We like to think that we can rationally compute information like a computer, but we can’t. Cognitive biases explain why we made a bad decision but rarely help us avoiding them. Better to focus on these warning signs something is about to go wrong.
I've taught thousands of people make smart decisions without getting lucky.
Here is a thread on 5 of the biggest reasons we fail to make effective decisions.
We like to think that we can rationally compute information like a computer, but we can’t. Cognitive biases explain why we made a bad decision but rarely help us avoiding them. Better to focus on these warning signs something is about to go wrong.
The rule: Never make important decisions when you’re tired, emotional, distracted, or in a rush.
The first person to state the problem rarely has the best insight into the problem. Once a problem is thrown out on the table however, our type-a problem solving nature kicks in and forget to ask if we’re solving the right problem.
The rule: Never let anyone define the problem for you.
We like to believe that people tell us the truth. We like to believe the people we talk to understand what they are talking about. We like to believe that we have all the information.
You know the person that sits beside you at work that has 20 years of experience but keeps making the same mistakes over and over. They don’t have 20 years of experience, but one year repeated 20 times. If you can’t learn you can’t get better.
Warning signs you’re not learning: You’re too busy to reflect. You don’t keep track of your decisions. You can’t calibrate your own decision making.
The rule: Be less busy. Keep a learning journal. Reflect every day.
The Learning Loop
— Shane Parrish (@ShaneAParrish) August 3, 2020
To better understand learning, let's break it into four components.
1. Experience
2. Reflection
3. Abstraction/Lesson
4. Action
This process creates a feedback loop so that you are continuously adapting and learning from your (or others) experiences.
Our evolutionary programming conditions us to do what’s easy over what’s right. Organizations encourage us to sound good over being good. After all it’s often easier to signal being virtuous than actually being virtuous.
For more timeless wisdom on learning faster, thinking better, and making better decisions sign up: https://t.co/cTnLlM0mzT
More from Life
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
TW: suicidal ideation.
At the darkest days of the abuse I was being subjected to I decided to attend a conference for women in Los Angeles. I convinced my mother in law to pay for it because I couldn’t afford it. @ChristineCaine was preaching. I was desperate...
1/
I wanted to die, I didn’t see a way out and I had tried everything. I imagined many ways to die daily. The most recurring one was throwing my car down a bridge I had to drive over every day. I never did it because my kids were in the car and I was afraid one of them would...
2/
survive or I’d kill someone on the way down.
Christine spoke about honoring your pastors even when they weren’t great, she spoke of us expecting too much of pastors and how wrong that was. She said God would use our testimony if we submitted to our pastors.
3/
She said “honor your pastors, God will honor you.” She said more about having disagreed with her pastors but she submitted and God honored her and now she’s blessed. How if they are faithfully serving God, we need to support them and not forfeit what God has for us.
4/
I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom because I couldn’t breath and I felt like I was going to faint if I didn’t scream. I now know I was having a panic attack. I sat on the toilet w/my head between my legs, breathed and wept..
5/
At the darkest days of the abuse I was being subjected to I decided to attend a conference for women in Los Angeles. I convinced my mother in law to pay for it because I couldn’t afford it. @ChristineCaine was preaching. I was desperate...
1/
There are many reasons why the unfolding news of Ravi Zacharias\u2019 abuse is enraging. But for me, there\u2019s one other piece. The women he chose to abuse were young, massage therapists, ethnic minorities, likely women who were not in positions of power or education.
— Devi Abraham (@devi_writes) February 12, 2021
I wanted to die, I didn’t see a way out and I had tried everything. I imagined many ways to die daily. The most recurring one was throwing my car down a bridge I had to drive over every day. I never did it because my kids were in the car and I was afraid one of them would...
2/
survive or I’d kill someone on the way down.
Christine spoke about honoring your pastors even when they weren’t great, she spoke of us expecting too much of pastors and how wrong that was. She said God would use our testimony if we submitted to our pastors.
3/
She said “honor your pastors, God will honor you.” She said more about having disagreed with her pastors but she submitted and God honored her and now she’s blessed. How if they are faithfully serving God, we need to support them and not forfeit what God has for us.
4/
I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom because I couldn’t breath and I felt like I was going to faint if I didn’t scream. I now know I was having a panic attack. I sat on the toilet w/my head between my legs, breathed and wept..
5/
