Be less certain

The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know. – Albert Einstein

I was scanning articles the other day, and I ran across this: Three Ways to Improve Your Decision Making. (HBR)

Now, if you talked to my wife, she would likely tell you that there are hundreds of ways to improve my decision making. So an article that whittles it down to three caught my attention.

Number one on the list? Be less certain. This comes from the article.

Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has said that overconfidence is the bias he’d eliminate first if he had a magic wand. It’s ubiquitous, particularly among men, the wealthy, and even experts. Overconfidence is not a universal phenomenon — it depends on factors including culture and personality — but the chances are good that you’re more confident about each step of the decision-making process than you ought to be.

 

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