In Praise of Premortems (not postmortems)

from Harvard Business Review

from Farnam Street:

https://fs.blog/kahneman-better-decisions/ 

Daniel Kahneman’s Favorite Approach For Making Better Decisions

Bob Sutton’s book, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less, contains an interesting section towards the end on looking back from the future, which talks about “a mind trick that goads and guides people to act on what they know and, in turn, amplifies their odds of success.”

We build on Nobel winner Daniel Kahneman’s favorite approach for making better decisions. This may sound weird, but it’s a form of imaginary time travel.

It’s called the premortem. And, while it may be Kahneman’s favorite, he didn’t come up with it. A fellow by the name of Gary Klein invented the premortem technique.

A premortem works something like this. When you’re on the verge of making a decision, not just any decision but a big decision, you call a meeting. At the meeting, you ask each member of your team to imagine that it’s a year later.

Split them into two groups. Have one group imagine that the effort was an unmitigated disaster. Have the other pretend it was a roaring success. Ask each member to work independently and generate reasons, or better yet, write a story, about why the success or failure occurred. Instruct them to be as detailed as possible, and, as Klein emphasizes, to identify causes that they wouldn’t usually mention “for fear of being impolite.” Next, have each person in the “failure” group read their list or story aloud, and record and collate the reasons. Repeat this process with the “success” group. Finally use the reasons from both groups to strengthen your … plan. If you uncover overwhelming and impassible roadblocks, then go back to the drawing board.

Premortems encourage people to use “prospective hindsight,” or, more accurately, to talk in “future perfect tense.” Instead of thinking, “we will devote the next six months to implementing a new HR software initiative,” for example, we travel to the future and think, “we have devoted six months to implementing a new HR software package.”

You imagine that a concrete success or failure has occurred and look “back from the future” to tell a story about the causes.

[…]

Pretending that a success or failure has already occurred—and looking back and inventing the details of why it happened—seems almost absurdly simple. Yet renowned scholars including Kahneman, Klein, and Karl Weick supply compelling logic and evidence that this approach generates better decisions, predictions, and plans. Their work suggests several reasons why. …

1. This approach helps people overcome blind spots

As … upcoming events become more distant, people develop more grandiose and vague plans and overlook the nitty-gritty daily details required to achieve their long-term goals.

2. This approach helps people bridge short-term and long-term thinking

Weick argues that this shift is effective, in part, because it is far easier to imagine the detailed causes of a single outcome than to imagine multiple outcomes and try to explain why each may have occurred. Beyond that, analyzing a single event as if it has already occurred rather than pretending it might occur makes it seem more concrete and likely to actually happen, which motivates people to devote more attention to explaining it.

3. Looking back dampens excessive optimism

As Kahneman and other researchers show, most people overestimate the chances that good things will happen to them and underestimate the odds that they will face failures, delays, and setbacks. Kahneman adds that “in general, organizations really don’t like pessimists” and that when naysayers raise risks and drawbacks, they are viewed as “almost disloyal.”

Max Bazerman, a Harvard professor, believes that we’re less prone to irrational optimism when we predict the fate of projects that are not our own. For example, when it comes to friends’ home renovation projects, most people estimate the costs will run 25 to 50 percent over budget. When it comes to our projects; however, they will be “completed on time and near the project costs.”

4. A premortem challenges the illusion of consensus

Most times, not everyone on a team agrees with the course of action. Even when you have enough cognitive diversity in the room, people still keep their mouths shut because people in power tend to reward people who agree with them while punishing those who dare to speak up with a dissenting view.

The resulting corrosive conformity is evident when people don’t raise private doubts, known risks, and inconvenient facts. In contrast, as Klein explains, a premortem can create a competition where members feel accountable for raising obstacles that others haven’t. “The whole dynamic changes from trying to avoid anything that might disrupt harmony to trying to surface potential problems.”

from Farnam Street:

https://fs.blog/11-rules-for-critical-thinking/

11 Rules for Critical Thinking

A fantastic list of 11 rules from some of history’s greatest minds. These are Prospero’s Precepts and they are found in AKA Shakespeare: A Scientific Approach to the Authorship Question:

• All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)
• Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)
• Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)
• Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)
• It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
• A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)
• The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)
• To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)
• It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)
• Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)
• All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

P.S. - 

Insight

“The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.”

