How To Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

Photo by Qijin Xu on Unsplash

Life is the sum of a bunch of decisions. We have to make decisions every day, both big and small. Often times we like to think we make them by carefully weighing the pros and cons and once we feel good about it, that its a well informed decision. Or conversely we make ones that we think requires no thought at all.

With something like decision making we think we know everything that goes into it, after reading “How to Decide”, the decision process is distilled down in a way that makes you rethink things.

Annie Duke, a former professional poker player and now author in behavioral decision science presents some interesting points in this book. I have outlined my favorite below.

• 2 Things Determine How Your Life Turns Out: Luck and Quality of your Decisions — You only have control of one of them.
• Good decision tool seeks to reduce the role of cognitive bias, a pros and cons list AMPLIFIES the role of bias
• Part of being a better decision maker is learning from experience, which contains lessons for improving future decisions
• Resulting is a mental shortcut in which we use the quality of an outcome to figure out the quality of a decision
• Resulting causes you to learn the WRONG lessons
• Our willingness to examine outcomes is asymmetrical — — we are more willing to put bad outcomes in context than good ones, trying to put good ones in perspective is a required part of becoming a better decision maker