Over the summer, I led a project in an entrepreneurship fundamentals class. The task was clear: guide students to build a functional business website from scratch.

Four days passed. Most students’ websites had only one page, and it was almost empty.

Not because they were lazy—they were genuinely working—but because they didn’t know what to put in it. They opened the website editor and got stuck. Like a writer sitting before a blank Word document, cursor blinking, unable to write a single word.

The Comfort Zone of System 1

Before the project began, I introduced students to cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman’s “dual-system theory.”

System 1: Intuitive thinking. Fast, automatic, effortless. You see 1+1 and intuitively respond with 2, no calculation needed. You see a face and intuitively judge whether the person is friendly or threatening, no analysis required.

System 2: Rational thinking. Slow, deliberate, extremely cognitively demanding. When you calculate 37×24, you use System 2. When you plan a business model, you also use System 2.

Most people spend over 95% of their daily lives using System 1. Because System 2 is exhausting. Activating System 2 is like switching your brain’s CPU from power-saving mode to full throttle—it’s effective, but you’ll quickly feel tired, irritated, and want to escape.

I told the students: For the next four days, you must turn on System 2 and keep it on.

The results after four days told me: most people still turned it off.

The Truth Behind Blank Pages

Why were the students’ websites empty? Because they skipped the most crucial step: thinking clearly about the website’s purpose.

I asked them: “What does your website do?”

“Sell things.”

“Sell what?”

“Um… sell some… products.”

“What products?”

“Still thinking about it.”

This is System 1’s trap. System 1 makes you feel like “I roughly know what I want to do”—but that “roughly” is fatal. When you actually need to implement ideas into concrete pages, copy, product categories, and purchase flows, you discover that “roughly” is full of voids.

I’ve repeatedly experienced this in running my own company. Every time I felt “this direction should work,” when I actually sat down to write a business plan and forced myself to think through every link, I’d discover countless problems I had previously “roughly” glossed over.

The quality of a business plan will never exceed the clarity of your thinking.

Working Backwards from Purpose

I used a framework to help students activate System 2.

Every website has a core mission. Educational websites provide knowledge, news websites deliver reports. We’re building business websites—the core mission is to help potential customers understand your product, trust you, and then buy.

Working backwards from this purpose, the frontend must clearly answer four questions: Who are we? What products or services do we provide? What do the products look like and why are they attractive? How should consumers purchase?

These four questions look simple, but answering them clearly requires deep System 2 operation for each one.

“Who are we” isn’t just the company name—it’s brand positioning, value proposition, and differentiation from competitors. “What we provide” isn’t just a product list—it’s what problem you solve and why customers should choose you. “What products look like” isn’t just posting photos—it’s a comprehensive presentation of visual design, usage scenarios, and social proof. “How to purchase” isn’t just adding a shopping cart button—it’s designing the entire user journey.

In “Pain Points Aren’t the Whole Story of Transformation,” I discussed how the most common failure in digital transformation isn’t technical issues, but not thinking clearly about what problem you’re actually solving. Business websites are the same—most failed websites aren’t ugly or functionally poor, but their underlying business logic was never thought through.

System 2 is a Team Sport

Another observation: System 2 operation is more difficult in teams than individually.

Activating System 2 individually is already painful enough. But in a team, you need everyone to simultaneously activate System 2 and point in the same direction. If any one person secretly switches back to System 1—“I think this is good enough” or “close enough”—the entire team’s thinking quality gets dragged down.

In “The End of Going Solo: Seeing the Real Battlefield of Group Development Through Triathlon,” I discussed how the core of teamwork is “keeping others in your heart.” The same applies to business planning—you’re not just thinking about your piece, you must understand the entire system’s logic and ensure your part connects with others’ parts.

This requires everyone to activate System 2. And not just during meetings—after leaving the meeting, every small decision you make must align with the overall logic.

Systematizing the Fragmented

At the end of the four-day project, I told the students:

The birth of a business website isn’t an accumulation of pages. It’s using System 2’s power to organize the fragmented ideas in your head into a logical, structured system that can operate autonomously.

Technology tools are just carriers that help present this system. If the system itself is empty, even the most beautiful carrier is just an attractive shell.

This isn’t just the principle of building websites—it’s the principle of making any business decision. Your plan won’t be clearer than your thinking. The only way to improve your plan is to deepen your thinking.

And that means you must endure the discomfort that System 2 brings—mental strain, irritation, feeling stupid. That’s not the feeling of incompetence, that’s the feeling of growth.