Smart Choices Quotes

“8.Have I thought ahead, planning out into the future? Can I reduce my uncertainties by gathering information? What are the potential gains and the costs in time, money, and effort? 9.Is the decision obvious or pretty clear at this point? What reservations do I have about deciding now? In what ways could the decision be improved by a modest amount of added time and effort? 10.What should I be working on? If the decision isn’t obvious, what do the critical issues appear to be? What facts and opinions would make my job easier?”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“Getting Started: Ten Diagnostic Questions 1.What’s my decision problem? What, broadly, do I have to decide? What specific decisions do I have to make as a part of the broad decision? 2.What are my fundamental objectives? Have I asked ‘‘Why’’ enough times to get to my bedrock wants and needs? 3.What are my alternatives? Can I think of more good ones? 4.What are the consequences of each alternative in terms of the achievement of each of my objectives? Can any alternatives be safely eliminated? 5.What are the tradeoffs among my more important objectives? Where do conflicting objectives concern me the most? 6.Do any uncertainties pose serious problems? If so, which ones? How do they impact consequences? 7.How much risk am I willing to take? How good and how bad are the various possible consequences? What are ways of reducing my risk?”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“The point is this: when you make even swaps, concentrate not on the importance of the objectives but on the importance of the amounts in question.”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“As its name implies, an even swap increases the value of an alternative in terms of one objective while decreasing its value by an equivalent amount in terms of another objective. In essence, the even swap method is a form of bartering—it forces you to think about the value of one objective in terms of another.”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“Decisions with multiple objectives cannot be resolved by focusing on any one objective.”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“Step 1: Write down all the concerns you hope to address through your decision.”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“Step 3: Separate ends from means to establish your fundamental objectives.”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“•Only fundamental objectives should be used to evaluate and compare alternatives.”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“The way you state your problem frames your decision. It determines the alternatives you consider and the way you evaluate them. Posing the right problem drives everything else.”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

“What makes all these traps so dangerous is their invisibility. Because most are hard-wired into our thinking process, we fail to recognize them— even when we’re falling right into them.”
― John S. Hammond, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions