- Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you what you want out of life.
- Try to discover my own principles from wherever I think is best and ideally write them down.
- Think for myself to decide 1) what I want, 2) what is true, and 3) what I should do to achieve.
- The worst thing you can be is a phony.
- Try to question every word and pick and choose among these principles so I come away with a mix that suits me.
- Make believability-weighted decisions; Operate by principles...; Systemize your decision making.
- The most important thing is that I develop my own principles and ideally write them down.
Time is like a river that carries us forward into encounters with reality that require us to make decisions. We can't stop our movement down this river and we can't avoid those encounters. We can only approach them in the best possible way.
- Try to discern the cause-and-effect patterns behind the achievements.
- Great is better than terrible, and terrible is better than mediocre, because terrible at least gives life flavor.
- Visualizing complex systems as machines, figuring out the cause-effect relationships within them, writing down the principles for dealing with them, and feeding them into a computer.
- It's smarter to start with what you really want, which are your real goals, and then work back to what you need to attain them.
- Money will be one of the things you need, but it's not the only one and certainly not the most important one once you get past having the amount you need to get what you really want.
- Timing is everything.
- The brilliant trader and investor Bernard Baruch said:If you are ready to give up everything else and study the whole history and background of the market and all principal companies whose stocks are on the board as carefully as a medical student studies anatomy—if you can do all that and in addition you have the cool nerves of a gambler, the sixth sense of a clairvoyant and the courage of a lion, you have a ghost of a chance.
- Imagine that in order to have a great life you have to cross a dangerous jungle. You can stay safe where you are and have an ordinary life, or you can risk crossing the jungle to have a terrific life. How would you approach that choice?
- Seek out the smartest people who disagreed with me so I could try to understand their reasoning.
- Know when not to have an opinion.
- Develop, test, and systemize timeless and universal principles.
- Balance risks in ways that keep the big upside while reducing the downside.
- Beneficial change begins when you can acknowledge and even embrace your weaknesses.
- You will think you have failed——but that won't be true unless you give up.
- The most important thing you can do is to gather the lessons these failures provide and gain humility and radical open-mindedness in order to increase your chances of success. Then you press on.
- One of the most valuable thing you can do to improve for making decision making is to think through your principles for making decisions, write them out in both words and computer algorithms, back-test them if possible, and use them on a real-time basis to run in parallel with your brain's decision making.
- If you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want.
- Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.
- Most people are more emotional than logical, they tend to overreact to short-term results.
- Bad times coupled with good reflections provide some of the best lessons.
- Making a handful of good uncorrelated bets that are balanced and leveraged well is the surest way of having a lot of upside without being exposed to unacceptable downside.
- If something went badly, you hand to put it in the log, characterize its severity, and make clear who was responsible for it.
- Life consists of three phases. In the first, we are dependent on others and we learn. In the second, others depend on us and we work. And in the third and last, when others no longer depend on us and we no longer have to work, we are free to savor life.
- The same types of people in the same types of circumstances are going to produce the same types of results.
- A thirty-minute video How the Economic Machine Works
Three main forces that drive the economy. 1) Productivity growth 2) The short term debt cycle 3) The long term debt cycle
The simplest part of the ecomomy: Transactions
A market consist all the buyers and all the sellers making transactions for the same thing.
Credit is the most important part of the economy.
Spending drives economy.
In an economy without credit, the only way to increase your spending is to produce more. But in an economy with credit, you can also increase your spending by borrowing.
The short term debt cycle typically lasts 5-8 years, and the long time debt cycle needs 75-100 years.
Three rules of thumb: 1) DON'T HAVE DEBT RISE FASTER THAN INCOME 2) DON'T HAVE INCOME RISR FASTER THAN PRODUCTIVITY 3) DO ALL THAT YOU CAN TO RAISE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY.
- The books:Heros with a Thousand Faces; The Lessons of History; Out of Eden; On the Role of the Individual in History.
