The key ideas

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

Chip Heath, Dan Heath, 2013

Why do smart people with good information so often make choices they later regret? The Heath brothers describe four traps that lie in wait for almost any decision, and a simple process to counter each one. Intel executives who mentally fired themselves, a rock band with a bowl of candy, and a question that gets a seller to admit a defect.

Who it is for

For anyone facing an important choice at work, in their studies or in their personal life who wants to regret their decisions less.

Why shouldn't you and I walk out the door, come back in, and do it ourselves?

What the book is about

Why do smart people who have time and information so often make decisions they later regret? The brothers Chip and Dan Heath believe the problem is often not a lack of intelligence.

In their view, decisions are spoiled by four “villains”. We see our choices too narrowly. We look for information that confirms what we already like. We give in to short-term emotion. And we're too sure about how the future will unfold.

For each villain, the authors offer a step to counter it. Together they add up to a process called WRAP. Ahead of you: a store owner who happily copied others, two Intel executives who mentally fired themselves, and a rock band that demanded a bowl of candy with no brown ones.

Idea 1. The “yes or no” trap

Listen to how a lot of our decisions sound. Quit or not. Buy this car or not. It sounds like a choice, even though there's really only one option on the table.

The researcher Paul Nutt spent many years studying decisions made by the leaders of organizations. According to the data the authors cite, most of the time only one alternative was considered. And these “yes or no” decisions failed noticeably more often than decisions where at least two options were compared.

The first villain is narrow framing. We look at a choice as if through a slot and don't see the other paths around it.

The question “Should I take this job?” quietly turns into the question “What job do I actually want, and where else could I look for it?”

If a decision sounds like “yes or no”, that may be a sign you don't have many options yet. Sometimes it helps to widen the choice first and only then choose.

Read in Livria

About the author

Chip Heath is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dan Heath is a researcher and author of books on business. Together the brothers wrote the bestsellers “Made to Stick” and “Switch”.

All books by this author: Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work Quiz

Terms from the book

  • Confirmation bias
  • Premortem
  • WRAP: The decision-making process the authors propose: Widen your options, Reality-test your assumptions, Attain distance before deciding, and Prepare to be wrong.
  • Narrow framing: A trap in which a choice is seen too narrowly, for example as “yes or no”, so other options can go unnoticed.
  • 10/10/10: Suzy Welch's technique: consider how you'll feel about a decision in ten minutes, ten months and ten years.
  • Tripwire: A signal set in advance that tells you it's time to reconsider a decision.

All terms

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