Decision making journal to create best decisions.

1. Lesson 22:
Decision-Making Journal
Module:
Find The $$$ Skills

2. Connecting The Dots
• Decision-making is like Battleship
– Maximizing options
– Narrowing options
• Understand and protect against cognitive
biases.
• Keep track of decision making processes.

3. Behavioral Microscopy
• Subjective Perspective: Normally we just make
decisions, but then don’t think about the
underlying process of decision-making.
• Objective Perspective: What process are you
using to make decisions and is that process
effective?

4. Learning Process
READ
(Info
Assimilation)
REFLECT
(Info
Processing)
EXPERIMENT
(Action)
FEEDBACK

5. Examples Of Feedback
• Riding a bike.
• Flying a rocket to the moon.
• Our five senses.

6. Challenge With Feedback
• We have feedback in school.
• Most people don’t have any feedback on their
decision making process.
• So, we need to create that feedback
mechanism.

7. I think it is very important to actively
seek out and listen very carefully to
negative feedback. This is something
people typically tend to avoid because
it's painful.
Elon Musk
“

8. Real experts seek out constructive,
even painful feedback.
Anders Ericsson, World’s Leading Researcher
Expert Performance
“

9. Why Decision Making Is Powerful
• Our life is a product of the decisions we make.
• We make tons of decisions. Those decisions (even
small ones) compound over time.
• Decisions are the most powerful tool we have for
getting things done.
• They determine what we do.

10. What Is A Decision Journal
• A way to keep track of your decision-making
processes.
• A way to reflect on those decision-making
processes.
Similar to other results-based journals:
food, steps, & exercise journals

11. The specific idea is whenever you're
making a consequential decision, just
take a moment to think, write down:
• What you expect to happen
• Why you expect it to happen
• How you feel about the situation, both
physically and even emotionally.
Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman
“

12. The key to doing this is that it
prevents something called hindsight
bias, which is no matter what happens
in the world, we tend to look back on
our decision-making process, and we
tilt it in a way that looks more
favorable to us, right?
Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman
“

13. Mental Model: Probabilistic Thinking
• A good result doesn’t mean you have a good
decision-making process.
• A bad result doesn’t mean you have a bad decision-
making process.
• Luck plays a major factor in life.
• The key is putting the odds in your favor.

14. I think of the future as branching
probability streams.
Elon Musk
“

15. Decisions are all about probabilities:
identifying relevant variables and
attaching probabilities to each of
them. Munger says that one of the
major advantages that Warren Buffett
has is that he automatically thinks in
terms of decision trees.
“

17. Examples From My Life
• Got overwhelmed with coaching calls.
– Insight: I made the best decision at that time.
• Came up with solutions.
– Insight: The root of the solutions often came
from other people.

18. How To Incorporate It
• Set aside time for reflection:
– At work
– Commute
– Weekly Reflection
• Ask yourself questions that will give
you the most learning.

19. Exercise #1
• What are the 5 worst decisions you’ve made in the past
year? Best decisions?
• Are there any patterns in the decision-making process
you used to make these decisions?
• How can you replicate the good decision-making
processes?
• How can we avoid bad decision-making processes?

20. Exercise #2
• Write down the big decisions you have right now.
• Write down the decision-making processes you’re using.
• Schedule a time in the future to reflect on the
effectiveness of the process.

21. Resources
• http://bit.ly/decision-making-template
• http://bit.ly/farnam-decision-making