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Effects of sleep deprivation on decision making

Posted on June 27, 2023 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Achieving Goals, Health Decisions, Neuroscience, Performance, Academic Achievement, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Risk and Uncertainty, Stress Management

How does a lack of sleep affect our judgment? Does it really lead to poorer choices?

"Drowsy drivers use next exit": warning sign on Interstate 15 in Utah Unfortunately, the answer is many times yes. In my research into the topic, I’ve found at least eight ways how a lack of sleep affects different aspects of our judgment and decision making.

Sleep deprivation affects us both physically and mentally, and decision-making is a complex process that requires the orchestration of multiple neural systems, such as emotion, memory, and logical reasoning. It is therefore not too surprising that sleep deprivation would take a toll on many fronts.

Here are eight effects of sleep deprivation on decision making:

1) What’s perhaps best known is that it impairs attention and working memory, leading to slower reaction times, reduced vigilance, and more mistakes. This is why the risks of driving while sleepy are considered at least as dangerous as the risks of driving under the influence of alcohol [1]. For example, being awake for 17 hours leads to impairments equivalent to having a BAC of 0.05%, and being awake for 24 hours to having a BAC of 0.10%.

For people with ADHD, sleep deprivation leads to even more focus-related problems, such as disproportionately more errors and slower reaction times. In addition, lack of sleep decreases the effectiveness of some ADHD medications [2]. (Unfortunately, ADHD also makes it harder stick to a good sleep routine. Here are some tips on how to deal with this problem.)

2) But it also affects long-term memory. Sleep deprivation affects the brain’s ability to learn and recall information [3]. In fact, lack of sleep seems to be a risk factor for (not only correlated with) dementia, probably for a number of reasons [4; 5; 6]. For one, during REM sleep the brain processes information and consolidates memories from the previous day. Sleep also plays a large part in regulating the availability of neurotransmitters. Lastly, sleep deprivation leads to an increase in beta-amyloid. This is the protein that occurs in abnormally high levels in brains with Alzheimer’s disease, where it clumps together to form plaques that collect between neurons and disrupt cell function.

3) Logical reasoning ability also suffers. Namely, sleep deprivation increases rigid thinking, perseveration errors, and difficulties in processing and using new information [7]. In other words, complex tasks and innovative decision-making do suffer from a lack of sleep.

4) Self-awareness is another aspect of our judgment that’s essential for making smart choices. Unfortunately, self-evaluation of cognitive performance is also impaired by sleep deprivation. In one study [8], during 36 h of sleep deprivation, research participants became more confident that their answers were correct as the wakefulness continued. Confidence was even stronger when the answer was actually wrong.

5) Lack of sleep makes us more risk prone. For example, in gambling tasks, sleep deprivation led to both higher expectations of rewards for risky choices, as well as diminished responses to their losses [9].

6) In addition, many studies show that sleep deprivation leads to more impulsive behavior and a lack of inhibition [e.g., 10; 11]. Note that impulsivity is not the same issue as the risk attitude from the previous point. These two aspects of decision making are independent – you can be deliberate about taking high risks (e.g., choosing an aggressive investment portfolio), and you can be impulsive about avoiding risks (e.g., giving into irrational fears or shying away from discomfort). But of course the combination of impulsivity and risk-proneness is a particularly dangerous cocktail that can lead to reckless behavior.

7) Sleep deprivation has negative effects on many aspects of mood, such as depression, anger, and anxiety [e.g., 12 – 15]. While some studies only show correlations over time [12]., others do show a causal effect [13; 14]. One study examined the effects of sleep deprivation in healthy adolescents, comparing depression, anger, confusion, anxiety, vigor, and fatigue across days. They found that all mood states significantly worsened following one night without sleep. Female participants showed a greater vulnerability to mood deficits following sleep loss, with greater depressed mood, anxiety, and confusion [14]. Another study examined a cohort of medical residents over their first postgraduate year and found that mood disturbances, lowered empathic capacity, and burnout increased over the year, and were associated with decreases in sleep amounts and increases in sleepiness [12].

Here, too, if we keep in mind that increased impulsivity will be added to this mix of bad mood, it won’t be surprising to learn that bad behavior follows. For example, one study looked at abusive supervisory behavior in managers across a variety of industries. They showed that daily sleep quality was negatively related to leaders’ self-control, and that those who were more sleep deprived were rated as significantly more abusive and toxic in interpersonal interactions [16].

8) Finally, sleep deprivation affects our hormones and metabolism. It leads to decreased glucose tolerance, decreased insulin sensitivity, increased evening concentrations of cortisol, increased levels of ghrelin, and decreased levels of leptin [17]. While cortisol is a biomarker of stress, ghrelin and leptin regulate our appetite. Ghrelin increases our appetive, while leptin decreases it. In other words, sleep deprivation leads to increased hunger and appetite on both the ghrelin and leptin fronts. Add to that again a lack of inhibition, and it becomes clear that our eating choices will be affected by a lack of sleep. Indeed, there is growing evidence both from epidemiological and laboratory studies showing an association between sleep loss and increased risk of obesity [18].

