Decisive - How to make better choices

Question 1

What is the acronym used to help learn the process?

Answer 1

WRAP

Question 2

What does W in Wrap stand for?

Answer 2

Widen your options

Question 3

What does R stand for?

Answer 3

Reality test your assumptions

Question 4

What does A stand for?

Answer 4

Attain some distance

Question 5

What does P stand for?

Answer 5

Prepare to be wrong

Question 6

What are 3 ways to Widen your options?

Answer 6

1. Imagine the ‘vanishing options genie’ appears in a puff or smoke, and declares that if you pick any of the options you are currently considering he will make your head explode.
2. Multitrack - explore multiple options in parallel. “This AND that” rather than “this OR that
3. Looks for bright spots - find places, people or practices that are successful and figure out how to replicate them eg rather than “how do we fix malnutrition in poor villages” think “which villages are not suffering from malnutrition and what are they doing differently”

Question 7

What question should you ask to Reality-test your assumption for any option

Answer 7

What would have to be true for this option to be the correct answer” or “what evidence would have to be true to make it the wrong answer”.

Question 8

In Reality-Test your assumption, what does consider both a inside view and outside view mean?

Answer 8

Outside view provides base rates, which then anchor your assessment of the inside evidence eg you might naively put your chances of business success at 50%, but once you find out that 99% of similar startups fail, you may be forced to realize that you don’t have sufficient evidence about your own uniqueness to update that base rate so far.
A simple way to obtain an outside view is to find someone with more experience than you and ask them for a base rate. Beware that asking for a specific prediction about your case might trigger the same inside view distortion that you are trying to avoid. Good questions: “what are the important variables in a case like this”, “what kind of evidence can tip the verdict”, “what percentage of cases like this get settled before trial”. Bad questions: “do you think I can win this case”, “what would you do if you were me”.

Question 9

In Reality-Test your assumption, what does Break out of the filter bubbles mean?

Answer 9

Seek out multiple independent points of view and don’t contaminate them by sharing data between them. See how many of those views turn up the same points.
Sample texture. Eg rather than only looking at percentage of good reviews, read a few random reviews to see if the pros and cons apply to you. Eg rather than only looking at defect rates in factory, visit some of the workers and see how the defects happen.

Question 10

In Reality-Test your assumption, what does Ooch mean?

Answer 10

find cheap, fast ways to test theories and get feedback. Eg before committing years to studying for a particular career, find a way to intern or shadow someone for a few weeks. Eg hire several candidates for trial periods rather than relying on interviews to pick one.

Question 11

In Attain Distance before deciding, what is the 10/10/10 rule.

Answer 11

How will you feel about this decision ten minutes from now? How about ten months? Ten years? Eg asking someone out - in ten minutes might be happy or embarrassed, in ten years might be married or might have totally forgotten about the whole thing. Explicitly considering different time-frames helps correctly weigh the impact of short-term emotions

Question 12

What is a simple question to ask yourself when trying to Attain Distance.

Answer 12

what would I advise my best friend to do in this situation