Making Good Decisions

University choices, job offers, money and friendships all involve decisions under uncertainty. You cannot control luck, but you can control how well you think a decision through.

Judge the decision, not just the result

• A good decision can turn out badly because of luck, and a poor decision can turn out well. Decision expert Annie Duke calls judging a choice only by its outcome "resulting".
• Example: you leave plenty of time for an exam, but the metro breaks down and you arrive late. The decision was still sound.
• Focus on the process, because that is the part you control: did you gather the right information, consider options and think about what could go wrong?
• Watch for words like "should have" after the event. They are often hindsight bias in disguise.

Pros and cons, done properly

• Write the options side by side, not just one option's pros and cons. Often there are more than two choices (avoid a false dilemma).
• Give each factor a weight from 1 to 5 for how much it matters to you. A pro like "near the beach" may matter less than "strong course in my subject".
• Score each option on each factor, multiply by the weight and add up. The total is a guide, not an order: if the result feels wrong, ask what factor you forgot.
• Decide your criteria before you look at offers or adverts, so you are not anchored by the first option you see.

Think in probabilities

• Most futures have several possible outcomes, each with its own likelihood and impact (Annie Duke).
• Instead of "Will this work?", ask "How likely is this to work, roughly?" Answers like 30%, 60% or 90% are more honest than yes or no.
• Ask "Wanna bet?" of your own beliefs: if you had to bet money, how sure would you really be? This exposes what you are assuming.
• Rough estimates are still useful. Annie Duke's phrase is that being roughly right beats being precisely wrong.

Run a pre-mortem

• Psychologist Gary Klein's pre-mortem: before you commit, imagine it is the future and the plan has already failed.
• Spend about two minutes writing down every reason it might have failed. In a group, each person writes silently first, then shares one reason at a time.
• Then choose actions to prevent the most likely or most damaging problems.
• Klein reports a study with 178 college students (Veinott, Klein and Wiggins, 2010) in which the pre-mortem reduced overconfidence more than simple critiques or pros-and-cons lists.
• A group pre-mortem can take as little as 20 to 30 minutes (Klein). Try it before a group project, a trip or a big purchase.

Get an outside view

• Talk your decision through with a few open-minded people who will challenge you, not just agree. Annie Duke recommends a "decision pod" like this.
• Ask a parent, teacher or older student who has made a similar choice what they wish they had known.
• Sleep on big decisions where possible. Feeling rushed by a deadline is a classic pressure tactic in sales and scams.