How can you get enough sleep in your busy life?

Most of all, make sleep a priority. This will most likely require some sacrifices, because it means giving up some of your waking hours. But if you’re taking into account how much better those waking hours will be if you’re fully rested, the trade-off will be well worth it.

For practical tips as to how to get into a better sleep routine, google “sleep hygiene” and follow all the advice you’ll find. As an example of that, a recent study at a boarding school found that a regular routine and no mobile devices at night helped teenagers get more sleep [19].

If your have troubles falling asleep despite good sleep hygiene, here are some interesting tips. Or, google “visualization falling sleep” and you’ll find cornucopias of techniques. I’d encourage you to try one after the other, until you find one that works for you.

All this is easier said than done of course! If you’d like to get some help along the way–from deciding how to shift and re-balance your priorities, to developing strategies, and getting support as you’re putting your priorities into practice–I’d be excited to talk to you.

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

Picture Credit:
Phil Konstantin. Photo released into the public domain via hhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UtahSignByPhilKonstantin.jpg

References:

[1] Powell, N. B., Schechtman, K. B., Riley, R. W., Li, K., Troell, R., & Guilleminault, C. (2001). The Road to Danger: The Comparative Risks of Driving While Sleepy. The Laryngoscope, 111(5), 887–893. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005537-200105000-00024
[2] Waldon, J., Vriend, J., Davidson, F., & Corkum, P. (2018). Sleep and Attention in Children With ADHD and Typically Developing Peers. Journal of Attention Disorders, 22(10), 933–941. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054715575064
[3] Alhola, P., & Polo-Kantola, P. (2007). Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 3(5), 553–567. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19300585/
[4] Berglund, J. (2019). The Danger of Sleep Deprivation. IEEE Pulse, 10(4), 21–24. https://doi.org/10.1109/MPULS.2019.2922564
[5] Lack of sleep may be linked to risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. (2018, April 13). National Institutes of Health (NIH). https://www.nih.gov/news-events/lack-sleep-may-be-linked-risk-factor-alzheimers-disease.
[6] Lack of sleep in middle age may increase dementia risk. (2021, April 27). National Institutes of Health (NIH). https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lack-sleep-middle-age-may-increase-dementia-risk.
[7] Harrison, Y., & Horne, J. A. (1999). One night of sleep loss impairs innovative thinking and flexible decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 78(2), 128–145. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1999.2827
[8] Harrison, Y., & Horne, J. A. (2000). Sleep loss and temporal memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology, 53(1), 271–279. https://doi.org/10.1080/713755870
[9] Venkatraman, V., Chuah, Y. L., Huettel, S. A., & Chee, M. W. (2007). Sleep Deprivation Elevates Expectation of Gains and Attenuates Response to Losses Following Risky Decisions. Sleep, 30(5), 603–609. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/30.5.603
[10] Anderson, C., & Platten, C. R. (2011). Sleep deprivation lowers inhibition and enhances impulsivity to negative stimuli. Behavioural Brain Research, 217(2), 463–466. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2010.09.020
[11] Demos, K. E., Hart, C. N., Sweet, L. H., Mailloux, K. A., Trautvetter, J., Williams, S. E., Wing, R. R., & McCaffery, J. M. (2016). Partial sleep deprivation impacts impulsive action but not impulsive decision-making. Physiology & Behavior, 164, 214–219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2016.06.003
[12] Rosen, I. M., Gimotty, P. A., Shea, J. A., & Bellini, L. M. (2006). Evolution of Sleep Quantity, Sleep Deprivation, Mood Disturbances, Empathy, and Burnout among Interns. Academic Medicine, 81(1), 82–85. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-200601000-00020
[13] Scott, J. P. R., McNaughton, L. R., & Polman, R. C. J. (2006). Effects of sleep deprivation and exercise on cognitive, motor performance and mood. Physiology & Behavior, 87(2), 396–408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2005.11.009
[14] Short, M. A., & Louca, M. (2015). Sleep deprivation leads to mood deficits in healthy adolescents. Sleep Medicine, 16(8), 987–993. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2015.03.007
[15] Pires, G. N., Bezerra, A. G., Tufik, S., & Andersen, M. L. (2016). Effects of acute sleep deprivation on state anxiety levels: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine, 24, 109–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2016.07.019
[16] Barnes, C. M., Lucianetti, L., Bhave, D. P., & Christian, M. S. (2015). “You wouldn’t like me when I’m sleepy”: Leader sleep, daily abusive supervision, and work unit engagement. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1419–1437. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.1063
[17] Leproult, R., & Van Cauter, E. (2010). Role of Sleep and Sleep Loss in Hormonal Release and Metabolism. Endocrine Development, 17, 11–21. https://doi.org/10.1159/000262524
[18] Beccuti, G., & Pannain, S. (2011). Sleep and obesity. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, 14(4), 402–412. https://doi.org/10.1097/MCO.0b013e3283479109
[19] Lushington, K., Reardon, A., & Agostini, A. (2022). O025 Boarding school students sleep better than day-student peers. The positive effects of bedtime routine and restricting technology use at night. Sleep Advances: A Journal of the Sleep Research Society, 3, A9–A11. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleepadvances/zpac029.024.

