How to make better decisions
Decisive - Chip & Dan Heath
A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped - Daniel Kahneman
The normal state of your mind is that you have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes your way. You like or dislike people long before you know much about them; you trust or distrust strangers without knowing why; you feel that an enterprise is bound to succeed without analysing it. - DK - Thinking, Fast and Slow
The Four Villains of Decision Making
Any time in life you're tempted to think,'Should I do this OR that?' instead, ask yourself, 'Is there a way I can do this AND that?'
Narrow framing - (unduly limiting the options we consider) the tendency to define our choice too narrowly, to see them in binary terms.
Confirmation bias - (seeking out information that bolsters our beliefs) Our normal habit in life is to develop a quick belief about a situation and then seek out information that bolsters our belief.
The tricky thing about the confirmation bias is that it can look very scientific. After all, we're collecting data.
And this is what's slightly terrifying about the confirmation bias: When we want something to be true, we will spotlight the things that support it, and then, when we draw conclusions from those spotlighted scenes, we'll congratulate ourselves on a reasoned decision.
Short term emotions - (being swayed by emotions that will fade) When we've got a difficult decision to make, our feelings churn. We replay the same argument in our head. We agonize about our circumstance. We have kicked up so much dust that we can't see the way forward. In those moments, what we need most is perspective.
Overconfidence - (having too much faith in our predictions) People think they know more than they do about how the future will unfold. The future has an uncanny ability to surprise. We can't shine a spotlight on areas when we don't know they exist.
Vanishing Options Test: You can't choose any of the current options you're considering. What else could you do?
What if our least favourite option were actually the best one? What data might convince us of that?
Multitrack (Consider more than one option simultaneously)
Toggle between the prevention and promotion midnsets
Find someone who's solved your problem
When you need more options but feel stuck look for someone who's solved your problem
Look outside: completive analysis, benchmarking, best practices
Look inside: Find your bright spots'
Consider the opposite
To gather more trustworthy information, we can ask discomforting questions
Can we force ourselves to consider the opposite of our instincts?
Zoom in Zoom out
When we zoom out, we take the outside view, learning from the experiences of others who have made choices like the one we're facing. When we zoom in, we take a close-up of the situation, looking for "color" that could inform our decision.
Zooming out and zooming in gives us a more realistic perspective on our choices. We down play the overly optimistic picture we tend to paint inside our minds and instead redirect our attention to the outside world, , viewing it in wide-angle and then in close-up.
Often we trust "the averages" over our instincts but not as much as we should.
The inside view = our evaluation of our specific situation. The outside view = how generally things unfold in situation like ours. The outside view is more accurate, but most people gravitate towards the inside view.
If you can't find the "base rate" for your decision, ask an expert
Ooch
Ooching = running small experiments to test our theories. Rather than jumping in headfirst, we dip a toe in
Ooching is counter productive for situations that require commitment
Overcoming Short-Term Emotion
Fleeting emotions tempt us to make decisions that are bad in the long term
10/10/10 provides distance by forcing us to consider future emotions as mush as present ones.
Honour Your Core Priorities
Agonizing decisions are often are sign of a conflict among your core priorities.
Tripwire ensures that we are aware it's time to make a decision, that we don't miss our chance to choose we've been lulled into autopilot.
Tripwires encourage risk taking by letting us carve out a "safe space" for experimentation
Tripwires allow us the certainty of committing to a course of action, even a risky one, while minimizing the costs of overconfidence.
In life, we naturally slip into autopilot, leaving past decisions unquestioned. A tripwire can snap us awake and make us realize we have a choice. Tripwire can be especially useful when change is gradual.
Decisive - Chip & Dan Heath
A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped - Daniel Kahneman
The normal state of your mind is that you have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes your way. You like or dislike people long before you know much about them; you trust or distrust strangers without knowing why; you feel that an enterprise is bound to succeed without analysing it. - DK - Thinking, Fast and Slow
The Four Villains of Decision Making
Any time in life you're tempted to think,'Should I do this OR that?' instead, ask yourself, 'Is there a way I can do this AND that?'
