CAPSULE | READS: Think Twice
Key Takeaways: On Trifecta Thinking, Careful Considerations & Maintaining Composure.
ON TRIFECTA THINKING:
When people see things in a particular way they have trouble seeing those things in new ways
- Learn about potential mistakes (prepare)
- Discover their context (recognize)
- Sharpen ultimate decisions when the time comes (apply)
ON CAREFUL CONSIDERATIONS:
Become well-versed in recognizing poor thinking and second-grade decision making in others, as you will be in a better position to flag a potential mistake when it faces you.
- Keep in mind that your actions will have reactions
- Get feedback: even good feedback is not useful if you do not use it
- Audit your decisions with a decision-making journal. Whenever you make an important decision, take a moment to:
> write down what you decided
> how you came to that decision
> what you expect to happen
> note you feel about it
ON MAINTAINING COMPOSURE:
Keep your cool.
- When outcomes are really good because of a dose of good luck, prepare for times where they will be closer to the average.
- When the results are disappointing from the results of bad luck, recognize that things will get better.
- Consequences are more important than probabilities. This does not mean you should focus on outcomes instead of process; it means you should consider all possible outcomes in your process.
We like to think that seeing is believing, but seeing is believing what a group tells you to believe.
- a diverse crowd will always predict more accurately than an average person in a crowd, not sometimes — always.
> diversity = reduces collective error
> aggregation = ensures it includes everyone’s info
> incentives = encourage people to participate when they have insights
> collective accuracy = equal parts ability and diversity
Correctly considering circumstances in decision-making:
- ask whether theory behind decision-making accounts for circumstances + consider decisions in context
- watch for correlation & causation trap
- when you hear of a correlation, consider the 3 conditions:
> time precedence
> relationship
> that no additional factor is causing the two to correlate - balance simple rules with simple conditions
- there is no ‘best practice’ in a domain with multiple dimensions
Phase transitions where small incremental changes lead to large effects:
- study the distribution of outcomes of the studies you are dealing with
- look for changes in the system — big changes usually happen when people coordinate their behavior
- beware of forecasters — prepare for all contingencies
- mitigate the downside, capture the upside (don’t bet too much on a particular outcome)
What kind of feedback helps performance?
- feedback should focus on the part of the outcome a person can control (the skill/the process)
- feedback solely based on outcome is useless; it fails to distinguish between skill and luck
What you should do differently tomorrow:
- raise your awareness
- put yourself in the shoes of others
- consider the incentives
- develop empathy
- get feedback
- create a decision-making journal to enable self-auditing of decisions | write down
> what you decided
> how you came to that decision
> what you expect to happen
> how you feel about it - practice
Introducing Reads as a capsule in the Learn Segment. Each week for the remainder of the year, we’ll be extracting key takeaways and notes from 26 books read in 26 weeks as a practice to nourish learning. Join us in the (re)wiring!