Annie Duke | How to Make the Most Important Decisions of Your Life

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Srini: Annie welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to

Annie Duke: join us. Well, thank you so much for having me.

Srini: Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So as I was saying right before we hit record here I had pulled up on your book thinking in bets at I remember adding it to my list on Amazon as I gotta read this book and then when I finally read it, I was like, okay I have to get in touch with you because I've so many questions now after reading this, but before we get into your book and your work, I want to stop asking what did your parents do for a living and what impact did that end up having on the choices that you've made with your life and

Annie Duke: career.

Annie Duke: Gosh, I can I just tell you you're like literally the only person who's ever asked me that and it's actually a very it's a really important impact that they had and it's probably in an unexpected way. So my parents met. In graduate school, my father had gone to law school. And about a year and he just decided like it wasn't for him that his passion was teaching and particularly his passion was English literature.

Annie Duke: So he then switches to the master's program in English lit, my mom and dad actually meet over a game of bridge because my dad pulled her out of the hallway and said we need a fourth. Do you happen to play bridge which I think is kind of funny since. Obviously I ended up being a poker player and and my brother was a card player as well.

Annie Duke: But at any rate, so that's strange. And so that's how they met. Anyway, my dad gets a job up at coming out of the master's program. He gets a job at a. Prep School in New England, so this was in 1961. It's an Episcopalian Prep School st. Paul School. There he's like they decide they need diversity.

Annie Duke: So they are him because he's do it and off he goes to teach at this Prep School. What's interesting about my father story is that his father had emigrated to the US when he was a child and had never gotten past sixth grade. So it's kind of this interesting like, you know his dad his dad never finishes sixth grade and now his son.

Annie Duke: Get some Masters ended up teaching at this, you know private school. My dad did actually end up getting a PhD in English. He taught at that school forever that allowed his children to go to that school for free which made a really big difference. My mother had a master's in neck. I think in history, actually she taught for a couple years but ended up being stay at home after that.

Annie Duke: And then my dad starts writing a column for the newspaper like the local newspaper and Concord New Hampshire. He some publisher than finds his columns thinks. They're cool. Ask him if he would write a book. He does. It's called anguished English. It becomes like a big bestseller and my dad now like has written like.

Annie Duke: 30 bucks or something like that. You can look them up as and Richard letter or so. I've heard of that book actually look at with English. That's my dad. Okay, so that's what they did. So my mom is basically stay at home. You know, my dad's really an English teacher eventually when I'm old this is when a much older so I think of him as a teacher he becomes he becomes a writer and then and then does some speaking so I in high school was very math oriented.

Annie Duke: But my parents who were both like my mom was a history major. My dad was an English major everything in my family was really around like a liberal arts and like particularly Humanities and there was like this. I don't I don't know if they intended this but there was this very deep value communicated around the humanities.

Annie Duke: So I'm in high school by the time I finished high school. I finished calculus 2. I go off to college and it's just sort of assumed. I'm going to become an English major. This is the Assumption in the family. This is what I do. I go off of I'm an English major now. I also backdoored into a double major in Psychology, but I didn't really pursue math.

Annie Duke: And I think I think it just goes to show you like these influences that you don't even realize are happening in your life. Right? Because I look back on that and I think wow if I had a child. Who is who is sort of that far along and math? I would have been encouraging them in college to pursue this.

Annie Duke: Meanwhile in college. I take zero math classes and I look back on that and that's one of my really big regrets. Like I wish I wish that I had pursued math and some way. So anyway that obviously end up having this very strange influence on me because it pushes me over to this other thing. Which probably ended up working out because that now I obviously develop writing skills through that but I now end up with this convergence of psychology and English Lit end up going to graduate school in Psychology and then discovered pretty quickly that the writing skills were actually really really helpful and graduate school in terms of being able to communicate ideas.

Annie Duke: That was all great and then at the end of graduate school I get sick. I need to take time off before I go and become a professor and then now finally now many years later. I find my way back to. So my father, you know be damned I found my way back to doing math.

Srini: So, I wonder as somebody who went through our Public School System.

Srini: I've always curious what the sort of version of school or education is like for somebody who gets to be in that kind of environment. Like what impact does that have because you mentioned that that played a significant role and when you've been in that kind of environment, I wonder when you see something like the College admission Scandal, you know.

Srini: What is your reaction to it?

Annie Duke: Yeah. So first of all, I actually have this interesting juxtaposition because up until 10th grade. I actually was in the public school system in New Hampshire and it was somewhere near 50th in the country. So I was it was a really like woah now I'm in a different kind of school.

Annie Duke: So. The the school that I went to I mean, it's Indescribable what the education is like they're, you know, you're basically doing liberal arts college as high school. I mean, it's like a small it's 500 kids. There were like 70 faculty for the 500 kids. Classes had you know, the math class has had a few more, you know more people in them.

Annie Duke: Maybe you know. 15 people in them or 20 maximum in the math classes and then the humanities classes you'd have like six people in the class so so much like individual attention so much college preparatory work in an English class. You are expected to read about a hundred and fifty Pages a week. It was a paper a week.

Annie Duke: So I mean, this is really like getting you ready for college and then you know when you go to college. The first two years are almost like repetition of what you already did. So that's that's the first thing is that it like completely prepares you but here is here's the thing where I think about the college admissions Scandal is I think that my experience at st.

Annie Duke: Paul's shows. Why what the college admissions candle tells you is that you should actually keep the SAT and not get rid of it and the reason being that at the time in my class. A hundred and twenty kids 71 kids went to Ivy League schools. And the reason that those 71 kids went to Ivy League schools were yes, they you know, they were getting a really good education and I'm sure that our SATs coming out of that school kind of better than average, but that's not why we were getting into those.

