Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work

by Chip Heath

we don’t immediately think to ask a lot of obvious questions.

What’s in the spotlight will rarely be everything we need to make a good decision, but we won’t always remember to shift the light.

Cole is fighting the first villain of decision making, narrow framing, which is the tendency to define our choices too narrowly, to see them in binary terms.

Our normal habit in life is to develop a quick belief about a situation and then seek out information that bolsters our belief.

When people have the opportunity to collect information from the world, they are more likely to select information that supports their preexisting attitudes, beliefs, and actions.

the third villain of decision making: short-term emotion. When we’ve got a difficult decision to make, our feelings churn.

the fourth villain of decision making is overconfidence. People think they know more than they do about how the future will unfold.

The problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know.

You encounter a choice. But narrow framing makes you miss options. You analyze your options. But the confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving information. You make a choice. But short-term emotion will often tempt you to make the wrong one. Then you live with it. But you’ll often be overconfident about how the future will unfold.

1. You encounter a choice. But narrow framing makes you miss options. So … → Widen Your Options.

2. You analyze your options. But the confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving info. So … → Reality-Test Your Assumptions.

3. You make a choice. But short-term emotion will often tempt you to make the wrong one. So … → Attain Distance Before Deciding.

4. Then you live with it. But you’ll often be overconfident about how the future will unfold. So … → Prepare to Be Wrong.

if you’re smart enough to get into Yale28, it doesn’t really matter (from an income perspective) whether you go there or instead choose your much cheaper state university.

What if we started every decision by asking some simple questions: What are we giving up by making this choice? What else could we do with the same time and money?

You cannot choose any of the current options you’re considering. What else could you do?

Often our options are far more plentiful than we think.

try the Vanishing Options Test: What if your current options disappeared?

“If I have only one design, then my ego is perfectly conflated with my design. But if I have multiple designs, I can separate the two.”

Managers need to push for legitimate alternatives, not sham options.

If there’s disagreement, that’s a great sign that you have real options. An easy consensus may be a red flag.

How you react to the position, in short, depends a great deal on your mindset at the time it’s offered.

Multitracking = considering more than one option simultaneously.

“Who else is struggling with a similar problem, and what can I learn from them?”

Could you create your own playlist to help your colleagues discover options?

To make good decisions, CEOs need the courage to seek out disagreement.

“Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?” All the committee members nodded. “Then,” Sloan said, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about.”

bias to favor our own beliefs.

Could you create a safe forum where critics can air their concerns?

When we want something to be true, we gather information that supports our desire.

“assume positive intent62

“considering the opposite.”

WE’VE REVIEWED three approaches for fighting the confirmation bias: One, we can make it easier for people to disagree with us. Two, we can ask questions that are more likely to surface contrary information. Three, we can check ourselves by considering the opposite.

when you’re trying to gather good information and reality-test your ideas, go talk to an expert.

An expert is simply someone who has more experience than you.

Like all presidents, FDR72 was concerned about the quality of information that reached him, worried that it would be polluted by the agendas of the people passing it along.

The inside view = our evaluation of our specific situation. The outside view = how things generally unfold in situations like ours. The outside view is more accurate, but most people gravitate toward the inside view.

To gather the best information, we should zoom out and zoom in. (Outside view + close-up.)

exploring options with small experiments

this preference for testing, rather than planning, was one of the most striking differences between entrepreneurs and corporate executives.

“When the bosses make the decisions, decisions are made by politics, persuasion, and PowerPoint.”

By making decisions through experimentation, the best idea can prove itself.

ooching has one big flaw: It’s lousy for situations that require commitment.

Ooching, in short, should be used as a way to speed up the collection of trustworthy information, not as a way to slow down a decision that deserves our full commitment.

The interviews seemed to correlate with nothing other than, well, the ability to interview.

Ooching = running small experiments to test our theories. Rather than jumping in headfirst, we dip a toe in.

people act as though losses are from two to four times more painful than gains are pleasurable.

What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?

To overcome distracting short-term emotions, we need to attain some distance.

loss aversion: losses are more painful than gains are pleasant.