The Decision Strategist

Our natural tendency when facing a decision is to gather as much information as is easily available and evaluate our options in light of that information. But because we have limited processing power and can only hold between 3 and 7 concepts in our mind at any given time, we can only evaluate a few bits of information. Unless we are using a decision making technique to keep track of all the information, we can’t possibly consider all the relevant factors.

So here is a simple decision making technique for making better decisions:

Ignore Everything But the Three to Five Most Relevant Factors

That’s it. Just consider the three to five most important factors in the decision and ignore the rest of the information. Why? Because if you don’t have the time or desire to plot out and list all the relevant information, you will be unconsciously eliminating everything else anyway.

Consider the benefits of ignoring excess information:

• It takes less time. Information takes time. Knowing that you can only factor in three to five things means you don’t have to spend extra time trying to find information or worrying that you aren’t being responsible. At some point gathering more information has serious declining returns to scale. That point appears to be after roughly five pieces of information.
• Confidence isn’t overblown. More information has the curious effect of making us more confident in our decision without increasing our ability to choose the best option. If we only factor in a few pieces of information, we are more open to hearing other points of few and less personally invested in the ‘correctness’ of our decision.
• Less confusion. Excess information not only makes us more confident, it also has the potential to confuse us so that we can’t decide what the most important pieces of information are. As we start to exceed our natural limits, our mind responds by shutting down reasoning pathways and leaving us a befuddled mess.

I’ve often thought that people who have trouble making decisions (and not just because they are trying to choose the ‘nicest’ option) are hindered by an inability to exclude information.

Not that you won’t ever make an error doing this. But the underlying thesis here is that it is better to make a bad decision and realize that it’s wrong and take steps to correct it than it is to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to do and then making a decision that isn’t likely to be any better.

-zot

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I finished reading Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking last night. There have been a million reviews of this book, so I just want to discuss a few points here that are relevant to decision making.

Blink is all about snap decisions. Those decisions made on the fly in very short amounts of time (typically less than 2 seconds). This doesn’t mean they are bad, but that there is no time to engage any reasoning or use any methods to help improve our decisions.

In Decision Making, Less is More

One of the most important points is that the human brain can only hold between 3 and 7 pieces of information at a time. In snap decisions we don’t have time to focus on more than a few key points, but even for more regular decisions more information can inhibit our decision making ability.

Our confidence increases with more information, but our ability to make the right decision stays flat and can even deteriorate. This makes excessive information almost toxic.

Snap Decisions are More Prone to Error

Snap decisions occur in less than 2 seconds, so there is little time to consciously or unconsciously adjust for decision making errors. Errors like automatic associations and visual errors become stronger. Worse, a good snap decision made in normal circumstances becomes confrontational when we are excited or active, such as when chasing someone.

Decision Making can be Improved

Though snap decisions are prone to errors, our ability to make the right decision can be significantly improved with experience and training. Blink is full of examples of people who have years of experience with certain snap decisions and can make very sophisticated decisions with very little information.

Practice Snap Decisions

The typical book course doesn’t appear to do much to improve our decision making abilities. It is much more effective to create a situation in which you make a snap decision repeatedly in a variety of different configurations. Some research discussed in Blink shows that you can improve your snap decisions with as little as 30 minutes of practice.

The key to this practice is to replicate the situation, especially the pressures to make a quick decision. However, even automatic associations of race can be improved by reading good things about black people, for example. This is why earlier I suggested improving your decision making ability by expanding your experiences.

Control the Environment

The other significant factor that contributes to correct decision making is the environment. In cases where we have more time to consider a decision but don’t want to be affected by an association, we can eliminate the effect by removing the information.

Blink gives the example of screens during orchestra auditions to prevent judges from knowing the sex of the applicant. The result was skyrocketing participation rates for women in orchestras. Similar methods can be used to control other biases that can harm our decision making.

-zot

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I have a decision making errors page, but it’s certainly not the only one. Natural Rationality has just posted a copy of Wikipedia’s list.

It’s all good stuff if you’re interested in why we sometimes make illogical or unreasonable choices. I’m trying to keep my list of decision making errors updated with the articles that I discuss them in, so it’s a good reference point.

-zot

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In life many of our decisions are very hard to make, and we never know whether a different choice would have turned out better. This being the one month anniversary of The Decision Strategist, and in the spirit of sharing, here are the 5 hardest decisions of my life, what made them hard, why I made the decision I did, and whether I would change it if I could (in chronological order and with some details removed to protect privacy).

1. When I was roughly six years old I was asked by an important adult in my life whether or not he had done the action he was accused of. I lied and responded “No.” I was small and afraid, and in the decision of whether to stand up for what I knew to be true I yielded to that fear. I don’t blame my younger self for that decision, but if I could go back and change it, I would. It paved the way for making the easier, rather than the right, decision. I’m still struggling to correct that tendency today.
2. At approximately twelve years old, I shot a robin with a BB gun on a dare from my older brother. He thought I would miss, and I could have refused. I was convinced the forest animals were going to rise up and kill me in my sleep. They didn’t, but of course I would still change this if I could.
3. I fought with my Aikido teacher and made the (so far permanent) decision to stop training. I still wrestle with this decision all the time. If I could go back, I would still stop, but I would talk to my teacher and discuss why instead of just disappearing. I’ve talked about metaphors in How to Fight Advertising, and Aikido was definitely a big part of my metaphor for my self. I’ll probably start it again because without it something is missing.
4. Taking a new job in a new city is always a tough decision. I took a research job in Albuquerque even though my memories of Albuquerque were less than pleasant. I had a great opportunity in Massachusetts at the same time, and moving to Albuquerque meant leaving all of my friends behind, but the research job was more of a career and had much better benefits, and seemed like solid interesting work, so I took it. This is one of those decisions where either choice probably would have turned out pretty well, but I’m happy I chose to return to New Mexico.
5. I’ve had multiple micro-tears in my rotator cuffs as a result of playing Ultimate Frisbee. After the last one I decided that it just wasn’t worth it. It’s been about a year and I wouldn’t change the decision to stop playing, but I probably will in the future when I find a team I really get along with.

What’s interesting about all of these decisions is the impact they’ve had on me today. Much of my pondering is dedicated to whether my actions have been ‘true’ enough, an aspect that is directly related to hard decision number one. Perhaps I wouldn’t change any decision even if I could; who knows whether I would have learned the same lessons otherwise.

The other thing that really strikes me about this list is how much of an influence the social and environmental aspects of a situation have on what I chose to do. I’m not trying to abdicate responsibility for my actions, but I think that our decisions are much more strongly influenced by social factors that we allow for.

I’ve been talking mostly about problems and decisions that I’m facing, but I’d like to also include problems and decisions that my readers are facing. If you’d like to send me a top five list, or even just a few that you are facing now, I’ll talk about it in future posts.

-zot

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