- Hero's way
- I realized that reality was, if not perfect, at least what we are given to deal with, so that any problems or frustrations I had with it were more productively directed to dealing with them effectively than coaplaining about them.
- Instead of feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, I saw pain as nature's reminder that there is something important for me to learn.
- I realized that all of them - like me, like everyone - make mistakes, struggle with their weaknesses, and don't feel that they are particularly special or great.They are no happier than the rest of us, and they struggle just as much or more than average folks. Even after they surpass their wildest dreams, they still experience more struggle than glory.
- Having the basics - a good bed to sleep in, good relationships, good food, and good sex - is most important.
Look to the patterns of those thing that affect you in order to understand the cause-effect relationships that drive them and to learn principles for dealing with them effectively.
I have found it helpful to think of my life as if it were a game in which each problem I face is a puzzle I need to solve. By solving the puzzle, I get a gem in the form of a principle that helps me avoid the same sort of problem in the future.
The pursuit of dreams is what gives life its flavor.
- a. Dreams + Reality + Determination = A Successful Life
People who achieve success and drive progress deeply understand the cause-effect relationships that govern reality and have principles for using them to get what they want.
Each of us needs to decide what we value most and choose the paths we take to achieve it.
Getting more out of life wasn't just a matter of working harder at it. It was much more a matter of working effectively, because working effectively could increase my capacity by hundreds of times.
1.2 Truth - or, more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality - is the essential foundation for any good outcome.
It's more important to understand and deal with the bad stuff since the good stuff will take care of itself.
- a. Radical open-mindedness and radical transparency are incaluable for rapid learning and effective change.
Learning is the product of a continuous real-time feedback loop in which we make decisions, see their outcomes, and improve our understanding of reality as a result.
The more open-minded you are, the less likely you are to deceive yourself——and the more like it is that others will give you honest feedback.
Being radically transparent and radically open-minded accelerates this learning process.
- b. Don't let fears of what others think of you stand in your way.
- c. Embracing radical truth and radical transparency will bring more meaningful work and more meaningful relationships.
Seeing things from the rop down is the best way to understand ourselves and the laws of reality within the context of overarching universal laws.
To try to figure out the universal laws of reality and principles for dealing with it, I've found it helpful to try to look at things from nature's perspective.
- a. Don't get hung up on your views of how things "should" be because you will miss out on learning how they really are.
It's important not to let our biases stand in the way of our objectivity.
- b. To be "good" something must operate consistenetly with the laws of reality and contribute to the evolution of the whole; this is what is most rewarded.
- c. Evolution is the single greatest foece in the universe; it is the only thing that is permanent and it drives everything.
Perfection doesn't exist.
Rather than getting stuck hiding our mistake and pretending we're perfect, it makes sense to find our imperfections and deal with them.
- d. Evolve or die.
The key is to fail, learn, and improve quickly.
- a. The individual's incentives must be aligned with the group's goals.
- b. Reality is optimizing for the whole——not for you.
- c. Adaptation through rapid trial and error is invaluable.
Natural selection's trial-and-error process allows improvement without anyone understanding or guiding it. The same can apply to how you learn.
There are at least three kinds of learning that foster evolution: memory-based learning; subconscious learning; and "learning" that occurs without thinking at all.
- d. Realize that you are simultaneously everything and nothing——and decide what you want to be.
- e. What you will be will depend on the perspective you have.
- a. Maximize your evolution.
The things (toys, bigger houses, money, status, etc.) are just the bait. Chasing after them forces us to evolve, and it is the evolution and not the rewards themselves that matters to us and to those around us.
As Freud put it, "Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness."
- b. Remember "no pain, no gain."
Nature gave us pain for a purpose. It alerts us and helps direct us.
- c. It is a fundamental law of nature that in order to gain strength one has to push one's limits, which is painful.
There is no avoiding pain, especially if you're going after ambitious goals.
