Making Good Decisions - Part I

In their book Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath ask the question "Why do we have such a hard time making good choices?" Despite operating in a world increasingly rich with information we all too often find ourselves making poor choices. They have identified "four villains" that negatively impact our decision making.

1. Narrow Framing - We tend to define our options too narrowly. We see and consider only a few of the many potential options available to us.

2. Confirmation Bias - We quickly develop a belief about a situation and then look for data to confirm that bias and ignore evidence to the contrary.

3. Short Term Emotion - Big decisions are often accompanied by intense emotions (that will pass with time) that we allow to skew our perspective.

4. Overconfidence - We live in a society that values decisiveness, independence and self confidence. It's tough to admit when we don't have the requisite knowledge, skills or experience to make a good decision. 

In Part II of this post we'll look at the authors' process for overcoming these barriers to effective decision making.