How to Decide

If you could attain a state of perfect knowledge, is there something that would cause you to change your mind? If the answer is yes, ask yourself if that information is available, absent omniscience or psychic powers.

If the answer is “No, there isn’t any information that I could find out,” go ahead and decide. You’re done. It’s time to stop.

If the answer is yes and you can find out that information, ask the follow-up question of whether you can afford to get it.

There is a time-accuracy trade-off: Increasing accuracy costs time. Saving time costs accuracy.

The key to balancing the trade-off between time and accuracy is figuring out the penalty for not getting the decision exactly right.

You can identify low-impact decisions with the Happiness Test, asking yourself if how your decision turns out will likely have an effect on your happiness in a week, a month, or a year.

A freeroll is a situation in which there is limited downside.

When you have multiple options that are close in potential payoffs, these are sheep in wolf’s clothing decisions.

Only-Option Test, asking yourself for each option, “If this were the only option I had, would I be happy with it?”

Spend time sorting, determining which options you like. Once you have options you like, save time picking.

When you pick an option, you’re passing on the potential gains associated with the options you don’t pick. This is the opportunity cost.

Decisions with a low cost to quit, known as two-way-door decisions,

When you’re facing a decision with a high or prohibitive cost of changing your mind, try decision stacking, making two-way-door decisions ahead of the one-way-door decision.

you don’t want to chase the illusory ideal of a “perfect” decision in conditions in which you’re operating with imperfect information.

Trying to get as close to 100% certainty as possible in a decision is known as maximizing.

SATISFICING Decision-making motivated by choosing the first satisfactory option available.

The framework of this book should get you more comfortable with satisficing, choosing options that are good enough, living in the space between “right” and “wrong.”

There is a big gap between what we know we should do to achieve our goals and the decisions we actually make.

There is a big difference between thinking “I am going to fail,” and imagining “If I were to fail, what are the ways in which that could happen?”

there’s a lot of value in picturing the obstacles that might slow you down or get you lost, preventing you from reaching your destination.