Your Chief Weapon.

Your chief weapon to improve your decisions is turning the stuff you don’t know into stuff you know.

- Annie Duke, ‘How to Decide’.

It’s natural to look at a decision that didn’t give the expected outcome and rule it as a ‘wrong’ decision.

Or worse.

A waste of time.

If we categorise a decision as a waste of time because it got us ‘nowhere’, then we’re more likely to hesitate at our next decision, or avoid making a decision at all.

And yet.

Every decision we make tells us more about the stuff we don’t know. Or maybe even just tells us there’s stuff we don’t know. Like … why didn’t that decision turn out?

It’s all about what we’re measuring.

A good decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be.

Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances us towards where we want to be.

If our response to a ‘bad’ decision is despondent criticism of our judgement, and then an aversion to making decisions, then we’ve denied ourselves the opportunity to turn stuff we don’t know into stuff we know.

We’ve holstered our chief weapon to improve our decisions.