Annie Duke: How to Decide

Annie Duke is an author, corporate speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space. As a former professional poker player, Annie won more than $4 million in tournament poker before retiring from the game in 2012.

Prior to becoming a professional player, Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education.

Annie is the author of Thinking in Bets* and her newest book, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices*.

Key Points

Better decision-making aims to reduce resulting and hindsight bias.

Avoid using a pro/cons list in decision-making, as it tends to reinforce biases you already have.

Use a decision tree to document potential decisions, possible outcomes, and the likelihood those outcomes will occur.

More people being involved in a decision is helpful, assuming you are actually leveraging each person’s independent thinking.

Negative thinking will help you foresee potential problems along the path of your decision so you can do a better job of mitigating issues before they occur.

Resources Mentioned

How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices* by Annie Duke

Thinking, Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right* by Atul Gawande

The Alliance for Decision Education

Book Notes

Download my highlights from How to Decide in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How Women Make Stronger, Smarter Choices, with Therese Huston (episode 255)

How to Approach Corporate Budgeting, with Jody Wodrich (episode 355)

How to Ask Better Questions, with David Marquet (episode 454)

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