Put it on the bunny

When my younger daughter was a high school sophomore, she unintentionally gave me a reframe for overthinking.

She started saying "put it on the bunny".

Her English teacher had a John Deere tractor with two gears. Bunny was fast; turtle was slow. When he wanted someone to hurry up, he invoked the bunny.

"Put it on the bunny" became part of our family lingo.

How is this relevant to overthinking?

Like a John Deere tractor, your mind has two speeds.

Bunny: Fast, intuitive, and based on feelings. It speaksto you in the language of gut feelings and goosebumps.

Turtle: Slower, deliberate, and based on facts. It speaks to you in words and images.

Overthinkers often get stuck in slow mode—analyzing, reanalyzing, and doubting instead of taking action.

The trick is knowing when--and how--to switch gears.

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman calls these System 1 (fast) and System 2 (slow). He won the Nobel Prize for applying this 2-speed framework (among other things) to economic decision-making.

​Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is about "thinking without thinking"--fast thinking.

Thinking at two speeds

The bunny and turtle in your mind are each most useful in different situations.

Slow is most useful when you have few options, lots of facts, and it's important to be as certain as you can.

Fast is most useful when you have lots of options, few facts, and humans are involved--because they introduce uncertainty.

Neither is infallible.

Ideally, bunny and turtle work together by:

• Checking how a slow-thinking decision feels or

• Validating fast thinking with facts

More often, they compete for your attention--and one of them ends up in control. Slow thinking is particularly good at riding roughshod over fast thinking. The turtle is mighty.

We all subconsciously prefer one thinking speed. For overthinkers, it's almost always the deliberate, analytic turtle.

• Our years in school teach us its the key to success. Remember needing to show your work? That's explicit validation of slow thinking.

• Unless our family or culture values fast, feeling-based knowledge, we learn nothing about the bunny. Intuition goes into the same mystical bucket as ESP.

The reframe

When you overthink, you're just stuck in slow thinking.

Your brain isn't broken. The turtle mind just believes it'll eventually get to the right answer in every situation.

The way out of being stuck?

Switch gears from turtle to bunny.

I say that like it's a piece of cake.

It is simple--but not necessarily easy.

If we've been living in turtle mode for years, switching gears can feel unnatural. Many of us have a pretty weak bunny.

It’s not that we don’t have intuition—it’s just been underfed.

How to start shifting?

Step 1: Catch yourself in turtle mode.​ Notice when you're circling the same thoughts without coming up with anything new. That’s your cue to switch speeds.

Step 2: Do a "gut-check pause."​ Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and ask yourself:

If I had to decide right now, what would my gut say?

Simply notice the first thing that bubbles up. You don’t have to act on it— acknowledging it is enough.

Of course, strengthening your intuition is a much bigger topic. I'll dive into it next week.

This week, just notice when you're in turtle mode and see if you can catch a glimpse of your bunny.

Questions for the week

• Do you believe you have intuition? Why or why not?

• When was the last time you used it?

• If you don’t think you have intuition, are you open to the idea that you do?