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A review by bookgoodfeelgood
Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath, Dan Heath
4.0
My husband recommended this book to me after having been positively impacted by it, and it proved to be a powerful read.
If you don’t like having things broken down very systematically, formulaic strategies, instruction through repetition, and concept modeling via anecdotes (although there is no shortage of cold hard facts/data), you probably won’t like this book.
I absolutely love this style of communicating concepts and strategies, particularly when the subject matter can get complex in ways that are outside my typical frame of reference, so this was a treat for me.
The Heath brothers provide a handy-dandy mnemonic device to simplify the decision-making strategies they detail:
W - widen your options
R - reality-test your assumptions
A - attain distance before deciding
P - prepare to be wrong
They provide a wide range of anecdotes that detail the decision making process of different individuals in a variety of situations, allowing for effective modeling of how strategies can be applied (and what happens when they aren’t).
Some key takeaways that really stuck with me were:
- Don’t oversimplify things. It limits you. It’s often not a “this or that” decision. It could be “this AND that” or “this, that, and a third” or “neither this nor that but a third option entirely.”
- If you’re really having trouble deciding something, the best friend method will likely get you where you need to be, and fast. (i.e. if your bestie was mulling over the same thing, what advice would you give them?)
- Base rates > blind optimism. Research the problem. Look at the statistics of success rates. Believe them beyond the idea that you are magical one that will always beat the odds. Sure, sometimes you might be. But if taking that risk comes at great cost, it is likely not sound to let blind optimism lead you to incur great loss.
- Don’t always feel like you have to dive in if you’re unsure. Run experiments! Test-drive, proverbially, whenever possible!
- Conduct premortems so you don’t have to conduct postmortems. That is, before you going into something, imagine the worst-case: it fails. Parse through that hypothetical failure. What all went wrong? Use that information to allow you to account for as many of those variables as possible on the front end.
- Stay vigilant of confirmation bias. Deliberately seek out people with opposing viewpoints and varied experiences.
- Not all decisions are flat out right or wrong for eternity. What is absolutely right today, could continue to be right for the next two years, but beyond that could be wrong. Set “tripwires” to drive action after a decision as been made so that you have the opportunity to check in periodically to reevaluate the status of a decision. Then decide whether to carry on, shift gears, or quit altogether.
- When in doubt, use the 10-10-10 method. Ask yourself, if I take xyz course of action, how will I feel about it in 10 minutes? 10 months? 10 years?
There’s so much more beyond this, and this book is such a valuable tool in being more self-evaluative and reflective in the way you approach every choice you make, from the simplest to the ones with the most gravity.
If you don’t like having things broken down very systematically, formulaic strategies, instruction through repetition, and concept modeling via anecdotes (although there is no shortage of cold hard facts/data), you probably won’t like this book.
I absolutely love this style of communicating concepts and strategies, particularly when the subject matter can get complex in ways that are outside my typical frame of reference, so this was a treat for me.
The Heath brothers provide a handy-dandy mnemonic device to simplify the decision-making strategies they detail:
W - widen your options
R - reality-test your assumptions
A - attain distance before deciding
P - prepare to be wrong
They provide a wide range of anecdotes that detail the decision making process of different individuals in a variety of situations, allowing for effective modeling of how strategies can be applied (and what happens when they aren’t).
Some key takeaways that really stuck with me were:
- Don’t oversimplify things. It limits you. It’s often not a “this or that” decision. It could be “this AND that” or “this, that, and a third” or “neither this nor that but a third option entirely.”
- If you’re really having trouble deciding something, the best friend method will likely get you where you need to be, and fast. (i.e. if your bestie was mulling over the same thing, what advice would you give them?)
- Base rates > blind optimism. Research the problem. Look at the statistics of success rates. Believe them beyond the idea that you are magical one that will always beat the odds. Sure, sometimes you might be. But if taking that risk comes at great cost, it is likely not sound to let blind optimism lead you to incur great loss.
- Don’t always feel like you have to dive in if you’re unsure. Run experiments! Test-drive, proverbially, whenever possible!
- Conduct premortems so you don’t have to conduct postmortems. That is, before you going into something, imagine the worst-case: it fails. Parse through that hypothetical failure. What all went wrong? Use that information to allow you to account for as many of those variables as possible on the front end.
- Stay vigilant of confirmation bias. Deliberately seek out people with opposing viewpoints and varied experiences.
- Not all decisions are flat out right or wrong for eternity. What is absolutely right today, could continue to be right for the next two years, but beyond that could be wrong. Set “tripwires” to drive action after a decision as been made so that you have the opportunity to check in periodically to reevaluate the status of a decision. Then decide whether to carry on, shift gears, or quit altogether.
- When in doubt, use the 10-10-10 method. Ask yourself, if I take xyz course of action, how will I feel about it in 10 minutes? 10 months? 10 years?
There’s so much more beyond this, and this book is such a valuable tool in being more self-evaluative and reflective in the way you approach every choice you make, from the simplest to the ones with the most gravity.