Helpful decision-making advice & frameworks from Farnam Street
- Schedule time to think.
- When considering options, watch your heart rate.
- If all things are equal take the road less travelled (i.e., hard decisions easy life, easy decisions, hard life).
- No decision is sometimes the best path. If you can’t get comfortable deciding, the answer is to explore the tension, not force a decision.
- Instead of fight or flight, gather info. Think about what you can do to get the information you need to make a better decision.
- Saying no is more important than saying yes.
- Use time to filter people and ideas. The majority of the time you don’t need to be an early adopter.
- Look for win-win decisions. If someone absolutely has to lose, you’re likely not thinking hard enough or you need to make structural/environmental changes.
- When stuck work back to first principles and build up.
- The rule of 5. Think about what the decision looks like 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months, 5 years, 5 decades.
- Let other people’s hindsight become your foresight.
- Avoid things the best version of yourself will regret.
- Ask what information would cause you to change your mind. If you don’t have that information, find it. If you do, track is religiously.
- Focus on collecting feedback to calibrate your ability to make this decision.
- If you’re outside your circle of competence and still have to make a decision, ask experts HOW they would make the same decision, not WHAT they would decide.
- Lean into (not away from) what’s making you uncomfortable.
- Put things on a reversibility/consequence grid —irreversible and high consequence decisions likely require more time. The rest of the time you can usually go fast.
- Identify the 2-3 variables that really matter and break them down to unearth assumptions and get the team on the same page.
- Fast decisions should never be rushed.
- Too much information increases confidence not accuracy.
- Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.
- Walk around the decision from the perspective of everyone implicated (shareholders, employees, regulators, customers, partners, etc.)
- Some warnings signs that increase the likelihood of stupidity are (environment, the pace of change, rushing, physically tired, hyper-focus, authority, consensus-seeking behavior).
- Own the decision. (If you make decisions by committee, have one person sign their name to the decision—someone needs to own it.)
- Decisions are nothing without execution.
- Ask yourself “and then what?”