Founder and Clinical Director Matt Lundquist Featured in Vogue

Can an object’s design, function, and aesthetics impact how you engage with that object? For instance, can a better, more organized wallet lead to better finances? Our Founder and Clinical Director Matt Lundquist was recently asked that question for an article in Vogue in which he discusses primary and secondary process thinking and financial decision-making.

In “Do Better Finances Come Down to a Better Wallet?” Matt tells writer Liana Satenstein that physical reminders like an organized wallet can be “a tool that is going to better support behaviors more aligned with what you want to accomplish in your life.” A good physical wallet, as opposed to the immediacy of Apple Pay and other means of digital payment, can encourage more intentionality with purchases. 

Examining a physical wallet is an intervention that relates to primary and secondary process thinking (automatic functioning versus more executive function). As Matt observes, “In cognitive therapy, we talk about inserting pauses…For example, if someone has a temper, we might work to help them slow down their response even by a few seconds. In that interval, there’s a chance for what we call secondary process thinking and behaviors to come online.” Other examples that operate similarly are putting a Post-it note next to the coffee maker or tying a string around car keys as a reminder to pick up milk on the way home. Technology, especially smartphones and watches, adds a new dimension with endless options for buzzes and dings based on certain prompts.

While not in the article, these interventions work on two levels. The first is to notice—to insert awareness into the process. The next is to slow down. The hope here is to allow enough time for you to be reminded of your bigger goals and higher values. In the case of temper, it’s to remind you of your desire to be decent to other people even when they’re frustrated or themselves unkind. In the case of spending, it’s to bring into the conscious present your goals that are meaningful beyond the present moment.

These interventions can be easy to brush off as simply silly hacks. It is true that a hack that exists without both an examination of your broader goals and values (the vital question of what kind of person you want to be) and an examination of why you might continually find yourself engaging in behaviors that undermine what you believe are your broader objectives is fraught. But understanding the interplay between these modes of operating—primary and secondary processes—brings these core projects into focus.

The key is you have to want to engage with something at a higher level. Take, for instance, smoking. Addiction and habit operate on a primary process level. You crave something and seek it out like the recovering smoker who reaches for a pack only to be reminded that she doesn’t smoke anymore and therefore has stopped carrying cigarettes. It’s “automatic” functioning on a similar level to reaching to scratch an insect bite. The bad news is bad habits—habits you might want to give up—embed themselves within you and function automatically (or fairly close to automatically). The good news is that you have the capacity for reflection—for examining your behavior (for “noticing” yourself).

It is on this reflective plane that you can engage with the question of what you really want and who you want to be. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Overriding primitive instincts or habits that have embedded themselves on this level is hard. But it is possible. You just have to deeply want to, enough to do the work to override.