Early in my radio days, and later at Slacker Radio, I sat in what were called Music Meetings.

Picture a room with a bunch of people around a table, listening to early releases of songs that are scheduled to drop in a week, or a month.

We’d listen for a bit, then go around the horn and everyone weighed in. What’s going to be huge, what’s a dud, what’s genius.

What got me was how fast we made up our minds. Ten or fifteen seconds into a song, and half the room had decided whether or not we had a hit on our hands.

The meeting was supposed to be about thoughtful curation. About featuring music that would appeal to our audience, keep them engaged, bring them joy.

What we were actually clocking in those first few seconds was whether the song sounded like something that had already worked.

I’ve spent twenty-five years in music and media, and I’ve watched fantastic records lose to weak ones, again and again. The better record just didn’t show up wearing the right signals.

The weak one sounded familiar. It sounded like what we were already playing. So it got the vote and we left the meeting sure we’d made the right call.

We bump into this fast-thinking, slow-thinking dynamic all the time. Watch.

Read the words below out loud, or in your head, as fast as you can.

But, say the color of the ink, (not the word.)

I’m willing to bet you got hung up. The word tends to fire in your head first and trips you on the color.

Reading is so fast and so deeply familiar to us that it beats the slow, careful part of your brain, even when you know better.

That’s the Stroop test, one of the cleanest demonstrations of what Daniel Kahneman calls fast and slow thinking.

Our music meetings ran on the same wiring. We were never judging a song on its full merits. The fast system decided what it reminded us of, and the careful listening came after, mostly to justify the decision we’d already made.

You’ve spent months building a real thing. The investor deck, the home page, the case study, the new product.

But most people will decide whether to trust it before they ever look deeply at it. They ask fast-brain questions. What does this remind me of? Something I’ve liked before? Something I’ve trusted?

The fast brain answers in seconds. The careful part shows up later, and mostly agrees with what the fast part already picked.

You do this too. You size up other people’s work in the first few seconds, and you call it judgment. Everyone who sees your work does the same to you.

So decide what your work reminds them of, early, and on purpose. Or they'll decide without you.

~ Jaime

P.S. If you’ve got thoughts on this, hit reply. If nothing landed, tell me that too. I read every one, and I write back.

Thanks for spending time with Red Threads. I’m glad you’re here.