Annie Duke Quotes

The actual outcome casts a shadow over your ability to remember what you knew at the time of the decision.

John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, summed up this phenomenon well when he said, "Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally." Succeeding unconventionally carries with it the risk of experiencing failure as a result of veering from the status quo.

One of Teller's valuable insights is that pedestal-building creates the illusion of progress rather than actual progress itself.

We are much more bothered by the downside potential of changing course than we are by the downside potential of staying on the path we're already on.

Precision uncovers disagreement. It uncovers places where your belief is different from someone else's belief. And that's good, because you want to find out when you have something wrong. It gives you the chance to get it right. Think about it like this: Saying "2 + 2 is a small number" will help you get better at math, but it won't help you become an expert. "A small number" is technically correct, but it is much more helpful for your teacher to find out if you think the answer is 5, or 2, or 4, which are all small numbers. It's true that the less precise answer makes it harder to be wrong, but you want to find out when you have the wrong answer if you are going to get better at math.

People didn't even agree on what the terms always and never meant! If you're like most people, you were pretty surprised by these results. Most of us aren't aware of the wide range of what these words mean to different people. We assume that when we use a term, other people use it in the same way we do and mean the same thing we do.

Third, ask for a temporary agreement to engage in truthseeking. If someone is off-loading emotion to us, we can ask them if they are just looking to vent or if they are looking for advice. If they aren't looking for advice, that's fine. The rules of engagement have been made clear. Sometimes, people just want to vent. I certainly do. It's in our nature. We want to be supportive of the people around us, and that includes comforting them when they just need some understanding and sympathy. But sometimes they'll say they are looking for advice, and that is potentially an agreement to opt in to some truthseeking. (Even then, tread lightly because people may say they want advice when what they really want is to be affirmed.)

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.

They learned the lesson the ants have down pat: Don't wait to be forced to quit to start exploring alternatives.

In fact, losing feels about two times as bad to us as winning feels good to us.

We are all trying to defend ourselves against how we imagine other people are going to judge us.

Essentially, regardless of the history they have with the decision, they ask themselves, "If I were approaching this decision fresh, would I want to enter into this course of action?"

Once we are in a group that regularly reinforces exploratory thought, the routine becomes reflexive, running on its own. Exploratory thought becomes a new habit of mind, the new routine, and one that is self-reinforced.

We process outcomes sequentially, treating each outcome as if it stands alone. We don't sit back and wait to update our beliefs until we have enough data to overcome the uncertain relationship between outcomes and decisions.

A lot of experience can be an excellent teacher. A single experience, not so much. Looking across a large enough set of decisions and outcomes, we can start to tease out the lessons experience might offer us. Looking at just one outcome, we get resulting and hindsight bias.