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fbroom's review
3.0
Good but not great. Sometimes boring. Easy read. It wasn’t as fun as reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Some insights here and there. (3/5)
Notes:
Chapter 2: Avoid a Narrow Frame
Most often we get stuck in narrow framing. Whenever you see “Whether or not“, know that you are narrowing your options. Avoid it by thinking about opportunity cost. (Should I keep the the money for other purchases?) and consider the situation if the current options no longer exist.
Chapter 3: Multitrack
Consider more than one option but not too many (decision paralysis) and Instead of “this or that” explore the possibility of “this and that”
Chapter 4: Find Someone Who’s Solved Your Problem
Look at other people who solved the problem already. Look outside. "“This is how my brain works,” she told Dick Gordon in a June 2012 interview. “If I’m going to make something that goes fast, I tend to look at everything that goes fast and the mechanisms that make things go fast”"
Chapter 5: Consider the Opposite
Sometimes we tend to read reviews that confirm our bias. If we already thought this place will be good, we tend to focus on the good reviews. We need to spark disagreement and consider the opposite as well
Chapter 6: Zoom Out, Zoom In
Sometimes we tend to trust our instincts too much over the "numbers/averages" while we should we should trust "the averages”.“Experts are pretty bad at predictions. But they are great at assessing base rates.” Ask the right questions! ask what percentages of cases get settled before trial, not do I have a shot at this case. Why? because experts will be biased toward themselves.
Chapter 7: Ooch
And ooching means running small experiments to test our theories rather than jumping at decisions. We are terrible at predicting the future:
* One example story was from Intuit and their farming product in India which they highly doubted at the beginning but decided to test a pilot version of it anyways. by 2012, 325,000 farmers were using it and it was a huge success for them.
* Another example from 1979, the University of Texas Medical School interviewed and admitted those who ranked the highest on the interview (350 out of 800). Later on, the state required them to admit 50 more and they had to admit the worst because of the timing (worst 50 of 800). Surprisingly, all of them did equally well throughout school and during their residencies later on. Interviews don’t mean anything, instead managers should see a sample work of their candidates!
Chapter 8: Overcome Short-Term Emotion
Give yourself some distance: Use the 10/10/10 principle, think about the decision on three different time frames: How will we feel about it 10 minutes from now? How about 10 months from now? How about 10 years from now.
Look at it from someone’s else perspective: "Researchers have found again and again that people act as though losses are from two to four times more painful than gains are pleasurable”. An example is the story of the Intel CEO faced with the decision to abandon memories in order to focus on microprocessors was not an obvious decision. The CEO was able to see it clearly when he asked himself if he was replaced with a new CEO, what would be the the CEO’s first decision? Once asked, he immediately knew what to do. Another story was the Paypal founders giving up the palm pilot app and focusing on the web!
Chapter 9: Honor Your Core Priorities
When torn between two job offers Kim Ramirez did two things:
* Gave herself some distance and didn’t accept the job immediately
* Reviewed her core priorities: "What do I work for? What’s the purpose of it?, I work to make enough money to be secure, to travel with Josh, to take a photo class if I want, or to take my sister out for dinner. But if I don’t have enough time to do these things that I love, it won’t matter that I have more money or responsibility”
We often are trapped in doing the urgent (list A) and ignoring the important (list B). "If forensic analysts confiscated your calendar and e-mail records and Web browsing history for the past six months, what would they conclude are your core priorities? (We worry that ours would include drinking coffee, playing Angry Birds, and carefully deleting junk e-mail on an hourly basis.)”Suggestions to focus on the important includes creating a "stop-doing list” and setting a reminder that runs hourly to asses if what we’re doing matches our priorities.
Chapter 10: Bookend the Future
Look at all the range of possible outcomes, both extremes (worst failure, huge success)
Chapter 11: Set a Tripwire
Sometimes we get stuck into “autopilot” as the authors suggested or “too comfortable”. One way to avoid that is by setting deadlines for yourself (tripwire) to wake us up and realize that we have a choice.
Chapter 12: Trusting the Process
The decision making process in summary need not take a long time to be effective: Run the Vanishing Options Test to see if you might be overlooking a great alternative. Call someone who’s solved your problem before. Ask yourself, What would I tell my best friend to do? (Or, if you’re at work, What would my successor do?) Gather three friends or colleagues and run a premortem. In our quest to convince you of the merits of a process"
"When researchers ask the elderly what they regret about their lives, they don’t often regret something they did; they regret things they didn’t do."
ereidsma's review
4.0
Decisive – How to make Better Choices in Life and Work. God’s blessed me with some pretty good decision making skills, so when this book was recommended I was a little reluctant, but I’m glad that I took the time to read it. I really liked all the examples from Sam Walton’s plagiarism and Kodak’s mistakes to a college guy using the 10-10-10 method to decide whether or not to call a girl he met in class. Decisive provides a process for making decisions and while processes aren’t very “sexy” having a process does give confidence when making decisions and this book provided more “tools in my toolbox” for decision making.
katie_chandler's review
4.0
Breaks down different perspectives for making difficult decisions, taking into account our biases. Most of the steps seem like tactics I might naturally try in different situations but hadn’t ever thought to make a consistent pattern. Appreciated the chapter on being a leader who validates other ideas and opinions when a decision is made contrary to some opinions. Solid advice for personal matters as well as business leadership.