When should you quit your job?

Posted on November 15, 2022 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Book Recommendations, Career Development, Risk and Uncertainty

Fortune Cookies: A new job is in your future

What can poker teach you about when to quit your job?

– You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em –
– Know when to walk away and know when to run –
Kenny Rogers “The Gambler”.

Here’s a surprising fact about professional poker players: they quit – or fold – much more often than amateurs. Amateur poker players play over 50% of the hands they’re dealt, while great players play only between 15% and 25%.

Our natural intuitions about when to quit are flawed

According to Annie Duke, former poker champion and best-selling author of Thinking in Bets, these numbers illustrate just how poor people’s natural intuitions are about when to quit.

In her latest book, she argues that our poor quitting skills extend to all kinds of life and career choices, not just to poker. We tend to stick to our given path, even when that path is no longer promising. There are powerful forces at work that undermine good quitting behavior, and Annie Duke is not alone in arguing this. In fact, decision science has established a whole slew of cognitive biases that work in favor of “sticking it out”, rather than quitting, even when quitting would be more rational. These biases have been widely documented, and you can find them under terms such as the “sunk cost fallacy“, “loss aversion“, “escalating commitment“, the “endowment effect“, and “status quo bias“. (Granted, many of these concepts overlap.)

However, knowing when to quit is essential for success. Just like bad poker players, we keep losing out if we don’t develop better skills at knowing when to quit.

How can we find the right moment to quit?

Think forward, not back

Think about your future, not your past. This seems obvious, but is much harder than it sounds. If we were perfectly rational and omniscient, we would quit when the expected value—what we’re expecting to get out of the path we’re on—is no longer worthwhile, compared to other possible paths.

In reality, we do let the past creep into our decisions. We care about our life’s narrative. We want our past investments to pay off, even it means sacrificing more while staying on our course.

A trick that can help with this is to imagine a world without the status quo. For example: if you’re offered new position, ask yourself: if I wasn’t already at my current position, which one would I pick? Would I pick my current position or the new alternative? In my conversations with coaching clients, I’ve been surprised how often this question leads to a very clear answer of “I’d definitely take the new one”.

Don’t make decisions in the heat of the moment

When we’re right in the middle of a situation, we often make bad decisions, because our emotions have overwhelmed us. Instead:

Get clarity on your “values” – then figure out how to best meet them

In poker, you would define the expected “value” of your options simply in monetary terms: the amount you might win or lose. In a career, it’s not that simple. What are your criteria – your values – when it comes to you career? What do you want, and what do you NOT want from your work? Define your criteria, and then start to figure out how to best meet them. Look around to see if you could fulfill them better elsewhere. But also, figure out if you might be able to fulfill them better at your current organization, if you made some changes.

Keep exploring, even when things are good

Annie Duke suggests we take a lesson from the ants: even when most of them are on on their way to a big pile of food, a few of them are always wandering off somewhere, seemingly lost and at random. They’re exploring, always. They never know when their main source of food dries up.

Do the same with your resources: spend at least a little bit of your time on exploration. Create and maintain professional connections with people outside your organization. Take the recruiter calls, just in case.

Get a “quitting coach”

It is hard to see ourselves clearly. Annie Duke suggests we all find someone we can talk to regularly, who helps us see when we’re stuck on the wrong path. Your quitting coach could be a friend, a mentor, a coworker, a sibling, or a parent. The best quitting coach is a person who cares for your long-term well-being, and is willing to tell you the truth of what they see, even if it is uncomfortable. I would add to this that it should be someone who understands and accepts your values.

Don’t quit blindly

As enlightening as the poker analogy can be, it has its limits when compared to career choices. One big difference: when you fold in a poker game, you simply wait for the next round. The odds of your next hand are always the same unknown. In other words, you always get the same clean new start, to which you can compare the odds of your current hand. (By the way, if I ever play poker, I’ll find a way to sneak in this Odds Calculator.)

Your future odds on the job market are much less straightforward. But on the upside, you don’t need to fold first, before getting dealt your next hand. If at all possible, look for another job before quitting, and make sure to get as much information about it as possible. Again, get clarity on your values. Then, figure out which of your next options will fulfill them best.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR
Photo credit: www.flazingo.com

Bias and Noise in Hiring Decisions

Posted on July 19, 2022 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Book Recommendations, Leadership, Risk and Uncertainty, Strategic Planning, Business Decisions, Organizational Development

How can companies reduce not only bias, but also noise, in their hiring and other decisions?

