“Decisive: How To Make Better Decisions in Life and Work” Book Summary

Business & Books
13 min readApr 18, 2024

Best Quotes from Decisive: How To Make Better Decisions in Life and Work by Chip & Dan Heath:

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Introduction

  • The core difficulty of decision making: What’s in the spotlight will rarely be everything we need to make a good decision, but we won’t always remember to shift the light. Sometimes, in fact, we’ll forget there’s a spotlight at all
  • Given that we’re wired to act foolishly sometimes, how can we do better?
  • Most companies make decisions by having a team arguing only one side of the case
  • A better decision process substantially improves the results of the decisions
  • Discipline exhibited by good corporate decision makers involves exploring alternative points of view, recognizing uncertainty, searching for evidence that contradicts their beliefs
  • Why a process? Because understanding our shortcomings is not enough to fix them. Does knowing you’re nearsighted help you see better?
  • Push the spotlight around until you feel ready to make a decision

1: The Four Villains of Decision Making

  • “Any time in life you’re tempted to think, ‘Should I do this OR that?’ instead, asl…

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