Decisive Quotes

“Any time in life you’re tempted to think, ‘Should I do this OR that?’ instead, ask yourself, ‘Is there a way I can do this AND that?”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“Success emerges from the quality of the decisions we make and the quantity of luck we receive. We can't control luck. But we can control the way we make choices.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“The researchers have found, in essence, that our advice to others tends to hinge on the single most important factor, while our own thinking flits among many variables. When we think of our friends, we see the forest. When we think of ourselves, we get stuck in the trees.§”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“Multitracking keeps egos in check. If your boss has three pet projects in play, chances are she’ll be open to unvarnished feedback about them, but if there’s only one pet project, it will be harder for her to hear the truth. Her ego will be perfectly conflated with the project.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“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.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“Studies of the elderly show that people regret not what they did but what they didn’t do.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“The advice we give others, then, has two big advantages: It naturally prioritizes the most important factors in the decision, and it downplays short-term emotions.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“One solution to this is to bundle our decisions with “tripwires,” signals that would snap us awake at exactly the right moment, compelling us to reconsider a decision or to make a new one. Think of the way that the low-fuel warning in your car lights up, grabbing your attention.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“The psychologists Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir offered college students a five-dollar reward for filling out a survey. When given a five-day deadline, 66% of the students completed the survey and claimed their rewards. When given no deadline, only 25% ever collected their money.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“To make good decisions, CEOs need the courage to seek out disagreement. Alfred Sloan, the longtime CEO and chairman of General Motors, once interrupted a committee meeting with a question: “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.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“CHAPTER THREE IN ONE PAGE Multitrack     1. Multitracking = considering more than one option simultaneously.     •  The naming firm Lexicon widens its options by assigning a task to multiple small teams, including an “excursion team” that considers a related task from a very different domain.     2. When you consider multiple options simultaneously, you learn the “shape” of the problem.     •  When designers created ads simultaneously, they scored higher on creativity and effectiveness.     3. Multitracking also keeps egos in check—and can actually be faster!     •  When you develop only one option, your ego is tied up in it.     •  Eisenhardt’s research on Silicon Valley firms: Multitracking minimized politics and provided a built-in fallback plan.     4. While decision paralysis may be a concern for people who consider many options, we’re pushing for only one or two extra. And the payoff can be huge.     •  We’re not advocating 24 kinds of jam. When the German firm considered two or more alternatives, it made six times as many “very good” decisions.     5. Beware “sham options.”     •  Kissinger: “Nuclear war, present policy, or surrender.”     •  One diagnostic: If people on your team disagree about the options, you have real options.     6. Toggle between the prevention and promotion mindsets.     •  Prevention focus = avoiding negative outcomes. Promotion focus = pursuing positive outcomes.     •  Companies who used both mindsets performed much better after a recession.     •  Doreen’s husband, Frank, prompted her to think about boosting happiness, not just limiting stress.     7. Push for “this AND that” rather than “this OR that.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“Focusing is great for analyzing alternatives but terrible for spotting them. Think about the visual analogy—when we focus we sacrifice peripheral vision.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“we are quick to jump to conclusions because we give too much weight to the information that’s right in front of us, while failing to consider the information that’s just offstage. He called this tendency “what you see is all there is.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work

“So how can you avoid letting these subtle emotions get the best of you? Get some distance.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“One rule of thumb is to keep searching for options until you fall in love at least twice. If you’ve only identified one good candidate for a job, for instance, you’ll have the strong urge to talk yourself into hiring her, which is a recipe for the confirmation bias. You’ll start to make excuses for the flaws you see: She asked us not to call her old boss for a reference, but that’s probably okay, because the boss sounded like a real jerk …”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work

“Because day-to-day change is gradual, even imperceptible, it’s hard to know when to jump. Tripwires tell you when to jump.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“ASSUMING POSITIVE INTENT AND keeping a marriage diary are two examples of what psychologists call “considering the opposite.” I think my spouse is selfish—but perhaps I should keep track of situations where he’s looking out for me. I think my colleague is being rude and abrupt—but what if he’s not being abrupt and is just trying to respect my time? (Oops, and what if he thinks I’m disrespecting his time when I try to chat?) This simple technique of considering the opposite has been shown, across multiple studies, to reduce many otherwise thorny cognitive biases.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“Psychologists have identified two contrasting mindsets that affect our motivation and our receptiveness to new opportunities: a “prevention focus,” which orients us toward avoiding negative outcomes, and a “promotion focus,” which orients us toward pursuing positive outcomes.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“A classic study by Columbia’s Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper monitored the behavior of consumers in a grocery store. One day, the store set up a sampling table with 6 different kinds of jam, and customers loved it; another day, the store set up a table with 24 different kinds of jam, and it was even more popular than the first. The surprise came at the cash register: Customers who’d chosen among 6 jams were 10 times more likely to actually buy a jar of jam than customers who’d chosen among 24! It was fun to sample 24 flavors, it seems, but painful to pick among them. The choice was paralyzing.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“A 1993 study by Nutt, which analyzed 168 decisions in this laborious way, came to a stunning conclusion: Of the teams he studied, only 29% considered more than one alternative.† By way of comparison, 30% of the teens in the Fischhoff study considered more than one alternative.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“Roy Baumeister draws an analogy to driving—in our cars, we may spend 95% of our time going straight, but it’s the turns that determine where we end up.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“Confirmation bias is probably the single biggest problem in business, because even the most sophisticated people get it wrong. People go out and they’re collecting the data, and they don’t realize they’re cooking the books.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“When the researchers compared whether process or analysis was more important in producing good decisions—those that increased revenues, profits, and market share—they found that “process mattered more than analysis—by a factor of six.” Often a good process led to better analysis—for instance, by ferreting out faulty logic.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“time periods, and outcome variables … it is impossible to find any domain in which humans clearly outperformed crude extrapolation algorithms.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“She said, “When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed.…”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“Playlists should be as useful as checklists, yet your organization has many checklists and probably zero playlists. A checklist is useful for situations where you need to replicate the same behaviors every time. It’s prescriptive; it stops people from making an error. On the other hand, a playlist is useful for situations where you need a stimulus, a way of producing new ideas. It’s generative; it stops people from overlooking an option. (Don’t forget to shine your spotlight over here …) Playlists also spur us to multitrack.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“This and that.” Often, for example, we’ll get stuck in a mindset of prevention OR promotion. If we can do both, seeking out options that minimize harm AND maximize opportunity, we are more likely to uncover our full spectrum of choices.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“WHEN LIFE OFFERS US a “this or that” choice, we should have the gall to ask whether the right answer might be “both.”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

“You cannot choose any of the current options you’re considering. What else could you”
― Chip Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work