Annie Duke: That's that's not why that number got into the schools. It was because every single admissions agent that every single admissions person. At each of the Ivy League schools had a very deep and long relationship with the admissions people at my school so they could just literally like call them up on the phone and say aye here's the people who are going to apply I you know, you should really take them.

Annie Duke: So I think about this College admission Scandal and it's actually the thing about like, how are you thinking about the world and how are you sort of getting past your initial reaction? Right, so people looked at that and they said we have to get rid of the SAT obviously because look at these people they have gained it and they have cheated it and as someone who thinks about Game Theory I say no that's actually exactly the opposite the fact that they had to game it in order to gain admission to these schools shows why it's actually a really great gatekeeper because if you're thinking about someone like.

Annie Duke: You know Lori Loughlin who's married to a billionaire that you know that the daughter is like famous. Any school would die to have that person on their campus, you know, obviously they're trying to get that person on their campus the fact that that grades and SATs. Created a barrier. Such that that family felt like they had to cheat actually shows that that creates a really good barrier and when we think about what are the other things between besides an SAT that a school is using in order to decide whether to have somebody, you know, come in the gates.

Annie Duke: Well, we think about extracurriculars, right? And if you look at what an upper middle class family is spending on extracurriculars and enrichment activities compared to a family that's lower class. They have a ten-to-one outspend. I think it might even be an eight an 11 to one out spend. So I think that the upper middle class family is spending between seven and eight thousand dollars per year on extra, you know, extracurriculars and enrichment and the lower class family is spending about 700.

Annie Duke: So until working at like McDonald's becomes an acceptable enrichment and extracurricular activity, you know, because a lot of those kids have to work in the afternoon right that that upper middle class kids don't have to do the parents can't spend in order to create that kind of like, you know broadly experience sort of whole child right that that admissions people are sort of using as part of the.

Annie Duke: Admissions that's where you see that there's like this unless it's almost ungh aimable right? Because it's just sort of built in that the more of the stuff you do the better. So I look at that and I say, well you should do things to try to make it harder to cheat on the SAT and then keep it. The other thing is that there actually and there was actually a great thread on Twitter from Dave am Babel that shows that there actually isn't really any good scientific data that shows that the that the tutoring really up your score a lot.

Annie Duke: So there's a lot of like anecdotal data from Hooters themselves,saying like, oh, you know I had this kid who got a 200 Point increase but. There's no scientific data that actually supports that that you get a really that you get a really significant jump in your score with tutoring. And the other thing is that now the College Board is creating Partnerships in order to make sat tutoring accessible and free.

Annie Duke: So for example now Khan Academy. As a partnership so that it's just accessible to anybody if they want to, you know, if they want to work to get tutoring on how to take the test and so on and so forth so you can actually solve for that you can you can make that kind of stuff accessible. But what it proves is that if your kids not getting a great SAT score, there's not a lot you can do to get that score up a lot besides heating.

Annie Duke: So I think that that actually. Helps to even the playing field so that you know people from st. Paul's don't just get the chance to have the admissions person like call up and say hey let this person in and and that's actually less than over time. So for example by the time that my sister who's 7 years younger than I am by the time she graduated from st.

Annie Duke: Paul's out of a hundred and twenty kids. It was 40 kids going to Ivy League's and now if you look at those statistics, it's much less. Because over time that just sort of like pipeline people become more aware of that and it started to get reduced and it is much more. It has become much more based on like just what are your grades?

Annie Duke: And what are your SATs?

Srini: It's funny because I'm I look at Berkeley now and even my sister and I both went to Cal and we both thank you to we would probably never get in right now. Right so we had in high school. Like there's no way because becomes so much more competitive. So I wonder as somebody who you know was raised by academics, you know comes from a Jewish Family, which I from the conversations I've had with other Jewish people on this show sounds like, you know, you get raised with very similar narratives to Indian parents.

Srini: In the world was the response from your parents when you said, you know what I'm going

Annie Duke: to go and play poker. Yeah. So so I was I had the advantage of my brother already having broken their spirit before I went off. So so like just just you know to your point about like kind of what was the ethic and the household.

Annie Duke: I remember coming back from I think was in junior high. You know at this point, you know feel like bottom rank through your high school in New Hampshire and I came back to and I remember saying to my mother. Hey my friends like their parents. I'll give them like five dollars for every a they get like and I was asking like do you think I could like have the same deal and her response?

Annie Duke: I'm telling you. This is a quote her response was why would I do that? You're a letter or what else would you get? Well,

Srini: I've had that exact conversation with my dad by the way, and my dad said you get a meal on the table and a roof of it. This conversation is over like

Annie Duke: all right, I'm not sure. I don't know.

Annie Duke: I think that would have been better for my psyche. It was just literally this idea like well, I think the a is like that's the. Expectation below that is this pale your you should be paying me lady. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. So what happened was that my brother so my brother graduated from st. Paul's he got into he got into Columbia, you know, as one does from st.

Annie Duke: Paul's okay after your Ivy League school and and he deferred a year. So he defers a year moves off to New York to study with a grand master in chest because he had started playing chess when he was like 13 or 14 really really into it and started, you know, doing some stuff on like the tournament circuit.

Annie Duke: So I think he got up to he got up to a mess. He did get a master rating. So he's now take a so he then decided he wanted really wanted to pursue that he had been like doing tournaments during the summer. During High School takes the year off goes to study with a Grandmaster and during that year.

Annie Duke: He starts playing poker and he basically ends up never going back to school. I mean he did. He actually he and I think a few years later. He did like six months or one or two semesters at Columbia, but that was it. He never he never actually finished. So he started playing poker at that point. So by the time I started playing poker, It's he's been playing for 10 years professionally already.

Annie Duke: So like I say the spirit had already been broken by the time I came around I will tell you though that my father for my whole adult life. Has said to me. I would say. Five times a year so well. Are you going to finish

Srini: that PhD,

Annie Duke: you know and for a long time I was like, I don't really see why I need it. Now. I'm actually now I'm actually back to doing some academic research. So I'm sort of leaving it open-ended as whether that ends up in a PhD but I am doing I'm doing the research for because it there's actually two different things that I'm doing about questions that I just find incredibly.

Annie Duke: Interesting to me and I thought well, I can actually find out the answers to these through using science. So so and may actually end up we'll see if I do that for my dad and then my dad can you know, we can finally even finally leave them leave this earth really feeling like but they're what you know, his child has accomplished what he always dreams,

Srini: too.

Srini: Yeah, they don't feel bad. I had a friend whose mother told him and when we were in high school, if you want me to go to my grave in peace, you'll become a

Annie Duke: doctor. Oh my gosh. There you go. There you go. I mean, it's like it's I have a master's like my sister has an MFA, you know, maybe this could make them happy you seem to be very focused on the PHD, but.

Srini: Well, I think that actually makes a perfect segue to talking about this whole idea of making decisions because you know as we were talking about before we hit record here, I think one of the strangest things about the way we start making decisions is how early we make such consequential decisions with no real validity to the data that we have.

Srini: Yeah, you go into college and they're like, these are the majors. These are the potential careers that leads to. Hopefully you like it as it if you don't life sucks. So I kind of Wonder, you know starting at that point. You know how when you're working with such limited information. Can you make better decisions or do you just fuck it up and then say okay, you know what now I can go back and fix it.

Annie Duke: Yeah, so so that means it's an interesting question. I mean I as I said to you before before we hit record, oh, I wish you could overhear my conversations with I have four children two of whom were actually three of whom were in college, but two of them thinking about this issue of Majors right now and the math stress.

Annie Duke: It's like, oh my gosh, and and most of my conversation with them is it doesn't really matter. Don't worry about it, like whatever you're majoring and it's so kind of irrelevant what you're going to end up doing and the chances that the chances that in 15 or 20 years, you know, you're doing something that you would have predicted that you were doing when you're 18 is just like so incredibly small.

Annie Duke: Yeah, so so I'm always this sort of like trying to calm them down. It's like major in whatever make sure that you're really good with. You know, you know creating relationships with your teachers I think is incredibly important with your professors, you know have really great relationship with your peers because you should just have friends you're in college like have fun, you know, make sure that your grades are good enough, you know, and then afterwards you're going to try a bunch of stuff out and it's all good because you have so much time to change your mind.

Annie Duke: And I think that this is actually really important in terms of thinking sort of just how do you figure out what's a decision that I'm supposed to take a lot of time on versus what to decision that I should like decide, you know, I can decide quickly and I can be nimble and kind of figure this out and it's you can broadly think about it as a question about the stakes of the.

Annie Duke: And if we so what we can think about is sort of the first the first thing is what's the cost to reverse like what's the cost to me to reverse? So we can think about cost is obviously like money or or time those kinds of things. And so you can kind of ask like well really, is there a big cost to me to reverse this decision and certainly when you're talking about somebody.

Annie Duke: Who's in their 20s who's just out of you know college who's going to be entering a job at the entry level? There isn't a whole lot of cost to reverse right you go you go try a job. If it doesn't work out. It's not really a big deal because you're just you're just enter you just go into another entry level position and it's not like.

Annie Duke: You know, I mean, I see all sorts of people in finance, you know getting hired who actually like have history degrees right? For example, like you don't necessarily need to have a degree in the thing that you're being hired for because they are recognizing that you're young and as long as you're a really good thinker, you know when you present well a new interview well that they're probably going to be able to teach you.

Annie Duke: Whatever it is that they need to teach you specifically for whatever it is that you're going to be doing. And if you need further schooling they may suggest that and help you with that anyway, so when you're really young there's this very low cost to reverse you can sort of be you know more you can more be more sort of risk-seeking and take some more Gamble's and sort of try stuff, you know, obviously like when you're 60, That's a whole different story like losing your job when you're 60, or being out of work for a little while or having to change careers.

Annie Duke: Like that's a whole different thing. But certainly when you're 20, the cost of reverse isn't really big. So like I think like one of the best ways to sort of dig down and think about this is to think about ordering in a in a restaurant. So like the I'm sure you know these people who like, I mean literally they're trying to solve.

Annie Duke: You know relativity or something like that. It's like 20 minutes for them to try to decide and it's like they're asking you like what do you think? What should I order you're asking the waiter? Like, you know what between these this is like which one would you have? Right but this is actually this is actually quite a lot of people are doing this right and so I think that if they just stopped and said to themselves.

Annie Duke: You know, what are the stakes of this decision? Like well, first of all, it's low stakes on its face because you're going to eat another meal and like 6 hours like you're gonna get another try really fast. But the other thing is this is I think a really important question to ask yourself whatever the result of this is do I think in the future like let's say in a week as I look back on my happiness over the week.

Annie Duke: That how the chicken was versus the fish is going to have ticked my happiness up or down at all as I judge sort of like what's my overall happiness over the week? They're just course not right. I mean it's silly. So like once you sort of broadly divide the menu up into here our hair stuff, I like and her stuff.

Annie Duke: I don't like you really shouldn't be taking too much time with it. So I've been trying to think about like well, why do people seem to take so much time with that? But maybe like I mean in some cases like they take less time trying to figure out who married and they do heard right then they do order it in a restaurant and I think it's because the decision space of like what should I order off?

Annie Duke: The menu seems really well-defined right? Like my options are very clearly defined. I don't have to guess at what those are. I know a whole lot about what I like and what I don't like. And it feels like it should be knowable how good the dishes right and feels like that should be knowable. I mean, obviously you're trying to figure out the intersection of your likes and sort of how good the dish is, you know, and broadly like I guess if you ask the waiter, you're going to find something about in general how people like it, right which might maybe help you but but it feels like you're,answering a question like two plus two equals four.

Annie Duke: Right where now? It feels like it's really reduce the uncertainty and it's such a defined. Decision that I think people spend a lot of time on it because they think there's an answer. whereas when there are other decisions that you can be grappling with. it's much more. It's much less defined like.

Annie Duke: When you sort of take the whole life cycle of the decision, it's like what knowledge do I have that I should bring to bear on this decision. That's not always clear when you're dealing with a menu it is right. What are my experiences with chicken in the past? Think about that? What are my different options that that's also not.

Annie Duke: Necessarily clear right if I think about like what what I like or what don't I like what are my values? What is a good outcome? How often might I get a good outcome out of these different options. I mean now it becomes a very opaque and very uncertain and you have to really like live in this uncertainty is you're trying to work that through and one of the ways to get out of uncertainty is just to decide.

Annie Duke: Which is why I think that sometimes like this pain of sort of like an open-ended question particularly one that might not resolved very quickly, which obviously when you're in a restaurant it resolved fast one that might not resolved very quickly that people will find ways to kind of clamp down on the uncertainty and one of those ways is just to just to decide so actually I was thinking about so so first of all, you know, as far as.

Annie Duke: Kids and college. It's like try a major out. If you don't like it who cares could try another one, you know double major and then you could drop one and add another have a minor or whatever and then you exit, you know you exit with a degree in business or or history or whatever and you maybe you go into business anyway, or maybe you don't yeah, you know, because and if you need more education, you can probably go do that and you're 21 and.

Annie Duke: It's like ordering in a messy right? Like who's this? Hi stuff. Yeah. So one of the things that you figure out is that when the stakes of a decision are really low you could just try stuff literally just try stuff see how it works because one of the places that our decision-making goes really really really sideways is that we there's a whole bunch of stuff that we don't know.

Annie Duke: About the world and we haven't worked to refine the stuff that we do know enough and we haven't started to figure out like how frequently things work out and how often they don't and how do we like things and when things turn out a particular way what's a reaction and all of this stuff and you can only find that out.

Annie Duke: So we like poking at the world. So getting is opportunities where you realize that the cost of the decision is pretty low. So it's a really low stakes decision instead of like mulling over the menu for 20 minutes like this order and see how it works out.

Srini: Yeah. Well, it's funny because. I think if you had told me that Peter when I was in my twenties or 19 or 18, I'm like, how can you possibly say this is the low stakes decision?

Srini: Yeah, I don't think you know, you're at 20 like I think my awareness would have been like no, there's no way that this is a low-stakes decision. This is a matter of life and death the fact that I did that you know this poorly on a tester the fact that you know, I'm not gonna have a job when I graduate.

Annie Duke: Yeah and what I would say to somebody who was feeling that anxiety is go talk to a bunch of adults. Yeah, and ask them how much did your grades in college really matter when you're you know, go ask a fifty-year-old. When was the last time somebody asks you your GPA hmm, you know ask them. Hey, what did you think that you were going to do as an adult?

Annie Duke: And what did you end up doing this an adult now, obviously there's certain professions where you're going to have a higher. You know a stronger relationship between what you do in college and what you do as an adult, like obviously if you're a doctor you probably have a stronger relationship between those two things, you know, if you go to engineering school, right?

Annie Duke: It's probably a stronger relationship, but I would just say like go ask a bunch of people like when was the last time somebody asked you what your GP I was when was the last time somebody asks you where you went to college. Did you finish college? You know, how many different career changes have you had?

Annie Duke: If I had asked you when you were 18, what you were you going to do is this what you would have said that you were going to do like just go get some information from the world. And I think that those those, you know, 19 year olds and 20 year olds would be super surprised to hear the answer because it's not what they're being told by Society.

Srini: Hey, it's Trini. So have you ever wanted to write a book or the question should be how long have you been wanting to write a book? I know the idea of writing a book can seem really overwhelming. I've been there and it's something that I struggled with for years, but I finally managed to do it. I sat down I created the outline for my first book and six months later my life changed drastically because my self published book became a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and it changed my life forever.

Srini: And now for the first time I want to pass along the exact process I use to create the outline and structure of that first book because trust me there is a great book in you and I know it so here's the deal. I'll personally walk you through the systems and processes. You need to write a great book.

Srini: You will just leave with a detailed road map for how to finish your book. You have a system that you'll be able to use for the rest of your life. Not just to write books but to bring all of your creative ideas to life and I'm co-hosting this event with my friend Matt co-founder of relational intelligence and creator of the body based breakthrough movement system.

Srini: So come hang out with us for a weekend and leave with your perfect roadmap for your unmistakable book. If that sounds like exactly what you've been looking for head over to unmistakable creative.com author to sign up and learn more again. That's unmistakable creative.com slash author. I think one of the things that struck me that you said in the book is that we can get better at separating outcome quality from decision quality discover the power of saying I'm not sure learn strategies to map out the future become less reactive decision-makers building and sustain PODS of fellow truth Seekers to improve our decision-making process and recruit our past and future selves to make fewer emotional.

Srini: It's so I think the thing that really struck me was this idea of separating outcome quality from decision quality because I think we tend to to couple both of them like we tend to mix both in together. And so I remember because I had Michelle for Enzo here who's a Michelle friend of shoes, you know should studies definitive decision engineering at Stanford.

Srini: And I said, well, I think it was a shitty decision. She's like it was a shitty outcome. It was just a it was near the decision was a decision. And so I wonder how you. Managed to separate the two because I think that if you look at the core of like all spiritual practices almost all of it is about Detachment,

Annie Duke: right?

Annie Duke: So. This is there's so many ways out this first of all, I just want to say if that was a complete sentence that you just read. I really need to edit myself better because that was a really long sentence. But that's what I was thinking. As you were reading that o is really should have added that introduced as.

Annie Duke: Yeah, so I think that I think it really has to do with like developing really good habits of mind and and you have to do that intentionally and that's kind of the point of what I was saying in that impossibly long quote about making sure that you've got people around you who were reinforcing.

Annie Duke: These kinds of habits of mind that allow you to start to think about how do you separate outcomes and decision quality? So first of all, let me just start at the base, which is you know, what are the confusions that we make between the two and if we go back to this idea of you know, why are you ordering so much on a you know, so quickly on a.

Annie Duke: I guess reverse only said it again. Why are you taking so long to? To decide on you know, what you ordered on a menu versus maybe you're doing it really fast on something. That's more complicated. It's because figuring out the quality of a decision is really complex. It's really hard. You have to figure out what are the different options that were available to you and then for each of those options, you have to figure out what are the set of possible outcomes that might have occurred from those options you then have to assign a probability to each of those.

Annie Duke: Outcomes and then you have to figure out what the expected value is of each of those outcomes so that you can then figure out across the stat what the expected value is and the expected value is not necessarily money, right? It could be you could be thinking about how much time something costs you could think about how much happiness it brings you you could take about how much health it brings you so you also have to do like an exploration of your own values.

Annie Duke: And then, you know you you can sort of broadly think about grouping the outcomes and to sort of good and bad depending on what your values are. You have to think about payoffs, right that has to do with expectancy and how much risk you're willing to take. I mean, there's like, you know, I'm not even done.

Annie Duke: Yeah, you know and then compare across those options. Okay, so that's like a lot. So yeah, so so. If you imagine like I mean, that's like if you're doing a if you're making a decision prospectively, but now imagine it's retrospective and you're trying to sort of reconstruct all of that stuff. I mean, it's just so opaque and so hard and so complicated and so mushy but there is a thing that we absolutely know we know how it turned out and we know whether that was good or bad.

Annie Duke: That is a thing that we can see right right there with our own eyes. There isn't any complication to it. It's very clear. It feels very certain. And so what we do is this thing called resulting which is we say that that's all really complicated. I don't know whether to decision was good or bad or not.

Annie Duke: But I do know where they outcome was good or bad and so I'm going to work backwards from the outcome to the quality of the decision, and I'm going to figure out. Here's what I'm going to figure out if the decision is good then I mean if the outcome is good rather. The decision must have been good.

Annie Duke: If the outcome is bad, the decision must have been bad problem solved. but the issue is that the problem is not anywhere near solved because the only time that that's a reasonable thing to be doing is when. There is an incredibly strong relationship between the decision that you make in the outcome that you get ideally if you're going to work backwards.

Annie Duke: It would be that the decision only could result in one outcome. Right? So now we could work backwards in that particular case. So for example, if your two feet behind a vehicle in front of you and you slam on the accelerator. There's kind of only one outcome that can occur there. Right? Right, you're going to ram into the car in front of you.

Annie Duke: Okay, so now we can work backwards like it's going to make a good decision. No, he had a terrible outcome and indeed it was a terrible decision. But if we add sort of more possible outcomes into the mix like. you go through a green light you proceed to a green light at the speed limit. And now you get in an accident, you know, can we work backwards from that outcome to what your decision quality as well?

Annie Duke: Of course not and that just kind of true of most of the decisions that we make when when we make a decision what that what the decision does is it defines the set of possible outcomes that could occur and sort of what that's that looks like. So not just which outcomes are possible but also. How often those things will occur and it also defines what the payoffs are but that that's an added layer of complexity that we don't need in order to get to where you know to this discussion.

Annie Duke: So let's just say it defines the set of possible outcomes and How likely each of those outcomes are but it doesn't tell you exactly which outcome of those things will happen so you could have. You know, you can make a decision that could be five reasonable outcomes that can kind of come from,that one of those things that happen to percent of the time and guess what that means.

Annie Duke: It will happen to percent of the time. So hopefully we're not working backwards from that thing that occurred to percent of the time in order to think that somehow if we made that decision again. That that thing would happen again, but this is actually exactly what we do. And this is how we think so, you know, then the question becomes kind of to your point.

Annie Duke: Like, all right. Well, how do you kind of disconnect yourself from that kind of thinking? Yeah, and honestly, it's like by having really good people around you who help you work through this stuff and what it means is that you have to try to do your best to reconstruct what the set of possible outcomes were so when you.

Annie Duke: Some sort of result and you find yourself, you know, it's a bad result in your finder some I don't such a bad decision, you know, or you get a really good result in your like breaking your arm patting yourself on the back for how great your decision was. You need to really train yourself to step back and say well let me think about what are what were the possibilities here?

Annie Duke: What were all the things that could happen? Let me try to take a stab at how often those things would happen and this is. Particularly important when you get a good outcome. And the reason why it's particularly important when you get a good outcome is that will get outcomes feel really good and it feels really good to have something great happen and to say We'll look at what a great decision maker.

Annie Duke: I am like I get credit for that. Like I made that happen. I mean obviously like you feel really good about yourself under those circumstances and so. The willingness to dig down into that and say well, let me just a second. Let me try to think about what we're all those are the ways that this could happen.

Annie Duke: You know, what are the probabilities of all those other ways? That this could happen. It opens yourself up to a very sad occurrence, which sort of in poker terminology is yeah. I won that hand but actually I played it really poorly right and and that's not a discovery that most of us are eager to make.

Annie Duke: Uh-huh, and it's even true if I say, yeah when that hand and actually played it pretty well, but now that I've done some exploration I realized there was an even better way to play it that feels like kind of losing something to write. So we tend to really kind of leave those good results on examined and just allow ourselves to go ahead and result because it just kind of doesn't it doesn't feel good.

Srini: It's interesting to read that those kind of a perfect segue to my next question was this idea of the role that emotions play in decision-making. So I think that you know, particularly when you look at a past experience, right you could say okay. I'm going to be informed by this past experience or defined by it.

Srini: And if they talk about this and the landmark forum where they say basically what happens is you make a filing error something happens to you in your past, but you end up making a decision about how you're going to deal with that thing in the future. And so your future ends up looking exactly like the past.

Srini: Some cases that makes absolute sense for like the example you gave of you know, oh last time I stepped on the accelerator. I rear-ended somebody well I'd be an idiot to do that again and not to expect the same result. But on the flip side of that will give you another example. I tried to do a long distance relationship once I've made a mess of my life and I was like, that's it.

Srini: I'm never gonna do that again. And so I made a permanent decision based on a temporary experience. So I wonder how you deal with. Emotions in the role of decision-making and how you don't let the past Define your future but rather inform it.

Annie Duke: so. you know, I think first of all, I just want to kind of set the terms of.

Annie Duke: you know how we talk about these kinds of improvements that you make because I just want to make it really clear that that if I were to answer your your question, literally. I would say oh, you don't meaning oh, no, there's no way to not let your emotions at all Drive what you do in the future, right?

Annie Duke: But what I will say is that you can reduce the influence you can work so that you catch yourself more quickly. When your emotions are driving or let's say broadly like your emotions are your your desire to have like a positive self-image, right? You can reduce like you can reduce the effect of it.

Annie Duke: And so I just want I just want everybody to sort of be a realistic right, which is I I wouldn't want anybody to walk away that from this conversation saying there's some sort of perfect, you know, zen-like existence. Where you're never resulting you don't you know, you don't fall into this trap?

Annie Duke: Your emotions aren't driving your decisions. You're not overly waiting like a single experience and using that to inform all future experiences. And if I don't get there anything short of that is failure. I want people to walk away from the conversation saying we're all pretty bad at this stuff.

Annie Duke: There's a whole bunch of reasons. Why having to do with the you know, how our memory is constructed and the way that we act we we react to Danger because you know, obviously Evolution really wants you to run away from danger for example, and our brains are the brands that we have and so. Let's let's say that we're measuring ourselves sort of like from the bottom versus the top and anything better than what we would do if we weren't thinking about this stuff is success.

Annie Duke: So I just want to sort of set those terms out like yeah right away that it says what what what are you what are you really trying to achieve her? So I think so. So first of all, You know.

Srini: Yeah, that is absolute. That would absolutely be a better

Annie Duke: outcome. Yes, right. So this this kind of gives us a clue into how do we sort of become less emotional? And and there's two there's two Bradley. There's. Three three sort of verticals that we want to think about things number one is what can we do prospectively in order to make it less likely that were we're making decisions in a way that that's going to be driven by emotion.

Annie Duke: So that's sort of let's call that pillar 1. Pillar to is in the moment when we're feeling ourselves, very emotional. What are the things that we can do in order to reduce the chances that we're making decisions under those circumstances? I'm pillar 3 is what can we do retrospectively? To try to reduce the chance that emotions are driving the way that we're processing what has happened to us.

Annie Duke: And then obviously again that might take us forward in a way that that isn't particularly helpful. So so let me just start in the moment first so very often and this is pretty path dependent, but when we've had sort of A Series of Unfortunate Events the steel that we really get. Work that you know, and we and you can feel what that feels like to be really worked up.

Annie Duke: Like you're in an argument with your partner and you just get that feeling of like first of all you get this need to resolve right then, you know generally like your hearts racing your cheeks are flushing. Your thoughts are racing as well. And we all sort of know what that feels like bright like like we know what it feels like that moment that you thought you were going to get the promotion and you didn't.

Annie Duke: Right, like you're just like it's everything is you just get sucked down into the gravity of that moment. And it's just like my life is so horrible. I can't believe this. I'm so unlucky this is so unfair or you have to listen to me. You have to you have to understand what I'm saying? Right? Like there's all these things that kind of go along with that.

Annie Duke: So the first thing to do is to recognize. What are the signs both physiological and and you know in terms of self talk or actual talk that are really good signs that you're in a really emotional state and you can write those things down. Like I just said what some of them are but figure that out for yourself and write those things down and now just make a commitment and tell other people who are in on it with you.

Annie Duke: That's kind of the help of a decision pod when I'm in the state. You know poke me or when you catch yourself saying that stuff. They hold on a second. I got it. I have to take a breath and then you can actually follow a checklist of questions and my favorite question actually relating back to the conversation we had about the menu is I imagine it's a year from now.

Annie Duke: Do I think that this moment will have kicked my happiness up or down at all? That's a really good question to ask yourself. So for a lot of things the answer is no things that you're incredibly upset about in the moment. The answer is very often. No and once you sort of realize that you can you kind of can kind of get it into perspective, right?

Annie Duke: If you're like, you can ask yourself another question if it's a week from now and I imagine that in this state I continue to make decisions. Do I imagine that a week from now? I'm going to be happy with the decisions that I made or am I likely to have regretted them. So the answer to that is very often.

Annie Duke: Yes, and now you can do something about that which is stop making decisions right? Then just say I need to take some space. I got to take a moment because I just did a little time traveling here and I realized it will I'm going to be really sad with the decisions that I'm about to make if I continue to make decisions in this in this.

Annie Duke: You know in this state it's like you can imagine like if you're in a fight with your partner and you were to take a moment and say oh I got all these really bad signs going on. Do I think in a week that the next thing that comes out of my mouth? I'm going to regret. Right. Yes. Okay. That's a good moment.

