Annie Duke

That being said, there's a flip side to that, which is that we don't want the second guessing to go to zero.

And the reason that we don't want that to go to zero is that when we choose to do something, so let's say we choose to take a job.

Remember, I said every decision is a forecast.

We're choosing to take the job under conditions where we don't have a lot of information.

We've done some interviews.

We've researched the position and the company, talked to a few people who are there, gotten some vibes, and we decide to take the job.

But what do we really know about what it's going to be like when we're actually working there?

We don't know a whole lot.

So one of the things that we want to think about when we're entering into something is that that decision should not be treated as last and final.

It should be the thing that I'm doing now, but I need to think about what are the signals that would tell me that this was a choice that I would prefer to change.

Right.

So in other words, we don't want to live a life where the first job we take is the last job that we ever do unless we happen to get fired from the job.

We need to realize that we do have the option to quit, to change and go do other jobs.

So you need to get a balance between committing to the thing you're doing, but also paying attention to the signals that that job might not be for you.

In general, I think that people decide too slowly.

But stepping back from that, every decision is not created equal.

And we need to understand what are the types of decisions that we should be taking our time on and what are the types of decisions that we can go pretty fast on.

And if we can understand that, we can actually get to a better balance.

So the types of decisions that we can go really fast on are ones where

it's okay to make a mistake.