Challenging the conventional wisdom of trusting one's instincts, we delve into the fascinating realm of decision-making. Explore why gut feelings may not always be the best guide and discover alternative, more reliable methods for making crucial choices.
How should we make decisions in life?
Gleb Tsipursky, a behavioral economist and cognitive neuroscientist, says that whatever you do, never go with your gut
- In his new book, “Never Go With Your Gut,” he warns against the dangerous mental blindspots that lead to decisions we later regret
- The book empowers readers to defeat the dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that come from following your gut and lead to decision disasters in their careers and businesses
What do you do when you find yourself distracted or going off track?
Take a break when you feel yourself getting distracted or getting off track
- We should evaluate decisions more by the decision-making process than the outcome
- The most important takeaway is that what feels most comfortable is often exactly the wrong thing for us to do
- Adapt constantly to an increasingly-changing environment to ensure the success of your business and your career
- Set a timer for activities where you tend to lose track of time
- Journal about what happened yesterday and what you learned from it
What surprised you the most?
Many traditional methods used by leaders to try to address the weaknesses of human nature are often more harmful than helpful
- For example, consider business strategic planning assessments such as SWOT, where a group of business leaders try to figure out the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats facing their business
- The large majority of SWOT assessments fail to account for cognitive biases
- Overconfidence bias – those who were most successful in the past are the ones who grow most overconfident
- A related problem is the optimism bias, our tendency to look at life through rose-colored glasses
- Research shows that top leaders are especially likely to be excessively optimistic about their success which harms their ability to make effective strategic plans
What lessons should people take away from your book regarding how they should design their own behavior or the behavior of others?
Distance yourself from what feels comfortable in designing intentional behaviors for yourself and others
- Avoid the temptation of going with what’s comfortable and assuming that what feels right is what’s actually good for you
- Plan out your goals, and then design behaviors from those goals
- If some behaviors go against your instincts, deliberately go further than feels intuitive to you to accomplish your goal
