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Making Decisions: An Insider's Look at How To Make Better Life Choices
Making Better Decisions
We have more decisions to make than ever before. Careers, friendships, health, and finances all demand making good choices. But experts agree that unconscious biases skew our perception. This distortion creates blind spots on our options. The better you understand these blind spots, the better you’ll be able to steer around these mental obstacles to make wiser life choices.
No one wants to look back on their life and wonder if they could have done better. Making decisions we can be proud of is what we want in order to build the best life possible. Here we’ll show you how to leverage effective decision making to make better life choices that meet your goals and maximize your strengths.
Top Articles on Decision Making
Choice Architecture: Your Decisions Aren’t Entirely Yours (Interview with Eric Johnson)
Nir’s Note: Eric Johnson teaches at the Columbia Business School where he is the Director of the Center for Decision Sciences. He has authored some of the most influential research on decision-making, with papers published in leading scientific journals and articles...
Why the Illusion of Control Is Hurting Your Goals
A classic survivor test shows us how the illusion of control can sidetrack us from our mission when things get uncomfortableLet’s try something. Imagine you’ve just crash-landed somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, deep in the American Southwest. Though the aircraft is...
Hindsight Bias: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices
Don’t Follow Your Gut (and What to Do Instead)
How should we make decisions in life? Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, a behavioral economist and cognitive neuroscientist, says that whatever you do, Never Go With Your Gut. It’s such bold advice that Dr. Tsipursky decided to make it the title of his latest book. In this...
Why We Should All Be Wearing (and Making) Face Masks Right Now
Everyone should be wearing a face mask now, whether they are sick or healthy. We can make our own masks to ensure we're not taking them away from health care workers. In several Asian countries that are successfully lowering the number of infections from Covid-19,...
Fundamental Attribution Error: Why You Make Lousy Life Choices
Nir’s Note: This post part of a series on cognitive bias co-authored by Nir Eyal and illustrated by Lakshmi Mani. Discover other reasons you make terrible life choices like confirmation bias, hyperbolic discounting, distinction bias, extrinsic motivation, hindsight...
Peak-End Rule: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices
Nir’s Note: This post part of a series on cognitive bias co-authored with and illustrated by Lakshmi Mani. Discover other reasons you make terrible life choices like confirmation bias, hyperbolic discounting, distinction bias, extrinsic motivation, hindsight bias,...
Distinction Bias: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices
Nir’s Note: This post part of a series on cognitive bias co-authored with and illustrated by Lakshmi Mani. Discover other reasons you make terrible life choices like confirmation bias, hyperbolic discounting, extrinsic motivation, fundamental attribution...
Confirmation Bias: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices
Hyperbolic Discounting: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices
The Strange Way Being “Good” Hurts Your Willpower
Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Paulette Perhach. Paulette writes about finances, psychology, technology, travel, and better living for the likes of The New York Times, Elle, and Slate. I learned how to respect authority from my father. At the top of a huge water...
This Weird Research-Backed Goal Setting Hack Actually Works
Nir's Note: This article on goal setting was originally published in early 2016 but got such a great reader response that I decided to expand and update it along with adding the video below.Over the past four years, I’ve discovered many incredible ways to hack my...
Would You Take A Bet That Would Change Your Life? Probably Not. Here’s Why
Changing habits is hard. But what if there was a way to dramatically improve your odds of quitting even your worst habits? What if this method was shown to be over 8 times more effective than traditional methods at helping people quit a stubborn addiction like...
Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know The Answer) Book Review
Here's the Gist: Duncan Watts is a sociologist and principal researcher at Microsoft Research. His latest book is Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know the Answer): How Common Sense Fails Us. Personal preference, though not entirely arbitrary, is likely constructed and...
3 Ways to Make Better Decisions Using “The Power of Noticing”
Nir’s Note: This book review is by Sam McNerney. Sam writes about cognitive psychology, business, and philosophy.In Moneyball, Michael Lewis tells the story of Billy Bean, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics who transformed the A’s using sabermetrics, the...
The Power of No
Nir's Note: Is "no" the most powerful word in the English language? In this guest post Chikodi Chima explores the power of no and what happens when people say, "No." Chikodi is a former VentureBeat staff reporter who helps startups with their public relations and...
Think You Like What You Like? Think Again
A funny thing happens when you lie to people: they tend to believe. Why shouldn’t they? They lie to themselves all the time. Our minds are wired to respond in predictable ways--among them is perceiving the world the way we want to see it, not necessarily the way it...
Why Positive Thinking is Bad For You
Oliver Burkeman's new book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, challenges many widely-held assumptions. In this video, Burkeman discusses how positivity, goal setting, and visualization, often backfire.Burkeman writes the This...