Annie Duke

So Mike, have you ever, maybe you're somebody like this, or do you know people like this where you go to a restaurant and they're looking at the menu and it just takes them forever to decide what to eat?

Right.

Like it's particularly bad if you're, you know, at like the Cheesecake Factory, which I think has like a 20 page menu or something like that.

But even if you're at a place with a relatively small menu, people tend to really, really struggle with that decision.

And I think that part of the reason that people struggle with that decision is that pretty quickly after you order, you're going to get whatever it is you ordered and it's either going to be good or bad.

And when it's bad, you're going to feel like you made a mistake.

So what they're trying to do is to get to the right choice to avoid that feeling of I made a mistake because I don't like my food.

But of course, we have to remember every decision being a forecast that first of all, there's no way for you to know whether your dish is going to be great or bad in advance of getting it.

So you're just having you're making your best guess.

And if it turns out the chicken is dry, it doesn't mean you made a mistake.

But more importantly, the reason why we shouldn't take a lot of time on that decision is because it doesn't really matter, not in the long run.

So Mike, I mean, I can ask you this.

Let's say that we go to lunch and you order something and it turns out that you don't like your lunch very much.

If I catch you a year later,

after we've had that meal and I say to you, you know, hey, just catching up with you after a year, the last time I saw you was at that lunch a year ago and you didn't really like it very much.

How much did that meal affect your happiness over the course of this last year?

None.

Now, what if I see you a month later and I say, hey, it's been a month since we had that lunch.

Like, how much did that lunch affect your happiness over the last month?

No, not much.