How to Decide

When you use these blunt terms, you and the other people in the conversation are often speaking different languages without even knowing it.

If you communicate what you mean with precision, using probabilities expressed as percentages, the disagreement is immediately revealed.

You want to be explicit about how uncertain your belief is.

The goal is to set the narrowest range you can, where you would still be pretty shocked if the bull’s-eye wasn’t in the range.

Shooting for nine out of ten is a good rule of thumb for getting to that sweet spot between too broad and too narrow.

you may not know as much as you think you do, that your beliefs may not be as accurate as you think they are, and that you may need more help from others than you think you do.

Approach the quality of the stuff you think you know with more skepticism. That skepticism will make you more willing to question your own beliefs and more eager to seek out what other people know. And that will improve the quality of your decisions.

In general, we don’t question our own beliefs enough. We have too much confidence in what we think we know and we don’t have a realistic view of what we don’t know.

Making it a habit to ask yourself, “If I were wrong, why would that be?”

Making it a habit to ask yourself, “If I were wrong, why would that be?” helps get you to approach your own beliefs with more skepticism, disciplining your naturally overly optimistic view of what you know and getting you more focused on what you don’t know.

when you ask yourself what information you could discover that would make you change your mind, you can actually go find out some of that stuff. And in asking and answering the question, you are just more likely to go look for it.

In addition to making precise (bull’s-eye) estimates, offer a range around that estimate to express your uncertainty. Do this by including a lower and upper bound that communicate the size of your target.

Use the shock test to determine if your upper and lower bounds are reasonable: Would you be really shocked if the correct answer was outside that boundary?

Use the shock test to determine if your upper and lower bounds are reasonable: Would you be really shocked if the correct answer was outside that boundary? Your goal should be to have approximately 90% of your estimates capture the objectively true value.

“What information could I find out that would tell me that my estimate or my belief is wrong?”

Develop a habit of asking yourself, “What information could I find out that would tell me that my estimate or my belief is wrong?”

Part of why it’s easier to see other people more objectively than you can see yourself is that you are motivated to protect your beliefs when it

Part of why it’s easier to see other people more objectively than you can see yourself is that you are motivated to protect your beliefs when it comes to reasoning about your own situation.

OUTSIDE VIEW What is true of the world, independent of your own perspective. The way that others would view the situation you’re in.

Allowing those perspectives to collide, by embracing ways in which other people see things differently, will get you closer to what is objectively true.