The challenges you face will test and strengthen you.
As you climb above the blizzard of thingd that surrounds you, you will realize that they seem bigger than they really are when you are seeing them up close; that most things in life are just "another one of those."
- a. Go to the pain rather than avoid it.
Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life——you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but confortable delusion.
- b. Embrace tough love
If you can be open with your weaknesses it will make you freer and will help you deal with them better.
I urge you to not be embarrassed about your problems, recognizing that everyone has them. Bringing them to surface will help you break your bad habits and develop good ones, and you will acqire real strengths and justifiable optimism.
The quality of your life will depend on the choices you make at those painful moments.
Quite often the first-order consequences are the temptations that cost us what we really want, and sometimes they are the barriers that stand in out way.
"Whatever circumstances life brings you, you will be more likely to succeed and find happiness if you take responsibility for making your decisions well instead of complaining about things being beyond your control."
Higher-level thinking gives you the ability to study and influence the cause-effect relationships at play in your life and use them to get the outcomes you want.
- a. Think of yourself as a machine operating within a machine and know that you have the ability to alter your machines to produce better outcomes.
- b. By comparing your outcomes with your goals, you can determine how to modify your machine. The Machine
- c. Dinstinguish between you as the designer of your machine and you as a worker with your machine.
- d. The biggest mistake most people make is to not see themselves and others objectively, which leads them to bump into their own and others' weaknesses again and again.
- e. Successful people are those who can go above themselves to see things objectively and manage those things to shape change.
They can take in the perspectives of others instead of being trapped in their own heads with their own biases.
You shouldn't be upset if you find out that you're bad at something——you should be happy that you found out, because knowing that and dealing with it will improve your chances of getting what you want.
If you are disappointed because you can't be the best person to do everything yourself, you are terribly naive. Nobady can do everything weill.
Most of life's greastest opportunitues come out of moments of struggle.
- f. Asking others who are strong in areas where you are weak to help you is a great skill that you should develop no matter what, as it will help you develop guardrails that will prevent you from doing what you shouldn't be doing.
- g. Because it is difficult to see oneself objecticely, you need to rely on the input of others and the whole body of evidence.
- h. If you are open-minded enough and determinded, you can get virtually anything you want.
- Don't confuse what you wish were true with what is really true.
- Don't worry about looking good——worry instead about achieving your goals.
- Don't overweight first-order consequences relative to second- and third-order ones.
- Don't let pain stand in the way of progress.
- Don't blame bad outcomes on anyone but yourself.
- Have clear goals.
- Identify and don't tolerate the problems that stand in the way of your achieving those goals.
- Accurately diagnose the problems to get at their root causes.
- Design plans that will get you around them.
- Do what's necessary to push these designs through to results.
To evolve quickly, you will have to do this fast and contunuously, setting your goals successively higher.
You will need to do all five steps well to be successful and you must do them one at a time and in order.
The process if iterative: doing each step thoroughly will provide you with the information you need to move on to the next step and do it well.
If your emotions are getting the better of you, step back and take time out until you can reflect clearly. If necessary, seek guidance from calm, thoughtful people.
You will never handle everything perfectly: Mistakes are inevitable and it's important to recognize and accept this fact of life.
- a. Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can't have everything you want.
- b. Don't confuse goals with desires.
A proper goal is something that you really need to achieve.Desires are things that you want that can prevent you from reaching you goals.
- c. Decide what you really want in life by reconciling your goals and your desires.
- d. Don't mistake the trappings of success for success itself.
- e. Never rule out a goal because you think it's unattainable.
- f. Remember that great expectations creat great capabilities.
If you limit your goals to what you know you can achieve, you are setting the bar way too low.
- g. Almost nothing can stop you from succeeding if you have a) flexibility and b) self-accountability.
- h. Knowing how to deal well with your setbacks is as important as knowing how to move forward.
Your mission is to always make the best possible choices, knowing that you will be rewarded if you do.
