How to Decide Quotes

“The size of the range signals what you know and what you don’t know. The larger the range, the less information or the lower the quality of the information informing your estimate, and the more you need to learn. Communicating the size of the range also signals to others that you need their knowledge and perspective to narrow the range.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“In addition to making precise (bull’s-eye) estimates, offer a range around that estimate to express your uncertainty. Do this by including a lower and upper bound that communicate the size of your target.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Terms that express likelihoods mean very different things to different people. Using ambiguous terms can lead to confusion and miscommunication with people you want to engage for help. Being more precise, by expressing probabilities as percentages, makes it more likely you’ll uncover information that can correct inaccuracies in your beliefs and broaden your knowledge.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Natural language terms that express likelihoods, like “very likely” and “unlikely,” are useful but blunt instruments. The drive to improve on your initial estimates is what motivates you to check your information and learn more. If you hide behind the safety of a general term, there’s no reason to improve on it or calibrate”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“There are many possible futures, but only one past. This makes the past feel inevitable, as even the tiniest of twigs now looks like the thickest of branches because it’s the only thing you can see.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“A lot of experience can be an excellent teacher. A single experience, not so much.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe that an outcome, after it occurs, was predictable or inevitable.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Hindsight bias, like resulting, makes us lack compassion for ourselves and others.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Memory creep is the reconstruction of your memory of what you knew that hindsight bias creates.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Hindsight bias adds to the ruckus caused by knowing the outcome, distorting your memory of what you knew at the time of the decision in two ways: You did know what was going to happen—swapping out your actual view at the time of the decision with a faulty memory of that view to conform to your postoutcome knowledge. You should (or could) have known what was going to happen—to the point of predictability or inevitability.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“You can’t tell that much about the quality of a decision from a single outcome, because of luck. When you make a decision, you can rarely guarantee a good outcome (or a bad one). Instead, the goal is to try to choose the option that will lead to the most favorable range of outcomes.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“In the short-term, for any single decision, there is only a loose relationship between the quality of the decision and the quality of the outcome. The two are correlated, but the relationship can take a long time to play out.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Resulting is the tendency to look at whether a result was good or bad to figure out whether a decision was good or bad.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Resulting makes us lack compassion for ourselves and others.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“When you overfit decision quality to outcome quality, you risk repeating decision errors that, thanks to luck, preceded a good outcome. You may also avoid repeating good decisions that, because of luck, didn’t work out.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Because any decision determines only the set of possible outcomes (some good, some bad, some in between), this means good outcomes can result from both good and bad decisions, and bad outcomes can result from both good and bad decisions.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“When you make a decision, the decision makes certain paths possible (even if you don’t know where they lead) and others impossible. The decision you make determines which set of outcomes are possible and how likely each of those outcomes is. But it doesn’t determine which of that set of outcomes will actually happen.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“If you want some examples, go back to the very first questions I asked you: What were your best and worst decisions of the last year? The point of having you write those down is that most people don’t actually think much about their best and worst decisions. They usually start by thinking of their best and worst outcomes and work backward from there. That’s due to resulting.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“In every domain, the outcome tail is wagging the decision dog. There’s a name for this: Resulting. When people result, they look at whether the result was good or bad to figure out if the decision was good or bad. (Psychologists call this “outcome bias,” but I prefer the more intuitive term “resulting.”) We take this resulting shortcut because we can’t clearly “see” whether the decision was good or bad, especially after the fact, but we can clearly see if the outcome was good or bad.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“This is actually not that surprising. Outside of vague directives about encouraging critical-thinking skills, decision-making is not explicitly taught in K–12 education.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Even though the importance of making quality decisions seems obvious, it’s surprising how few people can actually articulate what a good decision process looks like.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Because there are only two things that determine how your life turns out: luck and the quality of your decisions. You have control over only one of those two things.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“there are only two things that determine how your life turns out: luck and the quality of your decisions. You have control over only one of those two things.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Stuff you knew before the decision: The sum of your knowledge and beliefs at the time of the decision. For our purposes here, specifically the stuff you brought to bear on making the decision. Stuff you know after the outcome: This includes all the stuff you knew before the decision and new stuff that you learned after making the decision. For our purposes here, we’re focusing on new information that revealed itself after the future unfolded however it did. Using a Knowledge Tracker reduces hindsight bias by clarifying what you did and didn’t know at the time of the decision. Detailing what you knew and when you knew it helps prevent stuff that revealed itself after the fact from reflexively creeping into the before-the-fact box.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Memory creep is the reconstruction of your memory of what you knew that hindsight bias creates. MEMORY CREEP When what you know after the fact creeps into your memory of what you knew before the fact.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“HINDSIGHT BIAS The tendency to believe an event, after it occurs, was predictable or inevitable. It’s also been referred to as “knew-it-all-along” thinking or “creeping determinism.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“RESULTING CHECKLIST ☐ How much is the outcome clouding your judgment (or someone’s judgment you’ve observed) about the quality of the decision? ☐ Even if bad decisions preceded a bad outcome, can you identify some good decisions made along the way? Can you identify some ways in which the process of coming to the decision was good? ☐ Even if good decisions preceded a good outcome, can you identify some ways the decision could have been better? Can you identify some ways in which the process of coming to the decision could be improved? ☐ What are the factors outside the control of the decision-maker (who might be you), including the actions of other people? ☐ What are the other ways things could have turned out?”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“These exercises were designed to get you thinking about the following concepts: Resulting is the tendency to look at whether a result was good or bad to figure out whether a decision was good or bad. Outcomes cast a shadow over the decision process, leading you to overlook or distort information about the process, making your view of decision quality fit with outcome quality. In the short-term, for any single decision, there is only a loose relationship between the quality of the decision and the quality of the outcome. The two are correlated, but the relationship can take a long time to play out. Luck is what intervenes between your decision and the actual outcome. Resulting diminishes your view of the role of luck. You can’t tell that much about the quality of a decision from a single outcome, because of luck. When you make a decision, you can rarely guarantee a good outcome (or a bad one). Instead, the goal is to try to choose the option that will lead to the most favorable range of outcomes. Making better decisions starts with learning from experience. Resulting interferes with that learning, causing you to repeat some low-quality decisions and stop making some high-quality decisions. It also keeps you from examining good-quality/good-outcome decisions (as well as bad-quality/bad-outcome decisions), which still offer valuable lessons for future decisions. Resulting reduces compassion when it comes to how we treat others and ourselves.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Even when you make a good decision, that doesn’t mean that it was the best decision. In fact, it rarely is. Striving to improve means being willing to fight the complacency that can come from a good decision leading to a good result.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

“Small changes in how much you notice the luck that you would otherwise overlook will have a big influence on the way your life turns out. Those small changes act like compounding interest that pays big dividends on your future decision-making.”
― Annie Duke, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices