Thinking in Bets focuses on how natural human tendencies often lead to poor decision making and offers up some tools to improve the decision making process. I found it a worthwhile read and would distill the content down to three major takeaways. 

Think in Probabilities 

In business and in life, there is almost always some uncertainty in the decision making process. To address this uncertainty, it is helpful to consider the full range of outcomes for a particular decision and to estimate the probability for each outcome. If it is very difficult to estimate probabilities, it may be helpful to gather more information to the extent that is possible. This approach leads to a more fully informed decision rather than only considering the most desired or likely outcome and ignoring the other possible outcomes, one of which may occur with some frequency based on the combined probabilities of all other outcomes. 

Consistent Decision Quality Delivers Long-Term Success

The outcome of any one decision is driven by a mix of judgment (i.e., skill) and luck. To evaluate decision quality, it is critical to separate the decision from the outcome. High quality decisions maximize the probabilities of desired outcomes based on the information available at the time. It can take discipline to maintain consistently high decision quality but doing so provides the best chance of successful long-term outcomes, as the luck elements that can play a major role in individual outcomes will tend to even out over longer time periods with larger samples of decisions. Regularly reflecting on past decision quality is a good way to identify factors such as fatigue that may influence one’s ability to maintain high decision quality. 

Shift Time to Aid Decision Quality

Changing one’s perspective in time relative to a decision can provide clues to decision quality. There are different flavors to this framework. One can imagine him or herself ten years into a desired future and then consider what role the decision at hand would play in manifesting such a future. One can also imagine a decision will lead to a negative outcome and then brainstorm what factors may have led to such an outcome. Both of these time-shifting mental frameworks help ensure the probabilistic thinking in the present is not lacking any key scenarios or inputs. 

As a bonus takeaway, keep in mind that nobody makes the optimal decision all the time, so we can all strive to improve our decision quality one decision at a time!