This document discusses how to make good and difficult decisions. It recommends avoiding stress when making decisions, as stress can impair judgment. It also suggests preventing decision fatigue by limiting the number of decisions made in a single session. The document also warns about common cognitive biases like self-serving bias, confirmation bias, cognitive fluency bias, and sunk cost bias that can influence decision making. It concludes by advising people to be aware of biases, focus on future costs when decisions involve sunk costs, and make decisions knowing they can be changed later.

1. How to make good and
difficult decisions
7th June 2018 – DevOpsDays São Paulo

2. Introduction

3. • CEO @ NETWAYS
• Co-Founder of Icinga
• DevOpsDays Core Organizer
@gethash
About Me

4. • Open Source Service & Support
• Focused on Datacenter Solutions
• Based in Nuremberg, Germany
About NETWAYS

5. Nuremberg - Bavaria

6. But not this part of Bavaria

7. • Open Source Monitoring
• Monitor any Infrastructure and any Application
About Icinga

8. Why this topic is
important (to me)?

9. How many decisions do we
make in an average day?

10. 35,000
https://go.roberts.edu/leadingedge/the-great-choices-of-strategic-leaders

11. Fooood

12. Choices

13. To decide means to
make choices

14. There are easy and hard choices

15. In an easy choice one alternative
is better

18. Hard choices have advantages and
disadvantages in different perspectives

19. Hard choices are hard because
there is no best option

20. Example Job Search
Small Company Big Company
Less money More money
Family atmosphere Strong hierarchy
Limited advancement Advancement opportunities
Remote work Commute

21. If technical comparisons like more, less,
or equal don’t work it is a hard decision.

22. How to make good choices

23. Fooood

24. Avoid stress
How to make good choices

25. Under stress the fight-or-flight
mode is activated
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response

26. Cortisol blocks the PFC and
creates a “fog” in your brain
https://www.uni-trier.de/fileadmin/fb1/ein/PLA/Diplomarbeit_Julia_Fechtner.pdf

27. Under stress it is very hard to
leave the comfort zone

28. Prevent decision fatigue
How to make good choices

29. “Decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating
quality of decisions made by an individual
after a long session of decision making.”
-
The brain is like a muscle!

30. Shai Danzinger - http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889
Extraneous factors in judicial decisions
“Fatigue increases the
tendency to rule in favour of
the status quo.”

31. Avoid perfection
How to make good choices

32. There’s ”no” perfect solution

33. The magical number seven
(plus or minus two)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

34. Bad things can happen while
aiming for perfection

35. Strive for the ideal preserves a lot
of cognitive effort and the
potential for a stress blowout

36. Biases

37. Reall ?

38. Let’s do a test

39. Answer each question quickly!

40. Here we go!

41. 5 + 3

42. 8

43. 9 + 2

44. 11

45. 10 - 6

46. 4

47. Quick

48. Think of a number between
5 and 12

49. Quick

50. You could have picked
6 8 12
7 10 5 11
9

51. I’m going to guess which
number you picked!

52. Here it is …

53. 7
https://www.facebook.com/lasseburholt

54. Why?

55. Self-serving bias
Biases

56. We do everything to maintain
and enhance our self-esteem

57. Possible Solution I
Create a good culture of failure

58. Possible Solution II
Get older J

59. Confirmation bias
Biases

60. We tend to be put off by * that
make us feel uncomfortable or
insecure about our view

61. Possible Solution I
Try to make friends

62. Possible Solution II
Watch out for the opposite

63. “Invert, always invert”
Charlie Munger

64. Cognitive fluency
Biases

65. We often misattribute
the sensation of ease about
something to the thing itself.
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/07/how-cognitive-fluency-affects-decision-making.php

66. Because familiarity enables easy
mental processing, it feels fluent. So
people often equate the feeling of
fluency with familiarity.
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/07/how-cognitive-fluency-affects-decision-making.php

67. Possible Solution
If it sounds (looks) good,
be careful!

68. Sunk cost bias
Biases

69. My personal “favorite”!

70. We want to make the investment
worth our while
https://litemind.com/sunk-cost-bias/

71. We become attached to our
commitments
https://litemind.com/sunk-cost-bias/

72. We fear failing and looking foolish
https://litemind.com/sunk-cost-bias/

73. Possible Solution I
Focus on future invests and costs

74. Possible Solution II
Evaluate the status quo as if it
was just another option

75. Recap

76. Be aware of Biases

77. Not making a decision is also a
decision, cause others will make
that decision for you

78. Make a decision and change it as
often as required (and possible)

79. When there is no best choice we
should create our own reason

80. Hard decisions are chances to
decide what we want to be

81. netways
netways
netways
www.netways.de
blog.netways.de
git.netways.de
Muito Obrigado!