Decisive

Some takeaways from the book Decisive:

• The pros and cons approach is familiar.  It is commonsensical.  And it is also profoundly flawed.
• Our normal habit in life is to develop a quick belief about a situation and then seek out information that bolsters our belief.  And that problematic habit, called the confirmation bias, is the second villain of decision making.
• People think they know more than they do about how the future will unfold.
• Multitracking keeps egos in check.  If your boss has three projects in play, chances are she’ll be open to unvarnished feedback about them, but if there’s only one pet project, it will be harder for her to hear the truth.
• With so little proof that interviews work, why do we rely on them so much?  Because we all think we’re good at interviewing.
• That’s why, in helping us to break a decision logjam, the single most effective question may be: What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?
• Productive interruption- set a timer that goes off once each hour, and when it beeps, we should ask ourselves, “Am I doing what most need to be doing right now?”
• The procedural-justice research shows that people care deeply about process.  We all want to believe that a decision process that affects us is fair, and that it is taking into account all the right information.