Slow thinking is incredibly annoying

[Suzanne]

Hello, my apsie friends.

As predictable, the realisation that I am a slow thinker, came to me.....well....slowly.

I am asked a question out of the blue and my mind is empty and only when it is not necessary, does the answer arrive. Online, I am excellent but that is because I have time to think; pressure is not there and do forth.

Sometimes, I do come out with an answer but that is so few and far, between, that it is negligible.

It distresses me, because I need to be a quick thinker and really, it is not due to a lack of social skill reading, for little did I realise that I have learned to read visually and the tone. Where I get stuck is when I am talking with animation and I become oblivious to the other person.

Wow, so annoying and frustrating when hours later, it suddenly hits me, the answer and then, regret enters

I guess practice is the answer eh?

 

[inabox]

You're not alone with this. I am completely the same. Very annoying isn't it?

With people who knew me well, I was ok, they knew if they wanted a response sometimes they'd have to wait (no longer around those people, not my fault or theirs, but an outside force). Now, people who accept me for being me don't understand yet that I might say something if they were to wait a while, (mostly not practical anyway) but they don't hold it against me.
Ultimately, for me, if people get angry about me doing this, they tend to be the kind of person I don't get on with anyway, so I don't feel like I'm losing out.
[emoji4]

 

[The Penguin]

You might consider this interesting. You know I'm starting a business but what you don't know I'm a slow thinker. This relates to my slow processing speed. When it takes me long to learn things, I can't bill the customer for that. It kinda sucks but something I need to learn to live with. The more I work on things, the faster I will get. However, the start is always slow for me. Long term goal is for me to do management and have employees do software development for me. It going to take time to get to that state. Till then, I need to manage the slow thinking for my business.

To extend this text, it is 4:27 AM right now. I'm learning this accounting software that taking me a long time. I finally got it but this task I wanted to do took hours to figure out.

 

[Suzanne]

Thanks you both for answering and making me feel not so alone.

Talking of business Penguin. My husband has been self employed for over 12 years and it is only NOW I understand how a business should work, but as usual because of my zeal, I am pretty demonstrative in sharing this with him. The facts are that he is better suited to being an employee.

Slow thinker to my husband, equates with low intelligence and thus, he will not accept I am and so, will not accommodate this.

 

[The Penguin]

Talking of business Penguin. My husband has been self employed for over 12 years and it is only NOW I understand how a business should work, but as usual because of my zeal, I am pretty demonstrative in sharing this with him. The facts are that he is better suited to being an employee.

Thanks. For me, I always did better in business than employment. Employers don't want to give accommodations. I will repeat, employers don't want to give accommodations. Realistically, it rare to find employers willing to do this. Though I need to give my own accommodations doing my business, I was always able to have happy customers as my business compare to working for a company as they keep going on how slow I'm to get task done. I feel I can work at my own pace for my business. I know I still need to meet deadlines, but the good news having a business, I have control of my course load compare to employment you don't.

 

[SignOfLazarus]

I guess it depends on what kind of answer/response you are speaking of. A lot of people can respond to something quickly, it doesn't mean it will be a good response [or that it won't be, either]. Speed does not dictate quality.

If a question is quite important, I have learned to give myself time to answer and not feel stressed to answer quickly- if I feel pressured to be quick about it I find it is actually more difficult to answer and it actually takes me more time. I get flustered and I also distrust whatever I come up with.

My boyfriend is one of the most intelligent people I've met [I don't just say that because he's my boyfriend, it's simply a fact]. He is very slow in answering, responding to... pretty much anything haha.

It used to make me crazy. Not because I equate speed with intelligence. It was more that there is this general pressure from the entire world to be so quick with results for ANYTHING. I had to learn to appreciate the time he took to think out his answers.

I also realized trying to force out my answers stressed me out and really ended up with results I wasn't happy about. So I really appreciate, now, how he takes such time with everything.

Whatever pace- there is no "right" way to think. There is simply how you think best, what works for you. It's really not an indication of intelligence.

 

[King_Oni]

For me it really depends on how long I need to process information.

I've found that when I'm joking around and up for general mischief, my mind usually operates way faster than when I actually have serious issues at hand. And that by itself might be a bit of an issue at times. I mean, yes, I'm fun to hang around with and I can crack jokes at a rapid pace, but life isn't all about joking around. It's like my mind actively shuts down the moment it notices something serious is up "uh oh! Red flag! Shut down! Shut down!". And I guess that goes in a multitude of ways; I can explain, and answer questions about musicproduction to friends without even taking a break to form an answer; it's this kind of information that's readily available. It's also the kind of information that interests me.

I've also noticed that the way I receive and give out information is part of how well I process it. I've been way, way better with written information, such as emails, forum posts and such, and way worse with verbal communication. That perhaps might be a bit of an auditory processing delay I have going on; It's for this reason I always watch movies with subtitles in the original language for instance.

As it is now, I was asked a question by my therapist and the careercoach and they gave me time to think about it all. I have 2 weeks for it, despite it's actually nothing more than a simple yes or no answer. But with this question I've gotten more questions and issues that came up and are really, really relevant to this answer. And for the record; I haven't even touched upon the notion of having a information processing delay such as the one I'm explaining now. I'm guessing they'll be be all ears when I throw them a few roadblocks on the way about issues that I've learned to live my life around and deal with, but might pose issues for potential employment. But alas, that's the process of getting to one yourself and being in a situation where you actively have to reflect on yourself.

It doesn't really bother me that much in general, that I might be a bit slower to process information, but an article someone posted the other day on this forum comes to mind; it's when society expects you to be think fast and act accordingly in fields they want to force me in, then by all means I'm disabled.

 

[Ylva]

Slow reading is even more annoying. It's like, it's all right there, on the page, but the voice of my elementary school teacher that still talks in my head insists I have to wait to find out what it says.

 

[The Penguin]

Slow reading is even more annoying. It's like, it's all right there, on the page, but the voice of my elementary school teacher that still talks in my head insists I have to wait to find out what it says.

This is another thing effect me with business too. I have many emails to read everyday, lots of research to do, reading legal documents, etc. Though I think for anyone reading legal documents can be overwhelming.

 

[Ylva]

This is another thing effect me with business too. I have many emails to read everyday, lots of research to do, reading legal documents, etc. Though I think for anyone reading legal documents can be overwhelming.

My sister studies law, and although she likes that she finds herself putting off reading.

 

[Balkan1996]

Did you knew that more intelligent people (usually) process some information slower? That's because intelligent people tend to focus on details rather than 'the big picture'.
This usually counts only for social situations and visual information, but from personal experience I can tell it can be on probably every aspect of your brain. Of course, I'm making an assumption that IQ tests really do measure one's intelligence...

 

[Suzanne]

I shall give an example of what I mean that happened very recently.

Had a huge issue with someone, but the trouble was and is, there is absolutely no point in me trying to solve it, because this person has the excellent tendency to freeze my mind and so, I resorted to the basic polite method.

Well, after some weeks, finally this person either notices or chooses to notice and comes out with: eh Suzanne, you not talking to me? My mind just went blank, because I didn't want to brush it away, but for the life of me, I could not think on how to respond. It was only, like 5 mins after this person was not around that it came to me. Well that rather depends on you, is what I thought.

As it happens, my husband informed me that he forgot to tell me that he had solved the issue and so, when the person again said it, I just gave him a big smile and said: now why would you think that? Knowing him as I do, I knew it would not go further and yep I was right.