The problem of bias in corporate decisions, such as hiring, promotion and salary decisions, is well-known. However, there is another type of error that has not been talked about as much – perhaps because it is harder to see, and harder to fit into a narrative: noise.

What is noise in corporate decisions, and how is it different from bias?

Noise is a random error in our decisions. Research has confirmed that in many tasks, experts’ decisions are highly variable. Professionals often make decisions that deviate significantly from those of their peers, from their own prior decisions, and from rules that they themselves claim to follow. This is the case even when the stakes of those judgments are high, such as when appraising real estate, valuing stocks, or sentencing criminals.

In hiring decisions, noise would be, for example, a variability in who gets hired, based on who is making the decision, what mood they’re in, or what time of the day it is when that decision is made. In other words, influences that shouldn’t play a part do play a part. What differentiates noise from bias is that the error does not always go in the same direction, as is the case with biases.

The target-analogy in the figure illustrates this difference. The shots on Target A are accurate. There is no bias and very little noise. The shots on Target B are biased, but not very noisy at all. They are systematically off in one direction – down to the right from the bullseye. Target C on the other hand shows noise, but no bias: the imprecisions in relation to the bullseye cancel each other out. Target D has both bias and noise.

Daniel Kahneman’s take on noise:

In his latest book “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment“, Daniel Kahneman makes a strong case that we should indeed care about noise, not only about bias. Noise is more difficult to appreciate than bias. However, it is no less real, no less costly, and no less unfair.

How can companies reduce not only bias, but also noise in their decision processes?

Trying to fix a known bias is a bit like curing a known disease. Knowing what the symptoms are, we try to work in the opposite direction. Fighting noise, on the other hand, must be preventative in nature, because we don’t know in what direction we are going to make mistakes. With that analogy, Kahneman recommends “Decision Hygiene”. Just as physical hygiene prevents all kinds of diseases, including ones we don’t fully understand yet, decision hygiene prevents all kinds of errors – noise as well as bias.

A few practical ways to apply decision hygiene, and thereby reduce noise in your hiring and other decisions:

Whenever possible, get several independent judgments and calculate their average. Averaging judgments gets rid of noise. (Averaging judgments does not reduce bias. However, it may still be an important step in fighting bias, because it makes any bias more visible. You can see this effect in the target shot illustration above. The bias is much more striking in Target B than Target D. Anyone looking at Target B would advise the shooter to aim “up and left”. For Target D, this conclusion would be much less obvious, even though there is no less bias.)
According to Kahneman, rank orders (= comparative judgments) contain less noise than ratings (= absolute judgments). Therefore, make judgments comparative instead of absolute. In other words: create a rank order of your options by comparing them, instead of rating each option separately on a scale.
Break problems into subproblems that you evaluate independently. For example, in a hiring decision, create selection criteria that you evaluate separately. Then apply those in the same way to every candidate. (This values clarification exercise may help with creating criteria.) The next point is related to this one:
Postpone your intuition. Structure the process to prevent “premature closure” driven by first impressions. In other words, don’t let your gut feelings call ALL the shots by coming to a conclusion too early. This does not mean that you shouldn’t listen to your (or your colleague’s) gut feelings, but give those feelings a place in the process. For example, in a hiring decision, make the “like-ability” of a candidate one of your official criteria. You’ll need to acknowledge that this criterion might be fraught with bias, because we tend to like people who are similar to us. However, when this is made explicit, you can decide consciously how much weight you want to give that criterion. Is it more important than the skills and experience? Does weigh in with it 10% of the total, 20%, or 80%? This kind of transparency and thoughtfulness will again not directly eliminate bias, but will make it more apparent.

As companies these days are more concerned about biases than they used to, they are hopefully also getting more attuned to the general importance of making good decisions, and to the risk of making bad decisions. That effort should naturally lead them to also tackle noise. Thankfully, many of the remedies that improve decisions will reduce both bias and noise.

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

“When something happens, you immediately have a story and an explanation. You have that sense that you learned something and that you won’t make that mistake again.
These conclusions are usually wrong.
What you should learn is that you were surprised again. You should learn that the world is more uncertain than you think.”

Daniel Kahneman

How to Deal with Regret

Posted on April 29, 2022 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Book Recommendations, Health Decisions, Performance, Academic Achievement, Relationship Decisions, Risk and Uncertainty, Strategic Planning, Business Decisions, Organizational Development

Do you have deep regrets about some of your past decisions?

A solid “No!” to this question should be much more concerning than a “Yes”. Regrets make us human, as Daniel Pink argues in his new book The Power of Regret. What’s more, regrets can help us become better humans, if we learn something from them along the way.

Drawing from his own research as well as previous studies, Pink claims that people feel regret quite often. He identifies four core categories of regret:

1. Foundation regrets
“If only I’d done the work.”
These are regrets where we opt for short-term gains over long-term payoffs, like not studying hard enough in school or not saving enough money.

