Annie Duke Quotes

There are many reasons why wrapping our arms around uncertainty and giving it a big hug will help us become better decision-makers. Here are two of them. First, "I'm not sure" is simply a more accurate representation of the world. Second, and related, when we accept that we can't be sure, we are less likely to fall into the trap of black-and-white thinking.

As with visual illusions, we can't make our minds work differently than they do no matter how smart we are. Just as we can't unsee an illusion, intellect or willpower alone can't make us resist motivated reasoning.

The second is that making a plan for when to quit should be done long before you are facing the quitting decision. It recognizes, as Daniel Kahneman has pointed out, that the worst time to make a decision is when you're "in it."

The endowment effect is a cognitive bias where we value something we own more than we would if we didn't own it. We can be endowed to objects but also to our own ideas and beliefs. Endowment is an obstacle to quitting because when we irrationally value things we own, we miscalculate their expected value. We might think the company we started or the project we devised or the belief we have is worth more than it actually is. We prefer to stick with the status quo. We are more tolerant of bad outcomes that come from sticking with what we are already doing than bad outcomes that come from switching to something new. This phenomenon is part of omission-commission bias. When you say, "I'm just not ready to decide yet," what you are really saying is, "For now, I am choosing the status quo." Even in highly data-rich environments like professional sports, sunk cost, endowment, and status quo bias distort decision-making.

As you build things, whether they're train tracks, or bookshelves, or relationships, or essays that you've written for classes, the endowment effect gaffs the scale even more, further escalating our commitment to failing causes.

Luck is what intervenes between your decision (which has a range of possible outcomes) and the outcome that you actually get. Because any decision determines only the set of possible outcomes (some good, some bad, some in between), this means good outcomes can result from both good and bad

When the outcome turns out poorly, it's easy to focus on the details that suggest the decision process was poor. We think we are seeing the decision quality rationally because the bad process is obvious.

The decision you make determines which set of outcomes are possible and how likely each of those outcomes is. But it doesn't determine which of that set of outcomes will actually happen.

Despite the popular wisdom that we achieve success through positive visualization, it turns out that incorporating negative visualization makes us more likely to achieve our goals.

not all situations are appropriate for truthseeking, nor are all people interested in the pursuit.

A higher chance of failing is more tolerated on paths that don't rock the boat. After all, what's the go-to defense in a postmortem after we make a decision that doesn't work out? "I followed procedure," or "I stuck with the status quo," or "I made the consensus choice."

But omission-commission bias causes us not to view these decisions as equivalent. That's why we accept that explanation of "I'm not ready to make a decision yet" from others and why we accept it from ourselves. Of course, what that really means is "I'm not ready to veer from the status quo."

Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.

RESULTING A mental shortcut in which we use the quality of an outcome to figure out the quality of a decision.

In large part, we are what we do, and our identity is closely connected with whatever we're focused on, including our careers, relationships, projects, and hobbies. When we quit any of those things, we have to deal with the prospect of quitting part of our identity. And that is painful.