<ul>
<li>Narrow framing: the tendency to define our choices too narrowly, to see them in binary terms.</li>
<li>Confirmation bias: we are more likely to select the information that supports our preexisting attitudes, beliefs, and actions.</li>
<li>Short-term emotion: when we’ve got a difficult decision to make, our feelings churn.</li>
<li>Over-confidence: we think they know more than they do about how the future will unfold.</li>
</ul>

The Four Villains Of Decision Making

It describes the process that “wraps” around your usual way of making decisions, helping to protect you from some of the villains and biases related to decision making:
<ul>
<li>Widen your options.</li>
<li>Reality-test your assumptions.</li>
<li>Attain distance before deciding.</li>
<li>Prepare to be wrong.</li>
</ul>

The WRAP Model

Focusing is great for analyzing alternatives but terrible for spotting them. Think about the visual analogy—when we focus we sacrifice peripheral vision. And there’s no natural corrective for this; life won’t interrupt our focus to draw our attention to all of our options.

Multitracking involves considering several options simultaneously. Multitracking has another advantage too, one that is more unexpected. It feels better.
When you consider multiple options simultaneously, you learn the shape of the problem. To get the benefits of multitracking, we need to produce options that are meaningfully distinct.

Multitracking

Psychologists have identified two contrasting mindsets that affect our motivation and our receptiveness to new opportunities: a ‘prevention focus,’ which orients us toward avoiding negative outcomes, and a ‘promotion focus,’ which orients us toward pursuing positive outcomes.

One of the reliable but unrecognized pillars of scientific thinking is the analogy (...) When you use analogies—when you find someone who has solved your problem—you can take your pick from the world’s buffet of solutions.

<ul>
<li>Studies found that the confirmation bias was stronger in emotion-laden domains such as religion or politics and also when people had a strong underlying motive to believe one way or the other.</li>
<li>Confirmation bias increases when people have previously invested a lot of time or effort in a given issue.</li>
<li>Confirmation bias doesn’t just affect what information we seek, but also what we notice in the first place.</li>
</ul>
Reality-test the assumptions you’re making by developing the discipline to consider the opposite of our initial instincts. That discipline begins with a willingness to spark constructive disagreement.

Considering the Opposite

Sometimes we think we’re gathering information when we’re actually fishing for support.

<ul>
<li>The inside view = our evaluation of our specific situation.</li>
<li>The outside view = how things generally unfold in situations like ours.</li>
</ul>
The outside view is more accurate, but most people gravitate toward the inside view.

The Inside and Outside View

To use 10/10/10, think about your decisions on three different time frames: How will I feel about it 10 minutes from now? How about 10 months from now? How about 10 years from now?
Conducting a 10/10/10 analysis doesn’t presuppose that the long-term perspective is the right one. It simply ensures that short-term emotion isn’t the only voice at the table.

The 10/10/10 Technique

Our decisions are often altered by two subtle short-term emotions: (1) mere exposure: we like what’s familiar to us; and (2) loss aversion: losses are more painful than gains are pleasant.

The future is not a “point”—a single scenario that we must predict. It is a range. We should bookend the future, considering a range of outcomes from very bad to very good.

Explains how to overcome natural biases and irrational thinking to make better decisions in work and life, drawing on extensive studies and research to outline specific strategies for enabling clear-headed thinking.

Stashed ideas

Decisive

Most job postings nowadays require skill sets related to problem-solving, making it a sought-after ability that job candidates love to put in their resumes. Finding solutions is where the big money is.
Yet we design our lives in a way that is counterintuitive to problem solving.
We are always in production mode, always working, available and doing something. Our mental resources are depleted most of the time, making us ineffective in solving problems.

Problem Solving: An In-Demand Skill

Humans have always leaned towards taking advice from their family, friends and colleagues to solve problems.Groups of people who are always communicating end up utilizing their collective knowledge and solve complex problems, while people who try to solve problems alone often invent original solutions never thought of before.The trick is to embrace the middle path and nurture one's own original ideas while also gathering with peers and look for solutions using collective learning.

Social Influence In Problem Solving

The always-on culture that instant communication has provided us is destructive to original thinking and diminishes our capacity to solve problems.A counterintuitive way to solve a problem is to set aside time when one is not dealing with the problem at all, but doing something completely different.

