some guidelines for decision making in the harvard business review:
“ultimately we’re best served by avoiding paralysis-by-analysis and moving foward by:
paying close attention to the feelings and emotions that accompany the decision we’re facing,
assessing how motivated we are to work toward the success of any given option, and
recognizing that no matter what option we choose, our efforts to support its success will be more important than the initial guesswork that led to our choice.”
know thyself (and still not have a clue) : jonah lehrer in the new yorker
“The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence. In fact, introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings. We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point.”
The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing.
