Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
Summary
The Heath brothers identify four failures that damage decisions and give a process for countering each. The failures are narrow framing, meaning considering too few options; confirmation bias, meaning collecting evidence that supports the option already preferred; short-term emotion, meaning deciding while a temporary feeling dominates; and overconfidence about the future.
Their process is the WRAP sequence. Widen your options counters narrow framing, using techniques including the vanishing options test, which asks what you would do if none of the current options were available; multitracking, which means considering several options simultaneously rather than sequentially; and finding someone who has already solved the problem. Reality-test your assumptions counters confirmation bias, using ooching, which means running a small test rather than committing; deliberately seeking disconfirming information; and considering the base rate. Attain distance before deciding counters short-term emotion, using the ten-ten-ten test asking how the decision will feel in ten minutes, ten months and ten years, and asking what you would advise a friend to do. Prepare to be wrong counters overconfidence, using premortems, setting tripwires that trigger reconsideration, and bookending the range of possible outcomes rather than predicting a point.
The evidence comes from decision research including Paul Nutt's studies finding that whether-or-not decisions failed at much higher rates than decisions among multiple options.
The book is a synthesis rather than original research, and some cited studies have replicated poorly. The four failures overlap and the acronym is contrived. The specific techniques, particularly tripwires and the vanishing options test, are practical and are used by people who dislike the rest of the framework.
Key takeaways 8
- Decisions framed as whether or not to do one thing fail at much higher rates than decisions among several genuine options.
- Asking what you would do if the current options disappeared forces the generation of alternatives that were available all along.
- Considering several options simultaneously produces better outcomes than evaluating them one at a time in sequence.
- Running a small test before committing produces information that no amount of analysis will, which the authors call ooching.
- Asking how a decision will look in ten minutes, ten months and ten years removes the distortion of short-term emotion.
- Asking what you would advise a friend in the same position produces clearer answers than deliberating about yourself.
- Setting a tripwire, meaning a predefined condition that triggers reconsideration, prevents drift into commitments nobody decided to make.
- Estimating a range of outcomes rather than a point prediction produces better preparation, and most people set the range far too narrow.
Who should read it
Operators and investors who want a specific process for the four recurring decision failures, particularly tripwires and multitracking.
Where it sits in the reference 1
Who recommended it 6 · 4 direct
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