The Way To Solve Problems Is To Not Solve Them

<ul><li>When we set aside some time to not deal with our problem, it paradoxically improves our efforts.</li><li>This downtime makes our subconscious mind work invisibly towards a possible solution.</li><li>What we do in our downtime is completely up to us, but research shows that exercise, Yoga and trekking are great options.</li><li>It is imperative to sleep well and eat nutritious food to help untangle our minds and bring clarity.</li><li>Companies can help by setting aside time for employees to relax and do some office activities to help them unwind.</li></ul>

Mental Downtime For Awakening The Subconscious

<ul><li>Tuning out from problem-solving helps us solve the problem in a better way, as paradoxical as it sounds.</li><li>We can use this to our advantage by engaging in creative activities that stimulate our mind, like playing music, solving puzzles and indulging in other interdisciplinary skills.</li></ul>The best way to solve problems is to keep learning new things and performing creative activities.

Be A Lifelong Learner

Tips from neuroscience and psychology can make you an expert thinker.

Hack your brain for better problem solving

The term &#39;planning fallacy&#39; was coined in 1977 and deals with how most of us are terrible at estimating how long a project will take. We are overly optimistic but terrible at predicting the future. If the project has a budget, we may underestimate that expense too.
The Sydney Opera House was commissioned in 1957 and had an expected completion date of 1963. The budget was 7 million Australian dollars. After the plan had been scaled back, it was completed in 1973 at the cost of $102 million.

The planning fallacy

We are prone to choosing the most optimistic timetable to complete a project while doubting other information that could change our predictions. Even if we are given evidence of how we've been wrong in the past, we believe that our current forecasts are optimistic. The problem with our predictions is that we treat every task like it's a new problem. Then, we construct a tale of how we will complete this task but ignore the evidence from similar projects done in the past.

Why we trip over the planning fallacy

In an experiment, two groups of students had to complete a one-hour computer tutorial. The students had to predict when they would finish the assignment. One group of students were prompted to think about past assignments similar to this one and use that knowledge to inform their prediction. The control group had no instructions. The result was that the first group correctly predicted how long it would take. Ignore what you want to be true. Instead, use past experience to build a schedule.

Overcoming the planning fallacy

We are terrible at predicting how well we will meet deadlines. Christopher Cox on how to rethink the planning fallacy.

Our Brains Make Us Way Too Optimistic About Meeting Deadlines. Here’s How to Work Around That

New month. New day. New leaf. So you’ve woken up and decided you’re finally going to take on the big, big problem that’s been weighing on you — perhaps it’s shoring up your public libraries, helping homeless dogs and cats, or fighting climate change.

If you want to take on big problems. Try thinking like a bee

The lifespan of a worker bee ranges from six weeks in the summer to twenty weeks in the winter. Most of which is spent gathering nectar to make honey.

Bee Work Lives

A bee in her lifetime makes only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey” — a tiny fraction of the hundred pounds of honey that a typical colony needs to survive. The most remarkable thing is that they don't even do it for themselves. A bee won’t directly benefit from the honey she makes; instead, it will allow future generations to thrive after she is gone.

The small things are enough

This too is how we can change the world — by not worrying about the size of our contributions and by letting our efforts join the actions of others.

How to change the world

Keep making honey. Your 1/12th of a teaspoon counts.

It counts

Honey bees can show us the power to be found in thinking small, says beekeeper Marianne Gee.

Self Improvement

If you want to take on big problems, try thinking like a bee

More mental models mean you have more ways to solve more problems.Don't you want to know all 25 of them

<ul><li>Most other professions are full of constraints upon one’s ideas.&nbsp;</li><li>Artists operate in a realm where most of these constraints are reduced,</li><li>&nbsp;so the bigger question is, “Why is this unique and interesting?”</li><li>&nbsp;Often the best companies produce things that look like art.&nbsp;</li><li>They are driven by uniqueness and creativity, rather than blandly filling out a list of specs.</li><li>How could your goals and projects be different if coolness, interestingness or refinement of an original idea were your priority?</li></ul>

1. Artist

<ul><li>There are many thinking tools native to economics, but a foundational one is simple.&nbsp;</li><li>People respond to incentives.</li><li>Tyler Cowen, the economist, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=actEhnPE4VM" target="_self">delivers this best</a>, explaining that a key element of economic reasoning is that by changing a system involving people, the people do not stay in place. Instead, they respond to the new incentives accordingly.</li><li>Almost any action you’ll take alters the perceptions of incentives by other people you deal with. The economist in you should ask yourself, “if I change this, how will people react?”</li></ul>

