Quote
“What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process.”— Annie Duke, in Thinking in Bets (2018) · Thinking in Bets →
Why it was said
Annie Duke, after twenty years of professional poker, writes this in the opening chapter of Thinking in Bets. It is her case against resulting, the habit of judging a decision by how the cards fell.
What it actually means
A good decision can lose and a bad one can win, because the future deals a card after you have chosen. Judging by the outcome teaches you to repeat lucky mistakes and abandon right choices. Duke's sentence separates the two questions that most people fuse: was the outcome good, and, given what could be known at the time, was the decision good. Only the second one is yours to improve.
How to use it
- 1Review a past decision by what you knew at the time, not by what you know now.
- 2Sort it into one of four boxes, good or bad decision crossed with good or bad outcome, and change your process only for the bad-decision boxes.