Making Smarter Decisions and Knowing When to Walk Away with Annie Duke

#81: Professional decision-maker, Annie Duke, joins Chris to talk about making better decisions. They discuss why learning the difference between luck and the quality of decisions is so important and how that can improve your life and your career, ways to improve your quitting skills, and what forces work against good quitting behavior. They also cover why so many people struggle with the decision to walk away, how to use kill criteria to determine when to quit a project, a job, or some other endeavor, and a lot more.

Annie Duke (@AnnieDuke) is a best-selling author and professional decision strategist. Her 2018 bestseller, Thinking in Bets, has helped countless people make better decisions, and her latest book is Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away.

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Selected Links From The Episode

Connect with Annie Duke: Website | Twitter

Annie Duke’s Resources:

• Books:
  • Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away
  • Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
  • How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

ATH Podcast: FOMO, FOBO and How To Make Great Decisions with Patrick McGinnis

Resources Mentioned: 

• Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
• Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
• Astro Teller on Moonshots for Alphabet's X (Monkeys and pedestals 25:08)
• Knowns vs Unknowns — Are you building a successful company or just typing?

Full Show Notes

Learning to distinguish between luck and the quality of your decisions and two ways to improve the quality of decision-making [1:20]

Improving the quality of your decisions and increasing the probability of a positive outcome when hiring [5:44]

Understanding and learning to calculate the base rate [9:11]

Gathering independent viewpoints to improve the quality of your information in both professional and personal situations [13:29]

Explicitly permitting others to share their honest opinions and critical feedback [21:08]

Understanding how the Sunk Cost Fallacy influences your decision-making and learning to shift your mindset [28:00]

Utilizing advanced planning, kill criteria, and stop-loss orders [30:12]

Example of the kill criteria [32:02]

The importance of having a qualified quitting coach, and what to look for when choosing one [33:24]  

Base rates: thinking about everything in life as a bet and making the implicit, explicit [41:49]

The side-effects of making things explicit [47:35]

Dealing with the emotional angst that comes with decision-making [51:41]

Employing the menu decision strategy [54:41]

What makes quitting such a difficult decision? [58:31]

Astro Teller’s mental model: monkeys and pedestals [1:04:55]

Figuring out the known unknowns [1:07:01]

Where to find Annie Duke online [1:07:57]

Connect with Chris

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