- a. View painful problems as potential improvements that are screaming at you.
Each and every problem you encounter is an opportunity.
It's essential that you bring them to the surface. Most people don't like to do this, especially if it exposes their own weaknesses or the weaknesses of someone they care about, but successful people know they have to.
- b. Don't avoid confronting problems because they are rooted in harsh realities that are unpleasant to look at.
Thinking about problems that are difficult to solve may make you anxious, but not thinking about them should make you more anxious still. Acknowledging your weaknesses is not the same as surrendering to them.
- c. Be specific in identifying your problems.
- d. Don't mistake a cause of a problem with the real problem.
- e. Distinguish big problems from samll ones.
- f. Once you identify a problem, don't tolerate it.
Tolerating a problem has the same consequences as failing to identify it.
You need to develop a fierce intolerance of badness of any kind, regardless of its severity.
- a. Focus on the "what is" before deciding "what to do about it."
Strategic thinking requires both diagnosis and design.
- b. Distinguish proximate causes from root causes.
Proximate causes are typically the actions that lead to problems, so they are described with verbs. Root causes run much deeper and they are typically described with adjectives. You can truly solve your problems by removing their root causes.
- c. Recognize that knowing what someone (including you) is like will tell you what you can expect from them.
What differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don't is their willingness to look at themselves and others objectively and understand the root causes standing in their way.
- a. Go back before you go forward.
- b. Think about your problem as a set of outcomes produced by a machine.
- c. Remember that there are typically many paths to achieving your goals.
- d. Think of your plan as being like a movie script in that you visualize who will do what through time.
- e. Write down your plan for everyone to see and to measure your progress against.
- f. Recognize that it doesn't take a lot of time to design a good plan.
A plan can be sketched out and refined in just hours or spread out over days or weeks. But the process is essential because it determines what you will have to do to be effective.
Designing precedes doing.
- a. Great planners who don't execute their plans go nowhere.
- b. Good work habits are vastly underrated.
- c. Establish clear metrics to make certain that you are following your plan.
- Keep in mind that the 5 Steps are iterative. When you complete one step, you will have acquired information that will most likely lead you to modify the other steps.
- When you've completed all five, you'll start again with a new goal.
- If the process is working, your goals will change more slowly than your designs, which will change more slowly than your tasks.
- You will need to synthesize and shape well.
First and foremost, have humility so you can get what you need from others.
Knowing what your weaknesses are and staring hard at them is the first step in the path to success.
- a. Look at the patterns of your mistakes and identify at which step in the 5-Step Process you typically fail.
- b. Everyone has at least one big thing that stand in the way of their success; find yous and deal with it.
Write down what your one big thing is and why it exists.
There are two paths to success: 1) to have what you need yourself or 2) to getit from others.
Humility is as important, or even more important, as having the strengths yourself.
Humility can be even more valuable than having good mental maps if it leads you to seek out better answers than you could come up with on your own. Have both open-mindedness and good mental maps is most powerful of all.
If you have good mental maps and low open-mindedness, that will be good but not great. You will still miss a lot that is of value. Similarly, if you have high open-mindedness but bad mental maps, you will probably have challenges picking the right people and points of view to follow. The person who has good mental maps and a lot of open-mindedness will always beat out the person who doesn't have both.
These barriers(your ego and your blind spots) exist because of the way that our brains work, so nearly everyone encounters them.
The two biggest barriers to good decision making are your ego and your blind spots.
- a. Understand your ego barrier.
- b. Your two "yours" fight to control you.
To be effective you must not let your need to be right be more important than your need to find out what's true. If you are too proud of what you know or of how good you are at something you will learn less, make inferior decisions, and fall short of your potential.
- c. Understand your blind spot barrier.
When trying to figure things out, most people spin in their own heads instead of taking in all the wonderful thinking available to them.
These two barriers-ego and blind spots-are teh fatal flaws that keep intelligent, hardworking people from libing up to their potential.