Annie Duke: They let's take some space. Let me walk away from the decision and come back when I feel a little bit better. Um, so so, you know, I mean I talked about this in my book, but this is this kind of time-traveling exercise where what you're really doing is causing yourself to imagine. How is this going to look to the future version of me as I look back on this and in doing so it sort of just by definition it quiets down the emotional part of your brain because in order to do this kind of time-traveling experiment where you're sort of imagining yourself in the future, You have to recruit the prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex accent and inhibitory relationship to the limbic system.

Annie Duke: And so you actually are quieting your emotions down through doing these kinds of time travel exercises. So that that's what you can do in the moment. Right and like for example, like I've had people actually like see me on the phone with a really frustrating. customer service agent and. This just happens to be like one of my strengths.

Annie Duke: I just happen to be very calm and those situations but I didn't used to be. I used to actually be very upset and those situations that I would get very upset with the customer service agent. But now I'm very very calm and I've had people watch me in those situations. How did you do that? And honestly, I'm just time traveling.

Annie Duke: You know, I'm saying like if I imagine it's a week from now and I got what I wanted out of this interchange. Do I think that it involved the yelling that I really want to do in this second, you know and the answer to that is no and so then I don't yell because I'm quickly doing this kind of as I feel my emotions going up.

Annie Duke: I'm doing these sort of time-travel things. Okay, so that's that's like that first thing like what do you do in the moment when you get sucked down into the gravity of your own emotions, and then the next thing is what we talked about before which is like, how are you thinking in advance? So that you're much less likely to be making decisions driven by emotion in the moment.

Annie Duke: And that is is another time travel example, but in a state where you're calm, so you're entering into a decision like I'm thinking about getting into a long-distance relationship and you imagine it's a year from now, and this has gone horribly. Let me write a narrative for why I think that it went horribly.

Annie Duke: And it's just this thing of like, you know, like when you're at the base of the mountain, all you can see is what's right in front of you and in the case of a long distance relationship, maybe all you see that's right in front of you is like how much you're into the other person and obviously you would,climb over like the biggest folder ever in order to get to them and this is all you can see is what's right in front of you.

Annie Duke: But when you get to the top of the mountain you can see all the paths. And you can see all of the obstacles that might be in your way and by identifying those you can now start to ask yourself some questions about those like when I come up against that obstacle. What do I think I will do let me think about that in advance.

Annie Duke: Is there a way around that obstacle that that I can see so that I never actually come up against it right like so on so forth. And so what that means is that you just end up. I already having thought about things in advance already having thought about how to increase success decrease failure and like sometimes you might discover like I'm looking back at this and I see that failure is so likely.

Annie Duke: that the payoff for this isn't high enough that I think that I should embark on it at. All right like that might sometimes be the answer. And Isn't it nice to find that out in advance, right? Because you've actually done this exercise. So that's that's the sort of sort of prospective thing and then retrospectively it has to do with putting these outcomes into context, right?

Annie Duke: So so when you feel yourself thinking about, you know an outcome and and sort of having this connectedness to it really take the time to put that outcome into the context of all the things that could have occurred at the moment that you. Entered onto that Journey. So for example to say like well, there are a whole set of possible outcomes.

Annie Duke: Like it could have ended up a marriage. It could have ended up after it could have ended after a month. It could have gone on for a while and then we became best friends, but we never we didn't continue romantically, you know. My partner could have decided they couldn't stand to be away for two seconds and actually moves back.

Annie Duke: You know, I'm just making these up but you sort of throw them out and then he took a stab at How likely you think any of those things were and the good news is some of those things you can look up right like you can go find. How often long-distance relationship work hard. Yeah rights, which isn't that often turns out right but you so you can go find that out.

Annie Duke: Right and then you can see like oh actually this wasn't going to work out that much and now you can take that knowledge with you into the future so that as you're considering another long-distance relationship, it's not that it's a zero. It's that if you understand what the likelihood of that outcome is.

Annie Duke: That you can now start to put that into context and think of what the payoff for you is whether it be worth it for you to take that risk.

Srini: Wow. Wow, so there's one other thing that they came to mind for me as you know throughout our conversation is you know, how do you make the distinction between taking responsibility for your decisions and blaming yourself for the outcomes?

Srini: Because I think that so often we confuse responsibility and blame.

Annie Duke: Mmm. Yeah, that's an interesting question because I think blame I think blame is just a word that should just go out of people's vocabulary. I

Annie Duke: think that what happens is that once you sort of use the word lame. It does become very outcome dependent right because you're not really blaming somebody for the decision. You're blaming somebody for how it turned out. You know, it's like you took this stupid shortcut to the airport and there was an accident along the way that made it so we missed our flight.

Annie Duke: I'm blaming like that's your fault. I'm blaming you for that, right? Where is I think about responsibility is just in general across the board thinking about responsibility for creating good decision process. So all I really care about is did you own the fact that you were thinking about? that you thought about it right that you thought about the decision that that's what I would prefer for you to think about in terms of responsibility and that.

Annie Duke: The responsibility goes two ways. Right? So blame it sort of feels like only goes one way like I get to blame you right but responsibility. I feel like goes two ways in the sense that I should hold you I shall hold should hold you responsible and accountable for a good decision process, right? But you also should hold me responsible for not being reactive to the way it turned out and not you know over, you know, sort of overly connecting.

Annie Duke: The decision to the outcome and being willing to see the decision in the in context. So that's the thing that I think that's really nice about, you know, creating a good decision group is I mean if we just exchange interchange the word, you know accountability for responsibility, which I think is sort of where we'd like to get to its that I get to hold you accountable to trying to strive toward a more.

