Information on Decision Making

As an individual, I enjoy learning about how I and others can make better decisions through critical thinking. In Malcom Gladwell’s book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, he does that through research and well thought examples and written stories applicable to the way we think.

Gladwell goes into detail about how our conscious versus unconsciousness help us make decisions, albeit sometimes not the best ones. I appreciated reading about these two concepts and how they work together in the real world. I especially liked studying how people perceived products and ideas based on their unconsciousness. Those in marketing would love this part of the book. Though I’m not in marketing, I absorbed quite a bit on how we might make purchases based on that hidden part of our brain. And if you ever wanted to grasp autism in a simple and understandable way, you’ll get that gist here when he explains the researched conducted by scientist on the subject matter in an easy-to-read manner.

In all, this is a delightful book to help you understand more about how we may think and perceive the world. Notice that I say “may,” as not everyone is the same or thinks the same way. Throughout the book, I maintained my “System 2” thinking, critical thinking, to help me stay the course and understand in my world what my unconscious may or may not be perceiving. I learned more about my decision-making process (DMP) and how I can apply it to my System 1 thinking world, quick decisions, and my System 2 thinking, those difficult and time-consuming decisions like which car to buy, home to purchase, or career path to take, so I in the end can make better decisions. This is an informative book to help you start reaching that goal.

I've been reading books about how we make decisions, how our emotions affect our decision-making process, and how we can make better decisions. That said, I was given How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, by Donald J. Robertson, by a friend who has read about Marcus Aurelius. He told me that the philosophy Marcus practiced was something that ties into how we could make better decisions in our own life. He said that I could add this type of thinking into my repertoire.

I read the book and thought it was a "good read." It discusses Marcus' life from his philosophical training when he was young, to when he became older and finally accepted stoicism. There is some great deal of history mixed in with various techniques on how to think and apply the philosophy of a Stoic. The author did a nice job talking about the history of Marcus, not only how he used his training in stoicism to effectively rule his empire, but to gain the trust of his army. Marcus eventually became deeply loved by his army.

In all, the techniques provided by the author that reflect being a Stoic are extremely useful. I must say that I've been applying these techniques since coming across them in the book and they have made a night and day difference for me. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to take more control of their emotions in order to 1) act more appropriately and 2) make better decisions in their life.

There are many ways that we make decisions based on a multitude of factors. We may not realize it, but we think in terms of algorithms, or should I say that we program computers using algorithms. You can’t say that computers taught us how to think.

In their book Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths draw parallels between the way we think and decide to how computing algorithms operate. It’s fascinating to read that what takes place with computer algorithms mirrors some of the ways we think. From sorting and caching, to overfitting, even to Game Theory (remember A Beautiful Mind?), you’ll see there are many instances where our thought process is similar to how algorithms work, especially when it comes to efficiency. In this book you’ll learn more about how we may think and some of the ways we could decide. You’ll pick up on some techniques that can help you become more efficient and effective in your decision-making process (DMP).

In all, this book is easy to read and filled with information that is useful and readily applicable to your DMP. One of my favorite takeaways from the book was the “Optimal Stopping” technique. Let’s just say it will help you from going down that rabbit hole we sometimes do when trying to decide. So, if you want to acquire some methods on ways to improve your DMP while getting an introduction to some mathematical programming models, for those in computers, you won’t be disappointed. This book is for you.