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:

1. ask whether theory behind decision-making accounts for circumstances + consider decisions in context
2. 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
3. balance simple rules with simple conditions
4. 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!