How many times have you made a decision – big or small – only to regret it later?
“I wanted to fund my IRA this year, but that vacation was calling my name…I should have known better. Now I feel behind.”
“I really wanted to take that out-of-state job, but I talked myself out of leaving my family and friends behind. Now I’m unhappy thinking about what could have been. How stupid of me.”
“Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have eaten all this ice cream, but it was too good to put away. What was I thinking?”
But…how could you have known?
We can’t make decisions with 100 percent certainty. Therefore, we can’t know how something will turn out.
Yet most of us get stuck in analysis paralysis, desperate to gather as much information as we possibly can before making a decision.
And when that decision doesn’t turn out as we hoped, our response is, “I should have known!”
How can we break this cycle? How can we accept that we don’t have total control over the outcomes of our decisions? How can we forgive ourselves, and others, for not getting it right?
Most of all: how can we improve our decision making skills to avoid this scenario in the first place?
That’s what today’s guest, Annie Duke, best-selling author of Thinking In Bets, is here to tell us.
In her new book, How to Decide, Annie describes a number of techniques that we can use to hone our decision-making skills in all aspects of life. In this episode, Annie covers:
- The tricks our minds play on us before-and-after we make a decision
- How to overcome hindsight bias and resulting
- Why we can’t make decisions with complete certainty, and what to do instead
- The happiness test, and how it can make your decision-making process more efficient
- One question you can ask to know whether you’re ready to make a decision
- How to forgive ourselves and others for making ‘bad decisions’ (which may not actually be bad)
- …and more!
You’ll enjoy this episode if…
- You’re tired of decision fatigue and analysis paralysis and want solutions you can implement immediately
- You don’t want to spend an average of 6-7 work weeks per year on inconsequential decisions (a statistic cited by Annie)
- You’re curious to know the signs that indicate you’re ready to decide on something
- You’re on the brink of making an important decision
Resources Mentioned:
- How to Decide, by Annie Duke
- Thinking in Bets, by Annie Duke
- AnnieDuke.com
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