2. Boldness regrets
“If only I’d taken that risk.”
These are regrets of inaction, such as not starting a business, not asking someone on a date, or not going on trips. Research suggests that people regret failures to act more often than they regret actions.

3. Moral regrets
“If only I’d done the right thing.”
These often seem to hurt the most and last the longest. They involve taking what our conscience says is a wrong path, such as lying, stealing, betraying or hurting someone. I found it actually quite heartwarming to read some of the examples Pink provided, such as lasting feelings of deep shame about not standing up for a bullied classmate in school. Surely, the fact that moral regrets are the most painful regrets says something nice about the human species.

4. Connection regrets.
“If only I’d reached out.”
These regrets stem from missed or broken relationships, such as when friends lose touch with each other over the years, or families remain estranged over a falling out that happened a long time ago.

How can we make the best use of our feelings of regret?

Pink fights the common idea that it would be a good thing to have no regrets. He argues that regret fulfills an important function in motivating us to do better. He points to three benefits of regret:

Regret can improve future decisions. Studies have shown that when people think about what they regretted not doing in the past, they made better decisions later on.
Regret can boost performance. Researchers have found that even thinking about other people’s regrets led to improved test scores.
Regret can deepen meaning. Examining regrets can help us clarify our life’s purpose and steer toward meaning.

On the other hand – there’s a dark side to regrets

All that said, I also often see that regrets – or rather the fear of regrets – can be paralyzing. My clients often tell me the one thing that makes their decision the most difficult is the fear they might regret their choice later. This fear is often influenced by past regrets that are still painful. So what should you do if the fear of future regrets is paralyzing your current decisions?

While I agree that past regrets can be very powerful in informing our future decisions, I do want to point out that they are not always rational. We often judge our past decisions with hindsight bias. Once we know the consequences of our actions or inactions (after they happen) it’s easy to see how we should have acted differently. In the moment we had to decide, chances are we simply didn’t know all that.

How can we avoid the kind of regret that’s based on hindsight bias?

A “therapy” for regret is to remind yourself of what you knew at the time you made the decision. If you considered the possible consequences at the time you made the choice, and linked reasonable probabilities to them, that’s all that can be expected of anyone. In the case of extremely unlikely events, even that may be too much to expect. (If you didn’t take these things into account when you could have, that’s another matter. Then the regret you feel might be a good opportunity to start learning and practicing a more rational approach to your decisions.)
Even better than therapy is inoculation. You can “inoculate” yourself against future regret before you make a decision by (a) preparing yourself to live with the worst-case scenario and also (b) preparing to remind yourself of what little was known at the time you made the decision.

Fear of regret can cause decision avoidance or paralysis. These can come at a high cost in the long run. In fact, there’s a sad irony to that, given that people tend to regret inaction more often than action.

Inoculation against regret can therefore play a very important role in helping you be courageous enough to actively and rationally decide in the first place, rather than avoiding the decision and letting fate (who’s not always on our side) take over.

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

Heuristics and Biases in Early Responses to Pandemic Uncertainties

Posted on February 22, 2022 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Health Decisions, Leadership, Risk and Uncertainty

Decisions under uncertainties are driven to a large extent by heuristics and biases. How can policymakers take advantage of this knowledge in order to communicate more effectively?

I’m happy to share the publication of a new commentary article by Raffaella Misuraca’s team that addressed this question in depth. It’s been a pleasure to be included in this collaboration:

Can We Do Better Next Time? Italians’ Response to the COVID-19 Emergency through a Heuristics and Biases Lens
by Raffaella Misuraca *, Ursina Teuscher, Costanza Scaffidi Abbate, Francesco Ceresia, Michele Roccella, Lucia Parisi, Luigi Vetri, and Silvana Miceli
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

ABSTRACT:
During the outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy, people often failed to adopt behaviors that could have stopped, or at least slowed down, the spread of the disease. We offer cognitive explanations for these decisions, based on some of the most common heuristics and biases that are known to influence human judgment and decision-making, especially under conditions of high uncertainty. Our analysis concludes with recommendations: policymakers can and should take advantage of this established science, in order to communicate more effectively and increase the likelihood that people choose responsible actions in a public health crisis. View Full-Text

Keywords: heuristics; biases; COVID-19; decision-making

Behavioral Sciences. 2022, 12(2), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12020039

View Full-Text Download PDF

Berry Kruijning Interviewing Ursina on Decision Making

Posted on June 23, 2020 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Career Development, Risk and Uncertainty

Berry Kruijning, JD, LL.M is a leadership coach and much admired colleague of mine. She works internationally but is based here in Portland, where I initially met her. She is an expert on communication and conflict resolution. One of her specialties is to help introverts become impactful and confident leaders. Here is an interview she did with me about decision making.

