Mapping out of your decisions is a way of alleviating hindsight bias and gives you a more granular understanding of how you work.
BY FAISAL HOQUE | March 31, 2014
Daniel Kahneman is something of a sage. He is a psychologist, yet he has won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Why? Because he’s demonstrated through experiment and argument that humans are not entirely rational creatures. In fact, we’re often quite irrational, making decisions that aren’t in our best interest, acting on impulse and blinded by unseen bias, and taking actions that aren’t well evaluated.
When Legg Mason Chief Investment Strategist, Michael J. Mauboussin, asked Kahneman what was the one best way was for him to improve his decision making. The psychologist’s reply was to buy a notebook.
This decision notebook, Mauboussin explained to the investment website Motley Fool has this purpose:
“Whenever you’re making a consequential decision…just take a moment to think, write down what you expect to happen, why you expect it to happen and then write down how you feel about the situation, both physically and even emotionally.”
What do you get from such a pen and paper practice? This mapping out of your decisions, Mauboussin explains, is a way of alleviating the hampering effects of hindsight bias, the nearly universal tendency to view past events with a favorable tilt toward our noble selves.
Read the full article @FastCompany.
