Goal
Make better decisions with a method, not a gut feeling
You make better decisions by changing the process, not the analysis: widen the options past whether-or-not, test the assumption you are betting on with a disconfirming question or a small experiment, state your confidence as a number, get distance from the emotion of the week, write how it failed before it does, and judge the decision separately from the outcome. Six books supply the steps; a decision journal makes them stick.
What is really going on
You face a job, a flat, a hire or a treatment this year and you will decide the way you always have: a gut feeling, a pros-and-cons list, and a story afterwards about why it was right.
The same mistake keeps arriving in new clothes, because you review decisions by whether they worked rather than by how they were made.
Your decisions land on other people, and 'I had a good feeling' is not something you can defend to them or to yourself.
Five ideas from five books
- 1
Name the villain before you make the list
The Heaths' four villains, narrow framing, confirmation bias, short-term emotion and overconfidence, wreck most decisions before the analysis starts. A pros-and-cons list defends against none of them; the WRAP process answers each in turn.
- 2
What you have spent has no vote
Dobelli's sunk cost fallacy keeps you in the project, the course or the investment because of what it has already cost. Ask whether you would start it today with nothing invested; if not, the only reason you are still there is the cost, and it is not coming back.
- 3
Judge the decision, not the card
Annie Duke: a good decision can lose and a bad one can win. Judging by outcome teaches you to repeat lucky mistakes. Sort every decision into four boxes, decision quality and outcome quality apart.
- 4
Say a number and check it later
Tetlock's superforecasters started from the base rate, said 63 percent instead of 'probably', and marked the number against reality. Most people's 90 percents come in at 70; only a written record shows it.
- 5
Write your own number first and reframe both ways
Kahneman: the first number sets the anchor and the wording sets the choice. Write your own estimate before you hear theirs, then write the key fact once as a gain and once as a loss; if your choice flips, the frame was deciding.
Try this today — free
Take one decision you are facing this month. Write it as one sentence, run the vanishing options test until you have three real options, and write a numeric probability, dated, that your leading option works out.
Questions people ask
- How do I make better decisions?
- Change the process: widen the options, test the assumption, state a probability, get distance from the emotion, prepare to be wrong, and review the decision separately from the outcome.
- What is the best book on decision-making?
- Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath for the process, Thinking in Bets for the stance toward uncertainty, and Thinking, Fast and Slow for the psychology underneath.
- Is a pros-and-cons list a good way to decide?
- It describes your lean; it does not defend against any of the four villains. Keep it if you like, but add options, test assumptions and get distance first.
- How do I know if a past decision was good?
- Ask what you knew at the time, not what you know now. A good decision with a bad outcome is a bad card, not a mistake, and the process should not change.