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

Summer Reading List 2019

Posted on June 17, 2019 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Achieving Goals, Book Recommendations, Career Development, Financial Decisions, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Risk and Uncertainty

Summer Reading List: Ursina's Book Recommendations on Creative Decision Making and Goal Achievement Somehow it became a summer tradition of this blog: here’s my latest list of book recommendations (you can see the lists from previous years here). As usual, they all have something to do with creative decision making and goal achievement. The first is a novel, the rest is non-fiction:

Wood, Benjamin (2016). The Ecliptic. A Novel.

More than the plot, it was the premise and setting that had me hooked from the start: an isolated artists’ colony on a small island – its anonymous residents lingering for years, all expenses paid. Relieved of their own ego and the burdens of everyday life, they should be free to create their next masterpieces. Needless to say, it doesn’t work out quite so smoothly for everyone. You can start reading here.

Two excerpts highlight why this book fits this particular reading list and the topic of my blog. Here’s the voice of the protagonist Elspeth, a Scottish painter: “Any guest who could not wait to talk about the project he was working on was usually a short-termer — that was our evaluation. Anyone who proclaimed his own genius was a fraud, because, as Quickman himself once put it, genius does not have time to stand admiring its reflection; it has too much work to get finished. We never sought out the company of short-termers. We left them to work and find their clarity alone, while we got on with jabbing at our own unwieldy projects. None of us seemed to recognise the fact that our separation from the others was, in fact, a tacit declaration of our own genius — and, thus, it surely followed that we were the biggest frauds of all.”

And the voice of her mentor: “Actually, it reminds me of the work I did when I was drinking — heavily drinking. Your thoughts are leaking out of so many different places you can’t hold them. There’s no control, no discipline. Everything’s just streaming out of you and you can’t stop it. I understand what that feels like, believe me I do. Feels like freedom but all you’re really doing is shutting things out. It leads you nowhere good.”

James Clear (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.

Of all the books on habit changes I’ve read so far, this might be the most practical yet. It focuses on small improvements and makes a compelling argument that in the case of habits, thinking small produces the biggest results over time.

Some of the take-home points:

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
The most effective way to change your habits is NOT to focus not on specific goals. Focus on your system instead. “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Four rules to build better habits: (1) Make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying. (The opposite rules apply to extinguishing bad habits.) The book goes into many examples and methods on how to apply each of those rules.
The greatest threat to success is not failure, but boredom. As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. It is therefore essential that we keep improving our systems. For that we need to remain conscious of our performance with reflection and review.
Success, therefore, is not to reach a specific threshold or goal, but to keep improving our systems.(Conveniently enough though, this is also the best strategy to reach any specific goals.)

You can look into the first part of the book here.

Annie Duke (2018): Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts.

As a former World Series of Poker champion, Annie Duke shares a convincing perspective of how important it is to cope well with uncertainty, if we want to make better decisions. As opposed to most of us, professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don’t always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don’t always lead to bad outcomes, and they are unafraid to scrutinize and review their own decisions (the processes, not the outcomes!) rigorously, because they know this pays off hugely in the long run.

Annie Duke’s advice is that we need to let go of our need for certainty, and instead make it a practice to accurately assess what we know and what we don’t. One way to committing to this practice is to find a peer group that can help you build a non-confrontational, non-threatening decision review team. If you want to read a sample, here’s a preview.

Vicki Lind, Tifini Roberts, and Leslie Yeargers (2019). Landing a Job Worth Having.

This is a new handbook written by three of my colleagues at Vicki Lind & Associates. It is full of very practical tips and resources, from searching for the right position to negotiating your salary. The authors guide you through all these steps:

Assessing what type of job you want
Using job boards and social media to find those jobs
Building a network of contacts to put you in front of hiring managers
Crafting resumes and cover letters to get you interviews
Interviewing with confidence and build great references
Negotiating a compensation package that matches your worth

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

Summer Reading List 2018

Posted on May 27, 2018 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Achieving Goals, Book Recommendations, Career Development, Financial Decisions, Group/Interactive Decisions, Conflict Resolution, Health Decisions, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Risk and Uncertainty, Strategic Planning, Business Decisions, Organizational Development

New Summer Readings: Books on Decision Making and Goal Achievement Another hopefully long and beautiful summer is coming up, and my intention is to spend a lot of it productively: reading. Preferably in a hammock. If you feel the same, here comes my new list of book recommendations about decision-making and goal achievement.

Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler (2017). Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter. I’ve always enjoyed Dan Ariely’s self-deprecating sense of humor, and in this collaboration he found a great match in Jeff Kreisler. Even though I was familiar with most of the concepts they discuss, this book not only kept me entertained, but also highlighted very clearly (and sometimes painfully) the irrationalities around money that I still allow into my life. Read a sample here.

Chris Guillebeau (2017). Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days. A practical step-by-step guide of how to create and launch a profitable part-time business. You can look into it here. Chris Guillebeau’s approach is very much no-nonsense, no fluff, no jargon – from brainstorming, shaping and selecting ideas, to launching, tracking and refining your game. While some steps would likely take more than his suggested hour per day, and while I’m not confident that I would have the discipline to follow all his steps in sequence, I do think it would make sense to do just that.