To be radically open-minded you must:
- a. Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with "not knowing" is more important than whatever it is you do know.
Most people make bad decisions because they are so certain that they're right that they don't allow themselves to see the better alternatives that exist.
You can't make a great decision without swimming for a while in a state of "not knowing".
- b. Recognize that decision making is a two-step process: First take in all the relevant information, then decide.
Most people are reluctant to take in information that is inconsistent with what they have already concluded.
- c. Don't worry about looking good; worry about achieving your goal.
People typically try to prove that they have the answer even when they don't.
- d. Realize that you can't put out without take in.
Most people seem much more eager to put out(convey their thinking and be productive) than to take in(learn).
- e. Recognize that to gain the perspective that comes from seeing things through another's eyes, you must suspend judgment for a time——only by empathizing can you properly evaluate another point of view.
Open-mindedness doesn't mean going along with what you don't believe in; it means considering the reasoning of others instead of stubbornly and illogically holding in to your own point of view.
- f. Remember that you're looking for the best answer, not simply the best answer that you can come up with yourself.
The answer doesn't have to be in your head; you can look outside yourself.
It's invaluable to know what you don't know.
- g. Be clear on whether you are arguing or seeking to understand, and thing about which is most appropriate based on your and others' believability.
When two prople believe opposite things, chances are that one of them is wrong. It pays to find out if that someone is you.
In thoughtful disagreement, your goal is not to convince the other party that you are right-it is to find out which view is true and decide what to do about it.
Remember, you are not arguing; you are openly exploring what's true.
It's pointless when people get angry with each other when they disagree because most disagreements aren't threats as much as opportunities for learning. People who change their minds because they learned something are the winners, whereas those who stubbornly refuse to learn are the losers.
A good exercise to make sure that you are doing this(Be open-minded) well is to describe back to the person you are disagreeing with their own perspective.
Working through disagreements does take time but it's just about the best way you can spend it. What's important is that you prioritize what you spend time on and who you spend it with.
It doesn't pay to be open-minded with everyone. Instead, spend your time exploring ideas with the most believable people you have access to.
Being able to thoughtfully disagree would so easily lead to radically improved decision making in all areas.
- a. Plan for the worst-case scenario to make it as good as possible.
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- Closed-minded people don't want their ideas challenged. While open-minded people are more curious about why there is disagreement.
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- Closed-minded people are more likely to make statements than ask questions. Open-minded people genuinely believe they could be wrong; the questions that they ask are genuine.
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- Closed-minded people focus much more on being understood than on understanding others. Open-minded people always feel compelled to see things through others' eyes.
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- Closed-minded people say things like "I could be wrong...but here is my opinion." Open-minded people know when to make statements and when to ask questions.
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- Closed-minded people block others from speaking. Open-minded people are always more interested in listening than in speaking; they encourage others to voice their views.
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- Closed-minded people have trouble holding two thoughts simultaneously in their minds. Open-minded people can take in the thoughts of others without losing their ability to think well.
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- Closed-minded people lack a deep sense of humulity. Open-minded people approach everything with a deep-seated fear that they may be wrong.
To practice open-mindedness:
- a. Regularly use pain as your guide toward quality reflection.
- b. Make being open-minded a habit.
- c. Get to know your blind spots.
Take some time to record the circumstances in which you've consistently made bad decisions because you failed to see what others saw.
- d. If a number of different believable people say you are doing something wrong and you are the only one who doesn't see it that way, assume that you are probably biased.
Be objective!
- e. Meditate.
It helps slow things down so that I can act calmly even in the face of chaos, just like a ninja in a street fight.
- f. Be evidence-based and encoutage others to be the same.
- g. Do everything in your power to help others also be open-minded.
- h. Use evidence-based decision-making tools.
- i. Know when it's best to stop fighting and have faith in your decision-making process.