— Joan Didion

https://fs.blog/2017/06/habits-vs-goals/

Habits vs. Goals: A Look at the Benefits of a Systematic Approach to Life

Tagged: Charles Duhigg, Habits, Stephen Covy, Systems

"First forget inspiration.
Habit is more dependable.
Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not.
Habit is persistence in practice."
— Octavia Butler

***

Nothing will change your future trajectory like habits.

We all have goals, big or small, things we want to achieve within a certain time frame. Some people want to make a million dollars by the time they turn 30. Some people want to lose 20 pounds before summer. Some people want to write a book in the next six months. When we begin to chase an intangible or vague concept (success, wealth, health, happiness), making a tangible goal is often the first step.

Habits are processes operating in the background that power our lives. Good habits help us reach our goals. Bad ones hinder us. Either way, habits powerfully influence our automatic behavior.

The difference between habits and goals is not semantic. Each requires different forms of action. For example:

• We want to learn a new language. We could decide we want to be fluent in six months (goal), or we could commit to 30 minutes of practice each day (habit).
• We want to read more books. We could set the goal to read 50 books by the end of the year, or we could decide to always carry a book with us (habit).
• We want to spend more time with our families. We could plan to spend seven hours a week with them (goal), or we could choose to eat dinner with them each night (habit).

The Problems With Goals

When we want to change an aspect of our lives, setting a goal is often the logical first step. Despite being touted by many a self-help guru, this approach has some problematic facets.

Goals have an endpoint. This is why many people revert to their previous state after achieving a certain goal. People run marathons, then stop exercising altogether afterward. Or they make a certain amount of money, then fall into debt soon after. Others reach a goal weight, only to spoil their progress by overeating to celebrate.

Goals rely on factors which we do not always have control over. It's an unavoidable fact that reaching a goal is not always possible, regardless of effort. An injury might derail a fitness goal. An unexpected expense might sabotage a financial goal. A family tragedy might impede a creative-output goal. When we set a goal, we are attempting to transform what is usually a heuristic process into an algorithmic one.

Goals rely on willpower and self-discipline. As Charles Duhigg wrote in The Power of Habit:

Willpower isn't just a skill. It's a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there's less power left over for other things.

Keeping a goal in mind and using it to direct our actions requires constant willpower. During times when other parts of our lives deplete our supply of willpower, it can be easy to forget our goals. For example, the goal of saving money requires self-discipline each time we make a purchase. Meanwhile, the habit of putting $50 in a savings account every week requires little effort. Habits, not goals, make otherwise difficult things easy.

Goals can make us complacent or reckless. Studies have shown that people's brains can confuse goal setting with achievement. This effect is more pronounced when people inform others of their goals. Furthermore, unrealistic goals can lead to dangerous or unethical behavior.

The Benefits of Habits

"Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do)."
— Stephen Covey

***

Once formed, habits operate automatically. Habits take otherwise difficult tasks—like saving money—and make them easy.

The purpose of a well-crafted set of habits is to ensure that we reach our goals with incremental steps. The benefits of a systematic approach to achievement include the following:

Habits can mean we overshoot our goals. Let's say a person's goal is to write a novel. They decide to write 200 words a day, so it should take 250 days. Writing 200 words takes little effort, and even on the busiest, most stressful days, the person gets it done. However, on some days, that small step leads to their writing 1000 or more words. As a result, they finish the book in much less time. Yet setting "write a book in four months" as a goal would have been intimidating.

Habits are easy to complete. As Duhigg wrote,

Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize—they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense."

Once we develop a habit, our brains actually change to make the behavior easier to complete. After about 30 days of practice, enacting a habit becomes easier than not doing so.

Habits are for life. Our lives are structured around habits, many of them barely noticeable. According to Duhigg's research, habits make up 40% of our waking hours. These often minuscule actions add up to make us who we are. William James (a man who knew the problems caused by bad habits) summarized their importance as such:

All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits — practical, emotional, and intellectual — systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.

Once a habit becomes ingrained, it can last for life (unless broken for some reason).

Habits can compound. Stephen Covey paraphrased Gandhi when he explained:

Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.

In other words, building a single habit can have a wider impact on our lives. Duhigg calls these keystone habits. These are behaviors that cause people to change related areas of their lives. For example, people who start exercising daily may end up eating better and drinking less. Likewise, those who quit a bad habit may end up replacing it with a positive alternative. (Naval and I talked about habit replacement a lot on this podcast episode.)