Annie Duke: You know rational decision process trying to strive toward thinking probabilistically trying to strive toward embracing uncertainty and you know and really tried to think about how do I be open-minded to other people's points of view? How do I do these really good internal audits of my own knowledge, but you also hold me accountable to that as well.

Annie Duke: And blame feels like such a one way street where accountability feels like a two-way street. And I think that's that's really I think what what we want to be striving for.

Srini: Wow, well, I feel like I could talk to you for like 3 hours about this so I could just this seems like a rabbit hole that runs incredibly deep

Annie Duke: it does it does it's really like.

Annie Duke: Yes, it's it is you can very deep into the ground.

Srini: Yeah, like this is kind of like I'm going to show you the Matrix and by the way, good luck out

Annie Duke: there. Yeah, exactly. It's a but I mean, I think that I think that again the thing that I really want to get across to people is like just a little bit of change in terms of the way that you think is going to make a big difference and it takes practice and you shouldn't, you know, I catch myself resulting all the time.

Annie Duke: And I'm just happy I catch it when I do because I know that if I weren't practicing this type of thinking that I wouldn't catch it, so it's about that, you know building upon building upon building and understanding kind of like the way that compound interest works, right and that this is the same way that these very small changes that you know, what like I caught a couple of extra examples of that.

Annie Duke: I thought a little bit more rationally about that I. You know, I realized I was less quick to judge over here less quick to blame over here. Whatever it is, like these small changes really do have very big effects, and then eventually one day like, hopefully you're not yelling at any customer service agents anymore.

Srini: Wow. Wow. Well, this has been amazing. I think that makes a Fitting Place to wrap up our conversation. I have one final question I have which is how we finish all of our interviews being mystical creative. What do you think it is to make somebody or something on mistake?

Annie Duke: Isn't everybody. I mean, that's my honest answer like isn't everybody. I kind of feel like you know, this this is this is something. and let me just tell you like a brief Poker Story in order to tell you why I answer it that way when I first started playing poker. I was like an asshole. In the sense of my brother was a world-class poker player, and he was teaching me and I knew so much more than everybody else.

Annie Duke: And when other people were doing things that I did not understand my first instinct was you know to say they have no idea what they're doing and look at how much better I am than they are at this game. And you know, maybe like a year into playing or something. You know as you sort of progress in the game and you start sort of figuring out new things for yourself.

Annie Duke: I kind of look back on some of the things that I was like incredibly dismissive of. And what other people were doing and I was like, hey, wait a minute. Like I'm doing that thing though. So maybe I just didn't like I just didn't understand what they were doing. I wasn't ready to see what they were doing.

Annie Duke: I certainly didn't see the value in what they're doing, but I'm doing it now. Wow, I was like a total freaking jerk. Number one. I mean not that I was saying this necessarily. I mean, I wasn't saying this out loud to other people. I was like, you know, you know, my my you know, self-talk was very I was a jerk to those people in my head and then I had this moment of Horror.

Annie Duke: Oh my gosh, I lost so many opportunities to learn. Like maybe I could have figured out that I should have been doing this thing like way earlier if I hadn't been so dismissive of that person which point I realized like, you know, what here's the thing even if someone is mostly almost all not as good as I am.

Annie Duke: I think it should be my job. Try to figure out the thing they're doing better than me. Because I now that I'm thinking about it. I have a hard time believing that there is a person who could be sitting at a poker table where literally I mean who has some experience who literally like a hundred percent of the things that they're doing.

Annie Duke: Are worse than what I do? So I made it my job like when I sit down at a table, I'm going to try to figure out this thing. And sometimes it was several things, but I was going to try to find out the the thing that they were doing that was better than me. And it really changed my view of the game.

Annie Duke: It changes my my view of how you know, I thought about other people it definitely changed, you know, my learning curve as I was exploring things and sometimes you know how to explore and I'll be like, oh actually that's not so good. But then I would understand more so much more about my own strategies and my own understanding the game so that exploration in and of itself had like so much value.

Annie Duke: And I think that's the thing. It's like when you're when you come across anybody that you meet try to figure out the one thing that's really unmistakable about them because it's there it exists and make it your job to find it.

Srini: That is one of my favorite answer I've ever heard that

Annie Duke: question. Okay.

Annie Duke: Well, okay.

Srini: Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story and your insights a listeners. This has been super eye-opening as one of those conversations. I feel like I'm going to have to go back to a hundred times now, I want it right now. I want to read your book after having this

Annie Duke: conversation.

Annie Duke: Oh awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. This is really fun.

Srini: Absolutely, and where can people find out more about you your work the book

Annie Duke: and everything that you're up to so Willie that kind of all-purpose place to go is and I do thought cam I can find out about my book there. You can get in touch with me there and I actually really love hearing from people who've heard me speaking or read my book just questions and conversation whatever.

Annie Duke: So there's a contact form there. There's also Archives of my newsletter which goes out. About once every week. The reason why I say about us because I'm in the middle of my next book and so it's a little bit slower right now, but when I'm not actually in the middle of writing a book it goes out every week you can find archives there and if you want to subscribe if you like the content, I would love for people to subscribe to it is free except for I guess the email box cutter, but other than that it is free.

Annie Duke: So hopefully people will look for me there and then the other place I would love for people to go is to how I decide that org, which is a nonprofit that I founded and we're trying to build the field of decision education for youth to really start to get these kinds of tools and strategies and tactics and understanding even just like, what is a decision.

Annie Duke: What's a habit? How do you think about your own values? How do you make a decision? How do you think probabilistically this kind of thing in to middle schoolers with a focus on underserved youth. So hopefully people will go and look at how I decide that organ and join the cause.

Srini: Amazing. Well, we'll look up all that stuff in the show notes and for everybody listening, we'll wrap the show with that.