It's important that you think independently and fight for what you believe in, but there comes a time when it's wiser to stop fighting for your view and move on to accepting what believable others think is best.
Everyone is like a LEGO set of attributes, with each piece reflecting the workings of a different part of their brain. All these pieces come together to determine what each person is like, and if you know what a person is like, you'll have a pretty good idea of what you can expect from them.
- a. We are born with attributes that can both help us and hurt us, depending on their application.
Having expectation for people(including yourself) without knowing what they are like is a sure way to get in trouble.
4.2 Meaningful work and meaningful relationships aren't just nice things we chose for ourselves——they are genetically programmed into us.
- The Spiritual Brain
- a. Realize that the conscious mind is in a battle with the subconscious mind.
When thoughts and instructions come to me from my subconscious, rather than acting on them immediately, I have gotten into the habit of examining them with my conscious, logical mind.
- b. Know that the most constant struggle is between feeling and thinking.
You can also comfort yourself with the knowledge that whatever psycholigical pain you are experiencing will go away before very long.
- c. Reconcile your feeling and your thinking.
- d. Choose your habits well.
Habit is probably the most powerful rool in your brain's toolbox.
Research suggests that if you stick with a behavior for approximately eighteen months, you will build a strong tendency to stick to it nearly forever.
If you really want to change, the best thing you can do is choose which habits to acquire and which to get rid of and then go about doing that.
The most valuable habit I've acquired is using pain to trigger quality reflections.
- e. Train your "lower-level you" with kindness and persistence to build the right habits.
- f. Understand the differences between right-brained and left-brained thinking.
Realize that both ways of thinking are invaluable, and assign responsibilities accordingly.
- g. Understand how much the brain can and cannot change.
Remember that accepting your weaknesses is contrary to the instincts of those illusion that you are perfect.
- a. Introversion vs. extroversion
Introverts focus on the inner world and get their energy from ideas, memories, and experiences while extroverts are externally focused and get their energy from being with people.
- b. Intuiting vs. sensing.
Some people see big pictures(forests) and others see details(trees).
The intuitive thinker's attention is focused on the context first and the details second.
- c. Thinking vs. feeling
Some people make decisions based on logical analysis of objective facts, considering all the known, provable factors important to a given situation and using logic to determine the best course of action.
Other people--who perfer feeling--focus on harmony between people.
- d. Planning vs. perceiving.
Some people like to live in a planned, orderly way(Planners or Judgers) and others prefer flexibility and spontaneity(Perceivers).
- e. Creators vs. refiners vs. advancers vs. executors vs. flexors
- Creators generate new ideas and original concepts.
- Adcancers conmmunicate these new ideas and carry them forward.
- Refiners challenge ideas.
- Executors can also be thought of as Implementers. They ensure that important activities are carried out and goals accomplished; They are focused on details and the bottom line.
- Flexors are a combination of all four types.
- f. Focusing on tasks vs. foucusing on goals.
Some people are focused on daily tasks while others are focused on their goals and how to achieve them.
- g. Workplace Personality Inventory.
- h. Shapers are people who can go from visualization to actualization.
Shapers are someone who comes up with unique and valuable visions and builds them out beautifully, typically over the doubts of others. Shapers = Visionary + Practical Thinker + Determined.
- Knowing how one is wires is a necessary first step in any life juorney.
- Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and everyone has an important role to play in life. Nature made everything and everyone for a purpose.
- The courage that's needed the most isn't the kind that drives you to prevail over others, but the kind that allows you to be true to your truest self, no matter what other people wat you to be.
4.5 Getting the right people in teh right roles in support of your goal is the key to succeeding at whatever you choose to accomplish.
While there is no one best way to make decisions, there are some universal rules for good decision making.
5.1 Recognize that 1) the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions, and 2) decision making is a two-step process (first learning and then deciding)
Learning must come before deciding.
No matter how you acquire your knowledge or where you store it, what's most important is that what you know paints a true and rich picture of the realities that will affect your decision.
