Decision Checklist

Google checklist on day to day

Achieve greatness in a smaller paradise

It’s not always to be a great headstart to work in hot industries such as Disney, Google, and Apple, understand the underappreciated laws of thermodynamics and that contrast is important. There is a saying that goes like this – It’s good to be a shark in a small pond than to be a small fish in a large pond (context here is: working in a hot sector where there are several other firms that are just as good as ones own)

Michael Abrashoff took ownership of the worst-performing ship and made it one of the best performings in the US Pacific ship within just 12 months. he started to make a decision through the eyes of his crew members which helped him to lead it differently. In his book It’s Your Ship, he explains, People think they can do more things and contribute much more but when it comes to facing the real situation we just overthink and spoil everything, unfortunately, the problems cannot be stored in a spreadsheet and solve it. Every day we face different problems and to tackle them we need real experience and presence of mind. “when people have the opportunity to take a decision they look for the past decision which has worked and not for the new ones ”

Creating a decision-making checklist

Here the author talks about creating a decision-making checklist that solves the main key areas of daily decision-making.

  • List the barriers you think are keeping you from making better decisions.
  • List three decisions you made in the past that did not have good outcomes, for each of these decisions, what barriers listed above affected your decision-making?”

Two types of knowledge

  • The first is Planck’s knowledge. People who have Planck knowledge really know what they are talking about; they’ve done the work and paid their dues.
  • Then there are people who have limited know-how (sales talk) without the subject knowledge, they can talk for hours without even making sense.

The map is not the actual guide – The decision is the ultimate guide.

We always look for the solution on the map expecting that to work just because it had worked earlier and there is no one at fault as everyone does it even businesses do it, they look into business strategies of last year so that it will for the next year based on that.

Here’s an example: Ron Johnson was one of the famous retail executives handpicked by Steve Jobs since he had a great experience in arranging store material but it turned to a disaster when came to designing the Apple store as this was a completely different outlet Steve had planned for.

Checklist Creation:

  • In your decision journal, think of a time when you used a mental shortcut, or “availability heuristic” to make a decision.
  • In your decision journal, answer the following questions:
  • Do you currently use a latticework of mental models to make decisions?
  • Is your mind currently prepared to make decisions based on many mental models?
  • Based on the list of mental models at the end of this book, how many do you currently feel competent in understanding?

Well, you could get the decision checklist made by Shane Parrish’s blog, (very helpful) give it a try

Book credit

Do check out Deep Work Review

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