Master Productivity: The Proven Eisenhower Matrix Method
The Eisenhower Matrix is a powerful tool that helps you work on the most important thing and get more done. Let’s explore how it works so you can put it to use today. Dwight Eisenhower …
Decision Making
A Decision-Making Magic Trick
Two important nuggets from an interview with Chip Heath, co-author of Decisive (more here), on improving our ability to make better decisions: A decision-making magic trick The closest thing to a …
The Four Villains of Decision Making
You’re probably not as effective at making decisions as you could be. This article explores Chip and Dan Heaths’ new book, Decisive. It’s going to help us make better decisions both …
What Matters More in Decisions: Analysis or Process?
We all make decisions. Some of them are large and many of them are small. Few of us understand that the process we use to make those decisions is more important than the analysis we put into the …
How You Can Sleep Better
You do want to sleep better, don’t you? Me too. After last weeks post, “If this is sleep research’s golden age, then why are we all so tired?” I picked up a copy of Dreamland: Adventures in the …
Richard Zeckhauser on Making Better Decisions
Richard Zeckhauser, aka Mr. Probability, is a champion Bridge player and the Frank Ramsey professor of political economy at Harvard University. Speaking about Zeckhauser, Charlie Munger, the brilliant …
“Everyone has filters to select information that receives attention.”
These excerpts were taken from Roger Fisher’s excellent book Getting It Done: How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge. Everyone has filters to select information that receives attention. If …
Nate Silver: The Difference Between Risk and Uncertainty
Nate Silver elaborates on the difference between risk and uncertainty in The Signal and the Noise: Risk, as first articulated by the economist Frank H. Knight in 1921, is something that you can put a …
Making Smart Choices: 8 Keys to Making Effective Decisions
Making decisions is a fundamental life skill. Expecting to make perfect decisions all of the time is unreasonable. When even an ounce of luck is involved, good decisions can have bad outcomes. So our …
Blindness to the Benefits of Ambiguity
“Decision makers,” write Stefan Trautmann and Richard Zeckhauser in their paper Blindness to the Benefits of Ambiguity, “often prove to be blind to the learning opportunities offered …
Why Bad Things Happen to Good Decisions
Good decisions don’t always have a good outcome, just as bad decisions don’t always have bad outcomes. Sometimes bad outcomes happen to good decisions. And sometimes good things happen to …
Michael Mauboussin: Two Tips to Improve The Quality of Your Decisions
Michael Mauboussin, chief investment strategist at Legg Mason and our first interview on the podcast, offers two simple techniques to improve the quality of your decision making: a decision journal …
Benjamin Franklin’s Rule for Making Decisions
When Charles Darwin set out to marry, he employed a technique pioneered half a century earlier by Ben Franklin. Despite his importance, the prolific Franklin often gave his practical wisdom to many of …
“When we encounter pain, we are at an important juncture in our decision-making process.”
It is a fundamental law of nature that to evolve one has to push one’s limits, which is painful, in order to gain strength—whether it’s in the form of lifting weights, facing problems head-on, or in …
“the truth is that prediction is hard, often impossible.”
Philip Tetlock, author of Expert Political Judgment, co-authors an interesting article in foreign policy. Academic research suggests that predicting events five years into the future is so difficult …
When Storytelling Leads To Unhappy Endings
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald *** John Kay, …