Outsmart your own decision biases

Outsmart yur own decision biasesOutsmart your own decision biasesWelcome to human nature. We are all, to varying degrees, prejudiced.We are influenced by different unconscious biases.Theodore Roosevelt once said, In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is leidhing.You make thousands of rational decisions every day?- ?or so you thinkPrejudice impact our thinking every day, but few of us even know they exist, saysNorma Montague, assistant professor of accounting at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.The word bias has a negative connotation, but its most often unintentional and a result of heuristicsmental shortcuts that allow people to make quick, efficient decisions, she says.Good decisions are often the result, but not always.We see ourselves as possessing the truth. Yet we all chose prey to human egocentricity (an inability to understand or assume any perspect ive other than our own)?- ?although not to the same degree.None of us will ever be a perfect thinker, but we can all be better thinkers.Deep and critical thinking is hard. Learning how to think is even harder. Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it, said Henry Ford.Thinking means sifting through information, filtering the most important piece, and connecting it to a framework that you can use.The ability to think and process multiple pieces of information quickly and effectively is a vital skill to have.No matter what your circumstance or goals, no matter where you are or what problems you face, you are better off if you are in control of your thinking, and apply better-thinking models in both short-term and long-term decisions.Dont confuse IQ with thinking, fast or slow.Those with high IQ are not necessarily life smart.IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning abil ity and working-memory capacity?- ?how much information you can hold in mind.But when it comes to abilities crucial to making good judgements in real-life situations, you need more than a test score.Whether youre answering hard questions, making impromptu remarks, analyzing a situation, or synthesizing data, critical thinking on your feet is crucial.A high IQ is like height in a basketball player, saysDavid Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things arent equal. Theres a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and theres a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ.In our fast-paced and fluid world, youve got to be able to pull out the right piece of knowledge at the right time.The good news is that everyone can improve their rational thinking and decision-making skills.Think about yourthinkingMetacognit ion, as this is known, is a crucial skill.Thinking about thinking is the ability to know what we know and what we dont know.It is the ability to plan a strategy for producing the information that is needed, to be conscious of your own steps and strategies during the act of problem-solving, and to reflect on and evaluate the productiveness of your own thinking.How many times do you stop yourself and think about your thought processes and the heuristics you apply in making judgements in life or business?InThe Art of Thinking Clearly, authorRolf Dobelliwrites, Whether we like it or not, we are puppets of our emotions. We make complex decisions by consulting our feelings, not our thoughts. Against our best intentions, we substitute the question, What do I think about this? with How do I feel about this?Unless you actively think about which mental shortcuts is best suited for the task at hand, you could end up making bad judgements when it matters most.Many scientists argue that the best predictor of good judgment isnt intelligence or experience its the willingness to engage in introspection.Dont over-persevereYour decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.Do you think you make smart, rational decisions most of the time?Chances are good that even if you pride yourself on being rational most of the time, you leise occasionally fall for the sunk-cost fallacy.The sunk-cost fallacy sees us continue to invest in an established project rather than cutting loose when something is over budget.Put another way, dont over-persevere.Quit early when it mattersIn psychologistDaniel Kahnemansbook,Thinking Fast and Slow, he writes about how he and his colleague Amos Tversky through their work in the 1970s and 80s uncovered the imbalance between losses and gains in your mind.Kahneman explains that since all decisions involve uncertainty about the future, the human brain you use to make decisions has evolved an automatic and unconscious system for judging how to proceed when a potential for loss arises.We often dont quit early enough, says Kahneman.Behavioral economistDan Arielyadds a fascinating twist to lose aversion in his book,Predictably Irrational.He writes that when factoring the costs of any exchange, you tend to focus more on what you may lose in the bargain than on what you stand to gain.The pain of paying, as he puts it, arises whenever you must give up anything you own. The precise amount doesnt matter at first.Youll feel the pain no matter what price you must pay, and it will influence your decisions and behaviours.Stay in the present, and cut your losses.Plan for theworstDenis Waitleyonce said, Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.As paradoxical as it sounds?- ?The best way to shield yourself from nasty surprises is to anticipate them.We tend to make plans which are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios.We prefer to ignore statistics suggesting things may go wrong, and ignore the probability of whatDonald Rumsfeldfamously called unknown unknowns.Pessimists might already be great at planning for worst case scenarios.Persevere and by all means pursue your life goals, but you need to get some plan in place for when the unexpected happens.Some events, no matter how much you plan, will still be a major blow.The loss of a job, the diagnosis of a serious disease, or the loss of a home would be a major negative shock in anyones life, but proper planning ahead will make the difficult news easier to bear.Take a moment (and give your brain some time to think) before making your nextdecisionHeres the problem in our rapidly changing, high-pressured, distracting world, our working memory gets taxed.Your brains capacity is constantly overburdened and thus diminished in function over time.It pays to let your mind wander.Give it a break. This promotes the creative incubation process, giving you moments of fore sight every now and then.According to astudypublished in the Psychological Science, the brains capacity for original and creative thinking is enhanced by stray thoughts, obsessive ruminations and other forms of mental load.The findings suggest that innovative thinking, not routine ideation, is our default cognitive mode when our minds are clear.Honing an ability to unburden the load on your mind, be it through meditation or some other practice, can bring with it a wonderfully magnified experience of the world?- ?and, as the study suggests, of your own mind.Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets, essayistTim Kreiderwrote in The New York Times.Everyone could use more white space during the week.Make a decision to make time. You wont create time for thinking if you dont actively make the time for it.Commit to spending a few hours every week on thinking and reflection.At some point in the week, stop, sit down and just think.The unexamined life is not worth living, Socrates observed.You can quickly make life more pleasant, more fulfilling if you slow down.When you enter a space outside the flow of targets and deadlines, you can start to focus on what is happening in your life right now.Fine-tune your routine to make rational thinking and metacognition a regular feature of your day.Taking just a fraction of a second more to make a decision could help improve your decision-making accuracy, according to a recent PLoS ONE study.Postponing the onset of the decision process by as little as 50 to 100 milliseconds enables the brain to focus attention on the most relevant information and lager out irrelevant distractors, saidJack Grinband, PhD, associate research scientist in the Taub Institute and assistant professor of clinical radiology at Columbia University Medical Center.Even the smartest people exhibit biases in their judgments and choices. But with practice, you can anticipate and outsmart them by nudging yourself in the right direction when its time to make a life-changing decision.Before yougoIf you enjoyed this post, you will lovePostanly Weekly(my free digest of the best productivity, psychology, and neuroscience posts).Subscribeand get a free copy of my new book, The Power of One Percent Better Small Gains, Maximum Results.Join over 36,000 people on a mission to build a better life.Thisarticlefirst appeared onMedium.