all limited by the rate at which we can connect the neurons in our brain. The more people ask the question, the more difficult it is to do it. And the more time passes, the more difficult it is to do it. That's where we are. [Pause] No, I'm sorry, that was a little too long. That's how we'll do it then. What I want to say is that there are two types of ways of thinking. So this is the first thing: There's one way of thinking that's very slow, which doesn't work in this job. If I gave you the question: "Peter, can you make someone understand this?" You think about it for ages, you think about it for ages, you think about it for ages, then you get it, you take a break. So I want to show you another type of way of thinking. And that's the second type. That's the second type of way of thinking: You get a solution very quickly, but it's completely wrong. And then you have to start to work on it and correct it. And it's completely the wrong solution. But sometimes this happens. So here's an example: Let's suppose that you and I are working with a colleague and he has a bad solution for a problem. And this solution is wrong. We have to solve the problem. How would we do it? One: You tell us you're working on it. Two: You show us how you do it. Three: We'll have a conversation about it, and we'll explain to you that your solution is completely the wrong solution. And then we have to sit together and think about it for ages until we can find a better solution together. And then we do it. We don't tell you, "Yes, of course, you're right." We just work with it, and we correct it together. Because we all need to think with each other, not about who's right and who's wrong. And this is my little analogy for the next steps. The next steps are the ones I'm going to tell you. It's a little hard to follow, because I have some trouble remembering them. We all do this. I don't know anyone that can remember what I'm saying. So it's really difficult. But here's my solution: You can think about it and then forget it. Or you can think about it and then ask a question. The way it was: "You do it, you correct it, and that's the way you go." That's a very fast type of way of thinking. And it has a lot of side effects. The first thing that happens when you think that way is you don't want to do it that way anymore, because it's completely boring. There's no room to think anymore in that way. And as soon as you realize that, you have to be very careful. Because when you realize that, that's the moment at which you need to start to look around and find new, faster ways of thinking. That's important. But you can think fast and it doesn't always have to be that way. You can think faster, and you can correct that fast. [Pause] I don't think this worked very well. There was a lot of clapping. That's fine. That means that it worked. [Pause] That was a bad joke, by the way. OK, Peter, we'll finish up here. At the end of the day, I hope I have a few minutes left at the end of the talk to talk about how I think it's possible to teach people how to think at their maximum speed.