Decisive: How To Make Better Choices In Life And Work (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
The book is a guide on decision making process. It does not tells you the best approach for decision making but it talks about the process and how that process helps in making better decisions. It also highlights the common reasons which can lead to bad decision making and how to avoid those.Each chapter in the book was followed by a one-page summary of the chapter which is really helpful for such books as I can just go through the summary if I want to revisit the process. I liked this book because of the author's emphasis on how to apply each concept on a practical level. I would have given it an additional star but for the fact that many of the ideas are not novel (e.g. Helga Drummond, Jonah Lehrer). WRAP: widen your options, reality-test your assumptions, attain distance before deciding, and prepare to be wrongNarrow framing of the problem and thus optionsGet at least two options - stop when you can't test additional options, or aren't improving your knowledge of the problem or the nature of potential solutions1. Avoid statements of resolve ("I will go to the gym every Monday") and Y/N decisions ("Should I go to Jane's party or not?"). 2. Opportunity costs - what else could you be doing with the same resources? 3. Vanishing options - if you lost all of your current options, what could you do? 4. Simultaneous testing ("multitracking") - empirically test multiple options at the same time and compare the feedback that you receive per option to better define the problem and available solutions5. Solutions for analogous problems - "bright spots" (occasions on which you've solved the problem), others' solutions starting with the most similar scenarios and branching outwards. 6. Shortlist of set questions for investigating similar problems (e.g. advertising - consider the brand's colour, strongest product opponent, product personification, brand as an upstart, etc.)Confirmation bias when analyzing information 1. Organizations - what must be true for this option to be the optimal choice?2. Inquiries (locating information contrary to critical assumptions) - asking subordinates with no incentive to conceal the truth (open-ended questions) c.f. everyone else (probing questions - Who were the last three associates to leave and what are they doing now? What problems does this car have? Roughly how many assignments do you have left to complete?)3. Empirically test assumptions with the biggest payoff (if proven inaccurate) 4. Statistical information (zooming out) - expert evaluations of aggregated past results in similar situations (don't ask for predictions regarding the present case because they will be inaccurate)5. Qualitative information (zooming in) - personal experiences in similar situations (e.g. personal experience with a product, individual patients' comments regarding a treatment)Short-term emotion roughly contemporaneous to when the decision is made1. Same decision given consequences of your choice in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years?2. Pretend you are advising a stranger - people focus on the most important factor when advising others, but not when they are advising themselves. 3. Stack priorities (e.g. patients over volunteer surgeons; customer service over profit)Overconfidence in the consequences of your choice1. Empirically test an option before making a costly commitment ("ooch")Tetlock on experts trying to predict socio-economic trends - "it is impossible to find any domain in which humans clearly outperformed crude extrapolation algorithms" (education & experience doesn't help)Interviews are awful at predicting academic performance and social skills 2. Safety factor & minimizing routine, non-core work whenever possible to increase resources available for core work3. Prepare for a bookend of possibilitiesX has occurred. What are possible reasons for the occurrence of X? (humans are better with hindsight than predictions)Worst possible scenario Best possible scenarioFMEA - potential failure per step (severity of consequences & likelihood)4. Anticipate problemsAvoid autopilot - maintaining the status quo is a choice 1. Cap resource allocations (e.g. funding, deadlines)2. Pre-set warning signals (e.g. brown M&Ms for contractual compliance)Organizations - procedural justice 1. Restate the other side's position as proof that you were listening2. If you've won, admit the pros of the other choice and the cons of your own choice as proof to subordinates that you're not delusional
What do You think about Decisive: How To Make Better Choices In Life And Work (2013)?
I can honestly say this is a book that changed my subconscious way of taking a decision. Good read.
—DHIRAJ
Very good and offers different insights into decisions
—d3ath94
Switch is far better. But, the Heaths can write.
—Hannajohansen
Good set of tools for making better decisions.
—acar
