How to Decide

The premortem reduces the natural tendency toward overconfidence, the illusion of control, and other cognitive biases that cause you to overestimate the chances that things will work out.

The premortem reduces the natural tendency toward overconfidence, the illusion of control, and other cognitive biases that cause you to overestimate the chances that things will work out. The backcast evens out the view if you are pessimistic in nature or underconfident.

Most important, you’re doing more than just imagining success and failure. You’re identifying the paths that lead to both results, and multiple ways to access the path to success, as well as the obstacles you have to avoid or manage.

The first thing you should always consider after doing these exercises is whether you want to modify your goal or change your decision, given what you’ve just learned.

consider the following actions: Modifying your decision to increase the chances of the good stuff happening and decrease the chances of the bad stuff happening. Planning how you’ll react to future outcomes, so they don’t take you by surprise. Looking for ways to mitigate the impact of bad outcomes if they occur.

you can physically prevent yourself from making poor decisions.

He gives you a good reason to make a choice that causes you to lose a little bit on the path to reaching your goal. Then he piles up a lot of those decisions, killing your plans slowly, without allowing you to be aware that you are taking yourself down.

When your reaction to a bad outcome can make things worse

Another likely obstacle to achieving a goal is the way you react to a bad outcome.

Right after a bad outcome, especially one due to something outside your control, you can become emotionally compromised.

TILT When a bad outcome causes you to be in an emotionally hot state that compromises the quality of your decision-making.

It changes your frame from “I can’t believe this happened to me” to “This happened but I knew it was a possibility.” When

It changes your frame from “I can’t believe this happened to me” to “This happened but I knew it was a possibility.”

the emotional parts of your brain inhibit the parts of your brain responsible for rational thinking.

When you consider how you might respond to negative outcomes in advance of those things happening, you’re likely to think more rationally.

you can learn to recognize the signs that you’re on tilt so you can identify and address it more quickly.

When you recognize the signs of tilt, ask yourself, “In a week (or a month, or a year), am I going to be happy with any decisions I make right now?”

Third, you can precommit to certain actions that you’ll take (or refrain from taking) in the wake of bad outcomes.

unexpectedly good outcomes also have the potential for compromising your decision-making.

A hedge reduces the impact of bad luck when it occurs. A hedge has a cost.