Ap Dijksterhuis

There are things that our unconscious will always think about.

And these have to do with basic routines or also with survival or things that are very much based on emotions.

You can think about love.

These are things that your mind, or the minds of most people anyway, will work on naturally.

Then there's things, creativity, inspiration, scientific problems, for instance, where your mind

You can think about if you set yourself goals, but it doesn't do so naturally.

You have to want it.

You have to set yourself goals.

And then there's a third category, and that's what you are referring to.

These are like mortgages or pension plans.

From the perspective of your unconscious, this is just a lot of modern nonsense that it's not going to think about, you know.

So, yeah, if you have to make decisions in that domain, and of course in modern life we sometimes have to make such decisions, you have to do it with a lot of conscious thought.

The unconscious is not going to do it for you.

It's simply a consequence of the enormous capacity of our brain and the rather limited capacity of consciousness.

Consciousness is one wonderful quality.

It's very precise.

You know, I could ask you, what's 14 times 17?

And you can...

use a calculator, but if you don't use a calculator, your consciousness can solve this within a few seconds.

The unconscious will never solve.