How to Decide

We all make many decisions every single day. From little ones like what to eat for breakfast, to big ones like whether to take a new job. Given how regularly we're deciding, we certainly have a vested interest in getting better at this skill. But how do we do so? How can we get better at making big choices, and spend less time dithering over the insignificant minutiae that often overwhelms our mental bandwidth? And why didn't anyone teach us how to do this stuff to begin with?

My guest today has written a book that offers an education in a subject matter many of us missed out on. Her name is Annie Duke, she's a former professional poker player and decision-making expert and strategist, and her latest book is How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices. Today on the show, Annie shares many of those practical tools, beginning with how to overcome hindsight bias and "resulting" -- our tendency to judge decisions based on their outcomes -- by doing something called "knowledge tracking." We discuss how to figure out the probabilities for things that seem difficult to predict and the importance of embracing an "archer's mindset." When then get into when you should make decisions slowly, when you can speed up, how to employ the "only option" test when making a choice, and why when a decision is hard, it’s actually easy.

Get the show notes at aom.is/howtodecide.

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