Narrow framing - (unduly limiting the options we consider) the tendency to define our choice too narrowly, to see them in binary terms.
Confirmation bias - (seeking out information that bolsters our beliefs) Our normal habit in life is to develop a quick belief about a situation and then seek out information that bolsters our belief.
The tricky thing about the confirmation bias is that it can look very scientific. After all, we're collecting data.
And this is what's slightly terrifying about the confirmation bias: When we want something to be true, we will spotlight the things that support it, and then, when we draw conclusions from those spotlighted scenes, we'll congratulate ourselves on a reasoned decision.
Short term emotions - (being swayed by emotions that will fade) When we've got a difficult decision to make, our feelings churn. We replay the same argument in our head. We agonize about our circumstance. We have kicked up so much dust that we can't see the way forward. In those moments, what we need most is perspective.
Overconfidence - (having too much faith in our predictions) People think they know more than they do about how the future will unfold. The future has an uncanny ability to surprise. We can't shine a spotlight on areas when we don't know they exist.
Vanishing Options Test: You can't choose any of the current options you're considering. What else could you do?
What if our least favourite option were actually the best one? What data might convince us of that?
Multitrack (Consider more than one option simultaneously)
Toggle between the prevention and promotion midnsets
- Prevention focus = avoiding negative outcomes.
- Promotion focus = pursuing positive outcomes
Find someone who's solved your problem
When you need more options but feel stuck look for someone who's solved your problem
Look outside: completive analysis, benchmarking, best practices
Look inside: Find your bright spots'
Consider the opposite
To gather more trustworthy information, we can ask discomforting questions
Can we force ourselves to consider the opposite of our instincts?
Zoom in Zoom out
When we zoom out, we take the outside view, learning from the experiences of others who have made choices like the one we're facing. When we zoom in, we take a close-up of the situation, looking for "color" that could inform our decision.
Zooming out and zooming in gives us a more realistic perspective on our choices. We down play the overly optimistic picture we tend to paint inside our minds and instead redirect our attention to the outside world, , viewing it in wide-angle and then in close-up.
Often we trust "the averages" over our instincts but not as much as we should.
The inside view = our evaluation of our specific situation. The outside view = how generally things unfold in situation like ours. The outside view is more accurate, but most people gravitate towards the inside view.
If you can't find the "base rate" for your decision, ask an expert
Ooch
Ooching = running small experiments to test our theories. Rather than jumping in headfirst, we dip a toe in
Ooching is counter productive for situations that require commitment
Overcoming Short-Term Emotion
Fleeting emotions tempt us to make decisions that are bad in the long term
10/10/10 provides distance by forcing us to consider future emotions as mush as present ones.
- How will we feel about it 10 minutes from now?
- How about 10 months from now?
- How about 10 years from now?
Honour Your Core Priorities
Agonizing decisions are often are sign of a conflict among your core priorities.
Core priorities: long-term emonional values, goals, aspirations. What kind of person do you want to be?
By identifying and enshrining your core priorities, you make it easier to resolve present and future dilemmas
Bookend the Future
The future is not a "point" - a single scenario that we must predict. It is a range. We should bookend the future. considering a range of outcomes from very bad to very good.- Lower bookend - we need to premortem. It's a year from now. Our decision has failed utterly. Why?
- Upper bookend - we need to preparade. It's a year from now. We're heroes. Will we be ready for success?
To prepare for what can't be foreseen, we can use a "safety factor"
Set a tripwire
Tripwire ensures that we are aware it's time to make a decision, that we don't miss our chance to choose we've been lulled into autopilot.
Tripwires encourage risk taking by letting us carve out a "safe space" for experimentation
Tripwires allow us the certainty of committing to a course of action, even a risky one, while minimizing the costs of overconfidence.
In life, we naturally slip into autopilot, leaving past decisions unquestioned. A tripwire can snap us awake and make us realize we have a choice. Tripwire can be especially useful when change is gradual.
