How to make better decision
How to make better decision
The Playbook #8: Outcomes ≠ Decision quality
This post is part of the design playbook, a collection of practical tactics, approaches, and mindsets about design by Thomas Budiman.
Don’t you realize you make many decisions throughout the design process?
From the tools or activities you chose to understand the problem space. The concept you decided to go for. The entry point and user flow you picked because you thought were the best ones to interact with. The layout you settled down—the component variants you selected.
There are a lot of decisions to make.
Your decisions determine how your outcome turns out. There might be luck playing a role, though. But focus only on what you have control over – which is making good decisions.
Annie Duke (author and former pro poker player) says, “Making better decisions starts with learning from experience.”
She asked hundreds of people about what was their best decision of the last year. It always turned out people answered their best outcome. So did when they were asked what their worst decision was, they told her their worst outcome.
We want outcome quality to align with decision quality. We want the world to make sense in this way, to be less random than it – Annie Duke
It’s natural to judge that your decision quality must be great when the outcome is the best. Let’s be real: You can get the best outcome from poor decisions, too–perhaps you were just lucky.
Great outcomes can come from good or bad decisions, and so can bad outcomes.
When you always align the outcomes with the quality of decisions, maybe the next time you repeat those decisions, it won't be a success like your past glory. On other hand, you may avoid some good decisions you’ve made because they didn't work out last time.
“Learning from experience allows you to make better decisions
as you go along.”
Annie Duke
So, to improve your decision quality, next time, when the outcomes are in front of you, good or bad, whether your design helped the conversion rates or not, ask yourself:
How was the decision quality?
Even if bad decisions preceded a bad outcome, can you identify some good decisions made along the way? Can you identify some ways in which the process of coming to the decision was good?
Even if good decisions preceded a good outcome, can you identify some ways the decision could have been better? Can you identify some ways in which the process of coming to the decision could be improved?
What are the factors outside the control of the decision-maker (who might be you), including the actions of other people?
What are the other ways things could have turned out?
– Taken from How to Decide, Annie Duke
Improving your decision quality starts with reflecting on your past decision-making experience, no matter the outcome.
References:
Other posts from The Playbook: