As a professional decision maker, I have spent my life studying how to make decisions effectively and have constantly looked for rules and systems that will improve my odds of being right and ending up with more of whatever it is that I am after. One of the most important things I’ve come to understand is that most of the processes that go into everyday decision-making are subconscious and more complex than is widely understood. For example, think about how you choose and maintain a safe distance behind the car in front of you when you are driving. Now describe the process in enough detail that someone who has never driven a car before can do it as well as you can, or so that it can be programmed into the computer that controls an autonomous car. I bet you can’t. Now think about the challenge of making all of your decisions well, in a systematic, repeatable way, and then being able to describe the processes so clearly and precisely that anyone else can make the same quality decisions under the same circumstances. That is what I aspire to do and have found to be invaluable, even when highly imperfect.
While there is no one best way to make decisions, there are some universal rules for good decision-making. They start with:
Recognize that the biggest threat to good decision-making is harmful emotions, and decision-making is a two-step process (first learning and then deciding).
Learning must come before deciding. As explained in Chapter One, your brain stores different types of learning in your subconscious, your rote memory bank, and your habits. But no matter how you acquire your knowledge or where you store it, what’s most important is that what you know paints a true and rich picture of the realities that will affect your decision. That’s why it always pays to be radically open-minded and seek out believable others as you do your learning. Many people have emotional trouble doing this and block the learning that could help them make better decisions. Remind yourself that it’s never harmful to at least hear an opposing point of view.
Deciding is the process of choosing which knowledge should be drawn upon, both the facts of this particular “what is” and your broader understanding of the cause-effect machinery that underlies it, and then weighing them to determine a course of action, the “what to do about it.” This involves playing different scenarios through time to visualize how to get an outcome consistent with what you want. To do this well, you need to weigh first-order consequences against second and third order consequences and base your decisions not just on near-term results but on results over time.
Failing to consider second and third-order consequences is the cause of a lot of painfully bad decisions, and it is especially deadly when the first inferior option confirms your own biases. Never seize on the first available option, no matter how good it seems, before you’ve asked questions and explored. To prevent myself from falling into this trap, I used to literally ask myself questions: Am I learning? Have I learned enough yet that it’s time to decide? After a while, you will just naturally and open-mindedly gather all the relevant info, but in doing so you will have avoided the first pitfall of bad decision-making, which is to subconsciously make the decision first and then cherry-pick the data that supports it.
But how does one learn well? For me, getting an accurate picture of reality ultimately comes down to two things: being able to synthesize accurately and knowing how to navigate levels. Synthesis is the process of converting a lot of data into an accurate picture. The quality of your synthesis will determine the quality of your decision-making. This is why it always pays to triangulate your views with people whom you know synthesize well. This raises your chances of having a good synthesis, even if you feel like you’ve already done it yourself. No sensible person should reject a believable person’s views without great fear of being wrong.
To synthesize well, you must synthesize the situation at hand, synthesize the situation through time, and navigate levels effectively.
Synthesize the situation at hand. Every day you are faced with an infinite number of things that come at you. Let’s call them “dots.” To be effective, you need to be able to tell which dots are important and which dots are not. Some people go through life collecting all kinds of observations and opinions like pocket lint, instead of just keeping what they need. They have “detail anxiety,” worrying about unimportant things.