Our decisions are one of the biggest factors determining the quality of our lives. We make as many as 35,000 decisions every day; most are unconscious or small, like “When will I get out of bed?” and some can be big like “Who will I marry or where will I go to college?” And, when you think about it, every conscious decision we make is essentially a bet: it is a bet that we will be happy we made that decision.

And yet, as humans, we have many biases that may inhibit good decision making. For example, shocking as this may sound, we tend to change facts in order to accommodate our beliefs when it should be the opposite: we actually need to be able to change our beliefs in order to accommodate new facts. Making matters worse, we generally don't have good systems in place to analyze our decisions to get better at making similar decisions next time.

My guest on this episode is a true expert when it comes to decision making. Annie Duke has nearly finished her doctorate in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania but it gets way more interesting. She has also made high stakes decisions for many years as one of the most successful professional female poker players of all time. She has also authored several bestselling books including, Thinking in Bets, which has been hailed by the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and by luminaries in business like Marc Andreessen.

Annie provides keen and actionable insights into how we are blind to our decision-making processes and real-world solutions to improving this crucial skill.

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