Habits can be as small as necessary. A common piece of advice for those seeking to build a habit is to start small. Stanford psychologist BJ Fogg recommends "tiny habits," such as flossing one tooth. Once these become ingrained, the degree of complexity can be increased. If you want to read more, you can start with 25 pages a day. After this becomes part of your routine, you can increase the page count to reach your goal.

Why a Systematic Approach Works

"First we make our habits, then our habits make us."
— Charles C. Nobel

***

By switching our focus from achieving specific goals to creating positive long-term habits, we can make continuous improvement a way of life. This is evident from the documented habits of many successful people.

Warren Buffett reads all day to build the knowledge necessary for his investments.

Stephen King writes 1000 words a day, 365 days a year (a habit he describes as "a sort of creative sleep"). Athlete Eliud Kipchoge makes notes after each training session to establish areas which can be improved. These habits, repeated hundreds of times over years, are not incidental. With consistency, the benefits of these non-negotiable actions compound and lead to extraordinary achievements.

While goals rely on extrinsic motivation, habits are automatic. They literally rewire our brains.

When seeking to attain something in our lives, we would do well to invest our time in forming positive habits, rather than concentrating on a specific goal.

For further reading on this topic, look at Drive: The Surprising Secret of What Motivates Us, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, and The Power of Habit.

Sent from my iPhone

The Science of Doing Good: My Conversation with William MacAskill | Farnam Street

JACKSONVILLE - This is a fantastic podcast on a very relevant subject. Charitable Giving.  I may be biased since I am taking a Community Resource Development course at UNF and reading the book "When Helping Hurts" by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, but if the snippets of ground covered in the interview sound interesting to you, this is worth a listen.

Hopefully, we can make smarter decisions regarding which charities are worthy of our support and can generate real results alleviating the social problem they are on a mission to solve.

There does seem to be quite a bit of churn and inefficiency in this space.

from fs.blog
https://fs.blog/william-macaskill/

The Science of Doing Good: My Conversation with William MacAskill
Subscribe on iTunes | Stitcher | Spotify | Android | Google Play

On this episode of The Knowledge Project, I'm happy to have William MacAskill.
William is the co-founder and President of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) and an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Oxford University. He is also the founder and president of 80,000 Hours, the co-founder and vice-president of Giving What We Can, and the author of Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference.

William's work is primarily focused on encouraging people to use reason and evidence to find the best possible ways they can use their resources to make the biggest possible impact in the world.

We cover a lot of ground in this interview, including:

• Why good intentions aren't enough when giving to charity and how we can do better

• How William's giving philosophy was formed and how it developed into The Centre for Effective Altruism

• The best metrics to assess how good a charity is before donating a dime

• How letting our emotions guide our charitable giving can lead to ineffective, and sometimes harmful outcomes.

• How many charities today unknowingly reward low dollar donors and sell themselves short millions of dollars in potential donations

• A powerful thought exercise to help you gain a different but valuable perspective about helping the poor and suffering in the world

• The one cognitive bias William believes is the most damaging to any business, organization or individual

• William's foundational values that guide his day to day decisions and actions

• William's take on "radical honesty" and when honesty can be taken too far and is no longer constructive

• William's definition of success and the imaginary conversation he has with himself on his deathbed to make sure he's on the right track (this is awesome)

• The most common mistake William sees people make over and over (and the embarrassingly simple way to avoid making it)

• And then to wrap up, I gave him a softball question: What is the purpose and meaning of life?

If you've wanted to make more of a positive impact in the world around you, this insightful interview will give you plenty to think about. Your resources are precious and should be optimized to improve the lives of those you help. I don't know of a better person to guide you than William.
Listen

• Listen to this episode on iTunes. (Leave a rating!)

• Stream by clicking here.

• Download as MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing "save as".

Transcript
Members of the FS learning community have access to transcripts, however, you can purchase this one separately for $7.
Discuss
Members can discuss this podcast on the Learning Community Forum.

Sent from my iPhone

~;::::::;( )">   

TED: The Art of Storytelling Through Presentations

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfQF3DXG-S4

from farnamstreetblog.com

http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2012/02/the-art-of-storytelling-through-presentations/

The Art of Storytelling Through Presentations

February 12, 2012 by Shane Parrish

From the "I have a dream" speech to Steve Jobs' iPhone launch, all great presentations have a common architecture. At TEDxEast, Nancy Duarte draws lessons on how to make a powerful call-to-action.