Bryan Dik and Ryan Duffy (2012). Make Your Job a Calling: How the Psychology of Vocation Can Change Your Life at Work. This book explores the powerful idea that almost any kind of occupation can offer any one of us a sense of purpose and thereby satisfaction. The authors define the idea of calling (both from a spiritual and secular perspective), review research on and provide tips for finding a calling at all stages of work and life. They also point out some dangers of pursuing a higher purpose. Here’s a preview.

Greg McKeown (2014). Essentialism. The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Sure, we all know the importance of prioritizing and focusing, but here Greg McKeown reminds us that living and working as an “essentialist” requires sacrifices. It requires a willingness to give up a lot to gain something of much more value. The author shows how to apply this concept in work as well as leisure and family life, with a special focus on leadership. Mostly through my clients, I know there are too many high-achieving professionals at the verge of burn-out with too many tasks to juggle. For their sake, I hope the message of this book will be heard and will find the necessary traction in our organizations. Check out the beginning here.

Glenn Livingston (2014). Never Binge Again: Reprogram Yourself to Think Like a Permanently Thin Person. Stop Overeating and Binge Eating and Stick to the Food Plan of Your Choice! While I usually recommend books that are based more on data and science, this one is different: its arguments use simple examples that are nonetheless convincing. It makes us realize there are plenty of rules we are perfectly capable of following, where we don’t think of our will-power as limited. For example: I never eat food from a stranger’s plate in a restaurant; I never shoplift; I never pick a fight with strangers. Why, then, do I think that I am powerless over certain food choices in certain situations? Powerless to say NO to the free cookies on a tray, or to the unsupervised half-empty box of donuts? According to this book, it is a simple matter of getting total clarity of what you truly want, and what you don’t want (e.g., when, and it what situations, you want to eat certain types of food), putting those rules into writing, and then sticking to them. Because you know you want to, and you know you can. Friendly rules, but no more permission to screw up, ever again.
(“Trigger foods”? We’re not guns. It’s just a metaphor, and perhaps not such a helpful one, I’ve come to think. There is no actual trigger that has the power to release an uncontrollable sequence of actions in us. At any moment, we can – and will – change our behavior, based on new information and our new preferences. So we just need to get our preferences straight.)
Here’s a preview, but it’s actually a free e-book anyway. Written by a coach, it accordingly comes with some promotion of his coaching. Read it for the message, not if you’re looking for a literary masterpiece.

Laurence Gonzales (2004). Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.
I’m not sure how long this book had been lying on our coffee table when I heard it was the 2018 winner of the Eric Hoffer Award Montaigne Medal. I admit this was the reason I picked it up again this year with renewed interest. I found it for the most part a captivating read, although sometimes frustrating with lots of names in personal stories, which were chopped up across chapters – starting, stopping and taking up again later with no transitions, punishing me for skipping earlier parts. (That may be my problem – I resent non-fiction that forces me to read it as if it were a novel.) More importantly: I took issue with the oversimplified message of “mind over matter”, which I find cynical in the light of those who didn’t survive. Many of his conclusions also suffer from quite literal “survival bias” – not a pun, but a serious problem in his reasoning, although with this topic admittedly a difficult one to avoid. At the very least it should be acknowledged as a limitation. That said, I did learn some interesting lessons about dangers in unexpected places and how to (not) face them. Start reading here.

Brad Borkan and David Hirzel (2017). When Your Life Depends on It: Extreme Decision Making Lessons from the Antarctic.
Also a book about decision-making in extreme life-and-death situations, this one takes a more systematic approach, and offers more substantial and original content, despite being based on an older history: it takes us back to the very first expeditions of early explorer teams to the Antarctic in the early 1900’s. The authors analyze the decisions made by several competing teams and discuss fascinating questions about leadership, as well as followership, under these extreme conditions. Look into it here.

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

German Translations of Decision Coaching Methods

Posted on March 2, 2017 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Coaching Practice, Risk and Uncertainty

(And you’ll also find some similar resources in English.)

I’m excited about my upcoming opportunity this month to teach several postgraduate seminars to career counselors in Switzerland again. The topic will be decision coaching methods: how to apply decision support tools in a career counseling setting. For that purpose I created course materials in German. I’m happy to share a part of those materials here, because I know some of my blog readers are native German speakers, or work with German-speaking clients, and have asked me before about resources in German.

The following are all downloadable pdf’s:

Entscheidungshilfen in der Beratungsarbeit – Wegleitung und Methoden
[Not the same, but the most similar resource I have in English: Decision making guideline – workshop handout with exercises]
Vorlage für Szenarienbäume
[In English: Paper/pencil template for scenario trees]
Vorlagen für quantitative Entscheidungsmethoden
[In English: Paper/pencil templates for decision tables and trees]

The first one is a guideline with exercises, outlining my framework and process for tackling difficult decisions. The German version includes a few more specific counseling methods than the English version.