2. Economist

<ul><li>While your financial advisor can only throw darts at picking which stocks will rise,&nbsp;</li><li>And a psychologist can only give hints at what people will do,&nbsp;</li><li>Engineers routinely create things that don’t currently exist and need to work 100% of the time.</li><li>The essence of doing this is to create a model of what you’re trying to work with,&nbsp;</li><li>Measure the relevant variables, and know to what degree of error you can expect in those measurements.&nbsp;</li><li>From there, you can actually know what will happen, instead of just guessing.</li></ul>

3. Engineer

<ul><li>Entrepreneurs often adopt a set of thinking tools that are often rare for normal professionals.</li><li>One major tool is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_prototyping" target="_self">rapid prototyping</a>. Many people see this as a product development strategy.&nbsp;</li><li>But in reality, it’s an abstract thinking tool that applies to a lot more than product R&amp;D.</li><li>Sometimes the right way to solve a problem is simply to do a lot of things and see what works!</li><li>The essence of this thinking tool is that you go out and try a bunch of things, without waiting around for a perfect answer. </li><li>It also requires listening carefully for feedback, so you can get hints as to what to do next.&nbsp;</li></ul>

4. Entrepreneur

<ul><li>Doctors meet patients who have an array of symptoms. </li><li>From there, you need to act like a detective to deduce the most likely disease and create a plan to cure it. </li><li>During this, a wrong move might kill your patient, so you have to choose wisely.</li><li>Your computer doesn’t work. Your business has stopped making money,&nbsp;</li><li>Similarly, many problems can be solved by this thinking tool&nbsp;</li><li>The first thing to do is see what all the possible causes could be.&nbsp;</li><li>Next, you need to rule out as many possibilities based on the symptoms you observe.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li><li>Knowing this can help you settle on a most likely diagnosis.</li></ul>

5. Doctor

<ul><li>Journalists rely on a ton of different thinking tools which allow them to write compelling stories that report the news fairly and accurately.</li><li>One of these thinking tools is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking" target="_self">fact-checking</a>. Because journalists often need to interview sources who may be misleading.&nbsp;</li><li>Fact-checking may be time-consuming, but it results in a much more accurate worldview than simply blindly following a stray comment.</li><li>How would your life look if you dug around to check the veracity of key pieces of information you’re depending on to make decisions?&nbsp;</li></ul>

6. Journalist

<ul><li>A basic thinking tool of Scientists is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_control#Controlled_experiments" target="_self">controlled experiment</a>. </li><li>Keep all the variables the same, except the one you want to test, and see what happens. </li><li>Too many people draw inferences from “experiments” that are anything but have many conflicting variables&nbsp;</li><li>that make drawing conclusions about their experiences much more difficult.&nbsp;</li><li>How many of your beliefs about work and life withstand such scrutiny?&nbsp;</li><li>Undergo such testing? Maybe you could benefit from a little more scientific thinking tools in your life.</li></ul>

7. Scientist

<ul><li>The thinking tools of a mathematician depend on having a much higher standard of what constitutes proof of something.&nbsp;</li><li>While an engineer may tolerate precision within some bounds, and an entrepreneur may be satisfied with a hunch,</li><li>&nbsp;a mathematician’s statements must be irrefutable or they don’t count. </li><li>Mathematical thinking tools help you be more rigorous and spot mistakes that may be relevant.</li></ul>

8. Mathematician

<ul><li>Programming encompasses a lot of thinking tools, but the most basic one is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm" target="_self">algorithm</a>.&nbsp;</li><li>Algorithms are a set of steps that can be defined precisely so that they require no intelligence to perform each one,&nbsp;</li><li>yet the net result is a useful product.</li><li>A useful application of this is to look at the things you do and see which could be automated, simplified or refactored.&nbsp;</li><li>you can think more like a programmer in many other domains of life. </li><li>What things do you repeat often in your work which could be automated?</li><li> What ambiguous process could you convert into a foolproof set of steps?</li></ul>

9. Programmer

<ul><li>Architects need to design buildings.&nbsp;</li><li>These are large structures that may take years to build,&nbsp;</li><li>and has to meet all the criteria of clients, contractors, city planners and building codes.</li><li>Oh, and they should also be beautiful.</li><li>One of the great tools of architectures is simply making a model.</li><li>Making a scaled down version of the thing you want to create, so you can see how it looks, and then envisioning how it will be on a larger version</li><li>it is difficult, but it often lets you see how reality will be before it’s too late to change it.</li></ul>

10. Architect

<ul><li>Salespeople work to deeply understand what the customer actually needs, </li><li>And then match them with products and services that fill that void.&nbsp;</li><li>This is incredibly hard to do, as you may recognize that you have the solution to a customer’s problem before they do.</li><li>A key thinking tool for success in this profession is to be able to infer what people’s worries and needs are.&nbsp;</li><li>This is a tool you can apply far beyond making an extra buck, to learn about human behaviour and thought process </li></ul>