Remind yourself that it's never harmful to at least hear an opposing point of view.
- LEARNING WELL
Getting an accurate picture of reality ultimately comes down to two things: being able to synthesize accurately and knowing how to navigate levels.
Synthesis is the process of converting a lot of data into an accurate picture.
To synthesize well, you must 1) synthesize the situation at hand, 2) synthesize the situation through time, and 3) navigate levels effectively.
Remember:
- a. One of the most important decisions you can make is who you ask questions of.
Make sure they're fully informed and believable.
Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all.
- b. Don't believe everything you hear.
Don't mistake opinions for facts.
- c. Everything looks bigger up close.
- d. New is overvalued relative to great.
It is smarter to choose the great over the new.
- e. Don't oversqueeze dots.
A dot is just one piece of data from one moment in time; keep that in perspective as you synthesize.
- a. Keep in mind both the rates of change and the level of things, and the relationships between them.
- b. Be imprecise.
When you ask someone whether something is true and they tell you that it not actually true, it's probably by-and-large true.
- c. Remember the 80/20 Rule and know what the key 20 percent is.
- d. Be an imperfectionist.
Perfectionists spend too much on little differences at the margins at the expense of the important things.
- a. Use the terms "above the line" and "below the line" to establish which level a conversation is on.
- b. Remember that decisions need to be made at the appropriate level, but they should also be consistent across levels.
It's necessary to: 1. Remember that multiple levels exist for all subjects. 2. Be aware on what level you're examinging a given subject. 3. Consciously navigate levels rather than see subjects as undofferentiated piles of facts that can be browsed randomly. 4. Diagram the flow of your thought processes using the outline template.
5.5 Logic, reason, and common sense are your best tools for synthesizing reality and understanding what to do about it.
As Carl Jung put it,"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
Successful organizations have cultures in which evidence-based decision making is the norm rather than the exception.
As the saying goes,"It never hurts to ask."
- To help you make expected value calculations well, remember that:
- a. Raising the probability of being right is valuable no matter what your probability of being right already is.
- b. Knowing when not to bet is as important as knowing what bets are probably worth making.
- c. The best choices are the ones that have more pros than cons, not those that don't have any cons at all.
- People who prioritize well understand the following:
- a. All of your "must-dos" must be above the bar before you do your "like-to-dos."
- b. Chances are you won't have time to deal with the unimportant things, which is better than not having time to deal with the important things.
- c. Don't mistake possibility for probalities.
- Anything si possible.
- It's the probalities that matter.
- Everything must be weighted in terms of its likelihood and prioritized.
As the saying goes,"Any damn fool can make it complex. It takes a genius to make it simple."
Using principles is a way of both simplifying and improving your decision making.
- The key to doing this well is to:
- Slow down you thinking so you can note the criteria you are using to make your decision.
- Write the criteria down as a principle.
- Think about those criteria when you have an outcome to assess and refine them before the next "one of those" comes along.
Using a tool called a Coach, which is explained in the Appendix.
- To do it well, be sure to avoid the common perils of :
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- valuing your own believability more than is logical
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- not distinguishing between who is more or less credible.
- Systemized and computerized decision making. Thinking -> Principles -> Algorithms
- In order to have the best life possible, you have to:
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- know what the best decisions are
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- have the courage to make them.
- It's essential that you embrace reality and deal with it well.
- Making the most if your circumstances is what life is all about. This includes being transparent with your thoughts and open-mindedly accepting the feedback of others. Doing so will dramatically increase your learning.
- The evolutionary process can be described as a 5-step process for getting what you want. It consists of setting goals, identifying and not tolerating problems, diagnosing problems, coming up with designs to get around them, and then doing the tasks required.
- If you can learn radical open-mindedness and practice thoughtful disaggreement, you'll radically increase your learning.
- Your ability to get what you want when working with others who want the same things is much greater than your ability to get these things by yourself.