The second one is a template for a scenario tree that can give you clarity in thinking through risky options. Drawing this kind of scenario tree helps you get a clear structure into your thoughts or into a conversation by visualizing different courses of action and their possible consequences that are in or out of your control. It does not include a quantitive evaluation, but it is a good step in getting your thoughts ready for the quantitive part. Or, if you’re anything like myself or many of my clients or students, clarity may well hit you suddenly on the way there.

The third document contains several tools: two templates for classic decision matrices to evaluate options based on multiple criteria; a classic probability tree template to evaluate risky options; and also a less commonly found template that combines both of those tools, for decisions that involve multiple criteria as well as major risks.

Please feel free to use any part of these materials for your own personal use or to help others with their decisions. You can find more here among the rest of my collection of resources. (If you share any of this, I’m honored, and I appreciate your crediting the source as practical and appropriate. If you manage to sell it, I bow before you.)

Depending on your familiarity with decision support tools, you may or may not find these materials self-explanatory. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have questions about them.

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

Are You Scared of Your Next Decision?

Posted on October 31, 2016 by by

Ursina Teuscher, PhD Posted in Creative Thinking, Risk and Uncertainty, Stress Management

Scared of Your Next Decision?

Edvard Munch (1893): The Scream. Oil, tempera & pastel on cardboard. [Image rights in the public domain.]

Tonight will be a scary night for the bravest of us, with countless children roaming the streets, high on sugar, threatening to knock on our very doors.

However, even today, our most crippling fears probably come from within. Are you scared of your next decision? Afraid of making the wrong choice? Funnily enough, while dogs and – some say – children can smell our fear; on our own we’re not always very good at recognizing when and why we’re scared.

Here’s how you can recognize whether your decision scares you:

You avoid making the decision altogether, for example by procrastinating or by shifting the responsibility to others.
You get overly emotional about your decision. Maybe you get angry or burst into tears when others are bringing up uncomfortable truths about your situation? Such emotional outbursts are effective ways of shutting down a conversation, and they can be warning signs that your fears are holding you back from thinking and acting in the best way.
You keep investing into previous mistakes. This is also known as “escalating commitment”. When coping with poor outcomes of our previous choices, it is tempting to dig in our heels and devote even more resources to our current path, in the hope of somehow making it work. But sometimes, making the best decision for the future requires that we admit having made a mistake in the past. This is not easy: even admitting mistakes just to ourselves takes a lot of courage, but it can open the door to a new and better direction.

If any of these points ring true, take it as a warning sign that you might need more courage to approach your decision.

How to become a braver decision maker

The simplest way to get more courage is to take responsibility for your decision process, even if the outcomes are not all in your control. Follow a decision process that is in line with your values. Without being able to predict the future, we will never have a guarantee that good decisions will lead to good consequences, but there is plenty of evidence showing that a good decision process is indeed more likely to result in better outcomes. Since you will make many decisions over your lifetime, you can therefore be assured that if you follow a good decision process throughout your life, your decision outcomes will be better overall.

Four steps to tackle your decisions fearlessly:

1) Commit to a value-driven rational decision process. This does not guarantee good outcomes, but it does make them more likely.

2) Ask yourself: Which of my values matter for this decision? In other words, what are my personal criteria as to whether the outcome will be “good” or “bad”?

3) Think: What can I do that best fulfills all those values? (Think beyond your initial ideas. If necessary, use tools/visuals/charts etc to evaluate your options – I’m not getting started on all this here, but you know who to ask if you want to know more about creative thinking and evaluating options.)

4) Act. Knowing that you’ve made the best decision you possibly could have with your current knowledge – a decision that is based on your values, rather than on fear – will empower you to act with confidence.

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

Selected References:
Anderson, B., Hahn, D., & Teuscher, U. (2013). Heart and Mind: Mastering the Art of Decision Making. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Aschenbrenner, K. M., Jaus, D., & Villani, C. (1980). Hierarchical goal structuring and pupils’ job choices: testing a decision aid in the field. Acta Psychologica, 45, 35–49.
Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Individual differences in adult decision-making competence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 938–956.
Dean, J. W., & Sharfman, M. P. (1996). Does Decision Process Matter? A Study of Strategic Decision-Making Effectiveness. The Academy of Management Journal, 39(2), 368–396.
Herek, G. M., Janis, I. L., & Huth, P. (1989). Quality of U.S. Decision Making during the Cuban Missile Crisis: Major Errors in Welch’s Reassessment. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 33(3), 446–459.
Keeney, R. L. (1996). Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decision Making. Harvard University Press.

Tags: decision analysis, decision quality, rational thinking, values

Blog Archives

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How does a lack of sleep affect our judgment? Does it really lead to poorer choices?

Here are eight effects of sleep deprivation on decision making:

How can you get enough sleep in your busy life?