11. Salesperson

<ul><li>The discipline embodied by military personnel is a very useful thinking tool. </li><li>By demanding conformity to those protocols, even when there is no danger, there is much less room for slip-ups.</li><li>This kind of discipline is also present in another live-endangering field: medicine.&nbsp;</li><li><a href="http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/" target="_self">The Checklist Manifesto</a> takes this idea of military routine and applies it to mundane things like hand-washing, which save lives by avoiding infection.</li><li>Once you know the best way to do something, do it precisely and exactly, without sloppiness or somebody might get hurt.</li></ul>

12. Soldier

<ul><li>Chess has long been considered a game to improve one’s thinking.&nbsp;</li><li>There are plenty of thinking tools that can be mined from the game.</li><li>One is the ability to simulate the game in your mind’s eye.</li><li>&nbsp;A common trick of grandmasters is playing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindfold_chess" target="_self">blindfolded games</a>. </li><li>While this amazes spectators, it actually reinforces a useful practice—being able to see the game in your head,&nbsp;</li><li>So you can calculate future moves your opponent makes.</li><li>Trying to visualize what might happen, and then compare that prediction to reality. This can hone your simulation abilities</li></ul>

13. Chess Master

<ul><li>A useful tool here is how something is made suggests how to use it.&nbsp;</li><li>A well-designed door handle suggests push or pulls, without needing to say it.&nbsp;</li><li>A well-designed light switch should already tell you which rooms will be illuminated when you flip it.</li><li>What if you designed your speeches so that they automatically caused the audience to shift their thinking where you need them to go?&nbsp;</li><li>What if you designed your habits so that you automatically applied them?&nbsp;</li><li>The scope of this thinking tool is really quite broad.</li></ul>

14. Designer

<ul><li>How do you create knowledge inside someone else’s mind?&nbsp;</li><li>Most of us take for granted how amazing teaching actually is, and our own ability to learn from it.&nbsp;</li><li>To be effective, teachers need to have a model of how their pupil's minds see the world and pupils a game plan for changing it.</li><li>To succeed in most professions, you need to be able to make other people see the problems as you do.&nbsp;</li><li>This involves identifying what knowledge they lack and saying the right things&nbsp;</li><li>While this is an obvious skill for teachers, it also can benefit us by improving our ability to explain</li></ul>

15. Teacher

<ul><li>Anthropology is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology" target="_self">study of cultures</a>. </li><li>Unlike economics, which tends to focus on mathematical models, or psychology, which tends to do a lot of careful experiments,&nbsp;</li><li>Anthropologists learn about cultures by man immersing in them.</li><li>How could you immerse yourself in groups to which you don’t belong? Groups of different nationalities or languages? Politics or professions? </li><li>How could you learn how those groups of people function, have them accept you as you live alongside them? these answers lie in anthropology </li></ul>

16. Anthropologist

<ul><li>Psychology has different thinking tools embedded both in its assumptions about human nature, as well as in its methods for discovering it.</li><li>On the subject of psychology itself, there are countless tools. </li><li>Which can help you understand people better</li><li>Psychologists, like all scientists, involves creating experiments.&nbsp;</li><li>However, unlike other scientists, your object of study is human beings,&nbsp;</li><li>This means you often can’t let them know what you’re trying to adjust.</li></ul>

17. Psychologist

Many critics go beyond telling you which books to read and which movies to watch. They build analysis, interpretation and discussion that goes well beyond the original work.The thinking tools involved are quite important, even for people who don’t analyze literature for a living. For starters, there is the ability to pay quite close attention to creative works.&nbsp;Experiencing something much more deeply than just a shallow consumer. Second, there’s the tool of being able to connect that knowledge to a web of other issues and ideas.&nbsp;

18. Critic

one of the philosophers powerful tools is being able to see the unexpected consequences of stretching an idea to its limits. This has two benefits.<ol><li>it can reveal flaws in the original idea, by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum" target="_self">reductio ad absurdum</a>.&nbsp;</li><li>this can help you recognize the fundamental principles behind your vague intuitions of things.&nbsp;</li></ol>By exposing your ideas to stronger, hypothetical critiques, you can see the real mechanisms by which they work.

