I worked with a guy who would always start with “to a first approximation…”

After a while it started to grate on me because it came across as “here comes my poorly formed first thought”

lol, yeah the trick is to use them as sparingly as possible and have a dozen or so to rotate. I'm not sure if I qualify as a slow thinker the way OP and some others here are discussing it. But, I do frequently need more time to answer complex problems. I've also started just feeling OK telling people I can follow up with them on certain questions as it's too complex to answer off top of my head. As with anything, it's a balance, I find if you can't answer simple questions people will lose confidence in your answers.