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"How to Decide " - Anne Duke - Reading Sprint - Makers Club

 Joined the maker club and participating in the 14 day reading sprint reading the first book "How to decide" by Anne Duke. Some key learnings

How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices eBook : Duke, Annie:  Amazon.in: Kindle Store

 Resulting - The feeling that the result of the decision determines the quality of the decision. Resulting is a way of simplifying complex assesments. But Simple isn't always better. Decision Quality & Outcome Quality are correlated but not perfectly. There is more to the story and seperate the quality of result to the quality of the decision.

Hindsight Bias - Makes one feel that the resulting decision was more predictable. This can cause one to repeat low quality decisions. Knowledge tracker of what you did and did not do will help you break this bias Be mindful of the verbal and mental cues that accompany your decision. Journal how you lead to the decision is another way to break the cycle.

Paradox of Experience When individual experience interfere with our ability to learn. Counterfactuals help us understand why things happen or didnt happen.

We are more than eager to put bad outcomes in context than good ones. Becoming a better decision maker requires us to try to put good ones in perspective ( this part is hard ).

Archers Mindset - The way of thinking that there is only "right" and "wrong" and nothing in between is one of the biggest obstacles to good decision making. Good decision making requires a willingness to "guess". Don't overlook the territory between right and wrong. Don't overlook the value of being a little less wrong or little closer to right. These small guesses will increase your quality of outcome in the long run. So don't toss things as trash have an "Archers mindset" .  Your guesses are archers arrows. Gradually improve.

Unknown/Unknown - Stuff we don't know and we don't know what will result because of that impact. A chief weapon to improve decision making is to improve the "stuff we don't know" to "stuff we known". Every time you convert one your foundation of making a decision improves. 

The more clearly one defines "bulls eye" using educated guess the more likely it is to start the process of asking "What I do know and what more can I know" . Assigning probabilities and % to the same maximize your exposure to the universe of stuff you don't know.

"Insider View Vs. Outside View" - Smart people are better at spinning narratives that convince other people that they are right, not in the service of misleading those people but in the service of keeping the fabric of their identity from tearing. So motivated reasoning, overconfidence in intuition makes people less likely to seek feedback. That means smart people must be more vigilant to getting the outside view. 

Happiness Test - If a certain decision or outcome will likely have a significant effect on your happiness in a year. If the answer is no then speed up the decision don't be stuck with analyzing too much and "save time" . 

Fear of regret costs time. Repeating options help defray the cost of regret.

"Freeroll" - A situation where there is asymmetry between upside and downside because the potential losses are insignificant. If you identify this being a situation then decide quickly and save time. "Time is money" .

When a decision is hard that means it is easy. The closer the two options are the decision is actually easy as whichever you choose you can't be wrong as the difference between the two is small.

Negative thinking helps in you improve the quality of decision. This includes mental contrasting, premortems ( what all can go wrong once decision is made )

"Tilt" - The hot emotional state is called tilt. When you are on tilt you are more likely to make decisions that make bad outcomes. Be aware of this.

Summary the book helped clarified some assumptions, learnt some new stuff and all can see things a bit more clearer. And yes writing help!!




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