19. Philosopher

<ul><li>Money is the blood of a business.&nbsp;</li><li>Accounting is the work that watches how it flows around, checking to make sure it isn’t getting clogged up.</li><li>The idea of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_ratio" target="_self">ratio analysis</a>. for instance, is the debt the company owes to the equity put in by the owners. Get too high, and there’s a greater risk of default.&nbsp;</li><li>This kind of analysis is useful to non-accounting domains. you could imagine tracking many other numbers and their ratios: output per hours worked, money earned per hour.</li><li>Organizing the data, keeping track of the details and seeing the patterns beneath the surface are all tools that can be used.</li></ul>

20. Accountant

<ul><li>Politics offers its own set of tools, politician may do a great job, and still get kicked out because of bad PR.</li><li>Therefore the thinking tools possessed by politicians are about calculating&nbsp;</li><li>Not only the effect of some action but also on how that action will be perceived. </li><li>Both by the voting populace, and one’s allies and enemies.</li><li>The thinking tools here mean that sometimes the right decision isn’t possible, </li><li>Simply because other people won’t see it as such, and you don’t have the power to convince them.&nbsp;</li><li>This may be frustrating, but it applies to many parts of reality we’d rather it didn’t.</li></ul>

21. Politician

<ul><li>Many people see stories as the linguistic embodiment of history.</li><li>&nbsp;We take what actually happened and weave it into some words so others can see it for themselves.</li><li>Unfortunately, people understand stories much better than realities. </li><li>So often you need to package up the histories you want to tell people in a way that they can interpret.&nbsp;</li><li>While this applies to writing novels or making movies.&nbsp;</li><li>Telling stories is a part of everyone’s life.</li><li>From “Why do you want to work at this job,” to, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” </li><li>These are all stories, and we need to understand their structures.</li></ul>

22. Novelist

<ul><li>A popular thinking tool for acting is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_acting" target="_self">method acting</a>.&nbsp;</li><li>This technique involves trying to actually feel the emotions of the character you’re portraying, rather than just faking it.</li><li>This may seem to be a contradiction: how can you feel something you know is fake?</li><li>Changing your emotional state to get the results you want is a great tool used by actors.&nbsp;</li><li>Feeling insecure, but know you need confidence?&nbsp;</li><li>Why can’t you summon that up in yourself as if you’re playing a part?&nbsp;</li><li>But don’t fake it–feel it.</li></ul>

23. Actor

<ul><li>Tradespeople don’t get enough credit for having unique problem-solving tools and strategies.&nbsp;</li><li>Yet those professions often out-earn those with a college degree</li><li>The essence of plumbing, just like many other trades,&nbsp;</li><li>is to get your hands dirty and take something apart to see what’s broken. </li><li>To do this, you need a model of what’s in there—otherwise, you might get water spilling everywhere or a dangerous shock. </li><li>How many of us avoid understanding things because we’re afraid to get our hands dirty? </li><li>We don’t want to risk breaking something, so we never really understand how it works?</li></ul>

24. Plumber

<ul><li>Hacking is one of the most commonly misunderstood skills. </li><li>In practice, hacking is mostly about understanding that there is often a more complicated layer of instructions which a simpler layer is built on top.&nbsp;</li><li>The computer sits in hierarchies, so each level of abstraction simplifies and reduces the layer below</li><li>This thinking tool works for computers, but also other areas of life.&nbsp;</li><li>Remember: everything you see is usually a simplification of a deeper reality. </li><li>Which can mean that the underlying system may be broken in a way you wouldn’t naively expect.</li></ul>

25. Hacker

You're only as smart as your thinking tools. Here are twenty-five tools, drawn from different professions, you can apply to your most difficult challenges!

The Four Villains Of Decision Making

Decisive

Problem Solving: An In-Demand Skill

Hack your brain for better problem solving

The planning fallacy

Our Brains Make Us Way Too Optimistic About Meeting Deadlines. Here’s How to Work Around That

If you want to take on big problems. Try thinking like a bee

If you want to take on big problems, try thinking like a bee

CHARLIE MUNGER

Twenty-Five Useful Thinking Tools | Scott H Young

.css-d7z4j9{font-family:'Source Sans Pro',sans-serif;font-size:2rem;line-height:2.5rem;letter-spacing:-0.125%;font-weight:700;}The Four Villains Of Decision Making

Decisive

Problem Solving: An In-Demand Skill

Hack your brain for better problem solving

The planning fallacy

Our Brains Make Us Way Too Optimistic About Meeting Deadlines. Here’s How to Work Around That

If you want to take on big problems. Try thinking like a bee

If you want to take on big problems, try thinking like a bee

CHARLIE MUNGER

Twenty-Five Useful Thinking Tools | Scott H Young

The Four Villains Of Decision Making