What I'm learning about
What is the core unit of production for the knowledge worker? You can answer this question in multiple ways depending on how you're looking at it. But on a general level, decisions are the key output of most types of knowledge work. Decisions, in a sense, are the fundamental unit of production.
I've written previously about how to practice what you do as a knowledge worker. I believe that learning how to make better decisions is one of the most important things you can train in that respect.
Decisions are the roads and the traffic lights of an organization (and of your own work). Information is the traffic that flows through it. How we decide what to do with that information and what sort of problems we concern ourselves with are the inputs to the decision-making process.
As knowledge workers, and as managers in particular, decisions are the way we affect change. For any executive, decisions are your main tool for getting things done. And the quality of your output, your results, is determined by the quality of your decisions. Since there's a large degree of randomness and luck involved in what ends up as a good decision, it's fundamentally the quality of your decision-making process that you can try to improve.
If you believe that there are better or worse decision making processes and good or bad decisions. Then you should believe that decision-making is a skill that can be trained and taught.
A fundamental insight of decision-making as a practice is that it is not so much the result of any particular decision you should concern yourself with, but the general process you apply. You need a systems mindset rather than an outcome mindset when evaluating the quality of a decision. In other words, a good process can lead to a bad outcome, but still be the right general approach to making the decision. Over time, a good process will yield favorable outcomes.
This is why you should judge your decisions based on the underlying decision process, the system used, rather than as the result of an individual decision. When you've made a bad decision, the first thing you want to consider is whether it was a result of bad process or just the result of bad luck.
Broadly speaking, you can categorize decisions into two types. Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 decisions are irreversible and consequential. Type 2 decisions are anything that's not a Type 1 decision.
Most decisions we confront are Type 2 and should be made as quickly as possible since they are often reversible and not (very) consequential. Type 1 decisions, on the other hand, are potentially life-changing and should be made deliberately and thoughtfully - using a good process. You should take as much time as you can before making such a decision, delaying it until it's starting to cause a loss of opportunity. The longer you wait the more information you have to make the best possible decision, de-risking the path forward. You want to keep your options open to the largest degree possible.
An analogy, probably coined by Jeff Bezos, is that decision-making is like passing through a door. Most doors you can walk back through and in that case, you should just make the decision and see what happens (Type 2). Some decisions, however, are like a one-way door and once you've traversed the threshold there's no way back (Type 1). More than anything, you need to make it clear to yourself which kind of decision you are making because that will determine how you approach making it.
When you're dealing with very consequential (and irreversible*) decisions, such as if you should get a divorce, if you should move to a new city, whether or not to invest the whole company in a new product line, or if you should sell your company or keep going; the final decision can feel like an insurmountable obstacle that you have no idea how to tackle.
The first step when approaching such a decision is to break it down into smaller decisions that are more manageable (reversible and less consequential). What you're trying to do is to de-risk the larger decision by identifying several smaller decisions, each of which will give you more information about the potential outcome of the bigger, more consequential one.
Continuing with the door analogy, you wanna keep one foot left in the doorway and peak through the other side for as long as you can, before stepping through completely.
Finally, to decide is to kill your options:
* You can make the case that most things are reversible as long as you're not dead. But here I'm referring to "irreversible" in the sense that for most intents and purposes, it's not practically possible to go back and try again. You get one shot at it and if you miss, you miss.
Interesting things I've come across
Tradeoffs: The Currency of Decision Making
The final requirement in order to take tradeoffs into account is that you really need to be able to let go of not being great at something. If you’ve chosen to prioritize your relationship with your kids over a clean house, then you need to be okay with letting other people see the mess. If you’ve prioritized physical activity over entertainment, you need to accept that other people are going to tease you for being ignorant of what’s going on in the world. If you’ve chosen to focus on your career versus maintaining every friendship you’ve ever had, you need to get over the pang of hurt when people stop inviting you out. Tradeoffs aren’t always easy, which is probably why we try to avoid them.
(See also: Balance is overrated.)
If Game of Thrones was a sitcom (heavy spoilers!)
About DNA and Human Nature on the Making Sense Podcast
In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Robert Plomin about the role that DNA plays in determining who we are. They discuss the birth of behavioral genetics, the taboo around studying the influence of genes on human psychology, controversies surrounding the topic of group differences, the first law of behavior genetics, heritability, nature and nurture, the mystery of unshared environment, the way genes help determine a person’s environment, epigenetics, the genetics of complex traits, dimensions vs disorders, the prospect of a GATTACA-like dystopia and genetic castes, heritability and equality of opportunity, the implications of genetics for parenting and education, DNA as a fortune-telling device, and other topics.
Most people are familiar with the concept of nature vs nurture and that some things are determined more by one or the other. But most people severely underestimate just how large of an impact that our genes have on who we are and who we become. It's certainly a contentious topic, but we now know from decades of twin and adoption studies, among other things, just how much our genes matter for who we become. This has a substantial impact on everything from parenting to social policy. (Parenting probably doesn't matter as much as you think, but that's not to say it's not important.)
"DNA isn't everything that matters but it matters more than anything else."
Stay safe out there,
/Phil