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Book Recommendation: “Decisive” by Chip and Dan Heath (2013)

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Chip and Dan Heath (2013). Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. New York: Crown Business.

Book Cover: "Decisive" by Dan and Chip Heath

I was impressed with this new book by the Heath brothers, a very helpful guide to decision making. It does not offer any formal tools to evaluate options, but a process with powerful ideas that are easy to apply to any personal or business decision.

They call their approach the WRAP process, an acronym standing for (1) Widen your options, (2) Reality test your assumptions, (3) Attain some distance, and (4) Prepare to be wrong.

Here’s a sample of some ideas that I’m finding very effective with clients as well as for my own decisions:

For widening your options, they propose the “Vanishing Options Test”: what would you do if the current alternatives disappeared? This question forces us to think creatively, oftentimes bringing better solutions to mind than the ones that seemed most obvious at first.

Also, consider opportunity costs: if I didn’t do this, what else could I do with the same resources?

Always think AND, not OR. Can you follow multiple paths at once?

For attaining some distance, they suggest the simple but powerful question: “What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?”

For preparing to be wrong, they introduce the idea of a “tripwire”: set a date or trigger for revisiting the decision. This will not only prevent you from getting stuck on a bad track, but it will give you a certain period where you will have the permission and peace of mind to fully commit to your current action plan, without tormenting yourself about whether this was a good decision or not.

Chip and Dan Heath also offer a great resources page on their website, with free cheat sheets and worksheets summarizing their process.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

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Book Recommendation: Two Very Different Books about Happiness

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Gretchen Rubin. The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun.

Russ Harris (Author), Steven Hayes (Foreword). The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living.

On first sight, the two books appear to be on two opposite sides of the happiness controversy – should we pursue it or not? Should we strive to be happy, or is happiness only achievable as an indirect (and not guaranteed) consequence, or side-effect, of focusing on other worthwhile pursuits?
After reading both books, I find their opinions smart and differentiated enough to agree with both. Whether the authors would agree with each other, I don’t know…

Gretchen Rubin’s book is a delightfully honest, refreshing and funny report about a year-long “happiness project”. Although it is very easy to read, it also contains a lot of research and is packed with creative insights.

The “Happiness Trap” is starting from a very different place – it challenges the very assumption that we should strive for happiness. In Russ Harris’ view, trying to find happiness ends up making us miserable and lies at the bottom of many addictions, depressions, and anxieties.
Instead, his advice is to live in line with our values. Happiness may follow if we do that, or it may not, but that’s not the point.

I highly recommend both books, although “The Happiness Trap” may be more useful for people who struggle with depression or anxiety. People already living fulfilling lives in great mental health (to the extent that they exist :)) will get more entertainment and education out of Rubin’s “Happiness Project”.

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Book Recommendation of the Month: Rational Decision Making

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Eisenfuehr, Weber & Langer. Rational Decision Making.

This month’s pick is a classic textbook, presenting theory as well as practical methods on how to improve decision making. It is admittedly not the easiest read, but those who are truly interested in the formal methods of how to approach difficult decisions will find this book very rich and thorough.


Book Recommendation for February

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Luke Rhinehart. The Dice Man.

Time for another fiction recommendation: the 70’s cult classic “The Dice Man” by Luke Rhinehart tells the story of a psychiatrist who begins making decisions based on the casting of dice, and develops a radical new approach to psychiatry with his “dice therapy”.

Warning: this book was banned in several countries due to the way it deals with controversial topics.


Book Recommendation for the New Year

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Charles Duhigg. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

This book offers a very well-researched but easy to understand explanation of how we form and maintain habits. Gaining a deeper understanding of this general mechanism gives us as readers a very useful starting point to develop our own interventions in kicking old unwanted habits and forming new intentional ones. It is not the kind of book that offers a lot of specific advice, but it gives you the knowledge to develop your own best practices. I have found it a very useful framework for improving my own habits, as well as for my coaching work with clients who want to achieve specific goals in their work or personal lives.


Book Recommendation on Consumer Decisions: “Spent”

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I guess I could call this a “seasonal pick”, as Amazon keeps counting down the days to Black Friday:

Geoffrey Miller (2009). Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior 

Book cover (cropped) of "Spent" by Geoffrey Miller

Geoffrey Miller presents an evolutionary psychology perspective on consumer decisions: why do we buy so much, and why do we buy the stuff we do?
(No, it’s not about cave dwellers and their preference for fur.)

Just like his earlier book “The Mating Mind”, it was very much worth reading the whole book, rather than just leafing through it and thinking that I “got the message”. The main message may indeed be simple (conspicuous consumption as a mating signal to indicate fitness), but there is a huge richness in data and an elegance of theory that make this book thought-provoking, amusing, and insightful on many levels. It also helps that Miller is a fearless, eloquent and humorous writer.

As far as food for thought goes, this book is delicious and satisfying.

Happy Thanksgiving!

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

 

 


Book Recommendation for October

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Jon Krakauer: Into Thin Air

This is Jon Krakauer’s bone-chilling eye-witness report of the disastrous 1996 Mount Everest climb that killed eight people. I’m not going to discuss why this book is about decision making and goal achievement (well – the dark side of focusing on a goal). All I’ll say here is it was a page-turner for me. I have deep respect for a writer who can make 400+ pages about climbing a mountain go by so quickly, and yet leave such an impression.


Book Recommendations of the Month

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1. Ralph Keeney (1996). Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to
Creative Decision Making.

It may not be the quickest read, and not the shortest
guide to decision making, but one of the most useful in my
experience – powerful with a minimum of formality.
I consider it a wonderful classic in the field, worthy of
those last few weeks of summer reading time…

2. Javier Marias (1992). A Heart So White.

A novel about decisions surrounding secrecies and loyalties.
What I loved about it is that it seemed like a fugue – one
motive in a multitude of layers, interwoven beyond
recognition into a beautiful piece of art.


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