The Ultimate Guide to Making Smart Decisions
A guide to making decisions covering how we can intelligently prepare to improve our thinking, avoid stupidity, and make better, smarter, decisions.
More from Farnam Street
Tit For Tat
Tit for tat is a strategy which, according to game theory, is the most effective choice for iterated games based on mutual cooperation or defection.
«Under tit for tat, a player will begin by cooperating, then in subsequent iterations will replicate whatever their opponent did last time.»
Math Makes Life Beautiful.
Math has long been the language of science, engineering, and finance, but can math help you feel calm on a turbulent flight? Get a date? Make better decisions? Here are some heroic ways math shows up…
«Being curious about the world helps us find solutions to problems by bringing new knowledge to bear on old challenges. Math and physics are actually powerful tools for investigating the possibilities of what is out there.»
The Art of Being Alone
Loneliness has more to do with our perceptions than how much company we have. It’s just as possible to be painfully lonely surrounded by people as it is to be content with little social contact. Some…
«“Loneliness, longing, does not mean one has failed but simply that one is alive.” — Olivia Laing»
Focus to Win
Since focus requires saying no, it also means really smart people and good competitors are saying no to really good ideas.
«This sounds really simplistic, but it still shocks me how few people actually practice this, and it’s a struggle to practice, but is this issue of focus.»
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The Elements of Good Judgment
How to improve your decision-making
5 Useful Heuristics for Quick Decision-Making in Daily Situations
A reflection on five useful decision-making heuristics, mental shortcuts designed to solve problems fast and make thinking more efficient.
Emotions Aren’t the Enemy of Good Decision-Making
Too often, when we need to make a difficult decision, we rush through it to avoid sitting with uncomfortable emotions. But channelling those emotions — a process the author calls “emotional…
«But the exercise of emotional bookending helped him realize that there were other ways to get the business acumen that the company needs.»
50 Cognitive Biases in the Modern World
Our rapidly evolving world forces us to adopt distinct patterns of behavior, and in the process, paves the way for new cognitive biases to emerge.
«THE GOOGLE EFFECT Also known as “digital amnesia”, the aptly named Google Effect describes our tendency to forget information that can be easily accessed online.»
How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You)
Our career path is how we spend our time, how we support our lifestyles, how we make our impact, and even sometimes how we define our identity. Let’s make sure we’re on the right track.
«a person’s career quadruples as the person’s primary identity. Which is kind of a big thing.»
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