Thinking in Bets

Great

Key takeaways:

- Stop thinking of ‘I don't know,' as a negative, meaning, ‘I have no idea,' or ‘I am not smart enough.' Start thinking of it as, ‘I don't have all the facts yet,' or ‘there are some unknowns'
- An expert will be better than a rookie, but neither can know for sure what the outcome will be. The expert will have seen more scenarios and as such will be able to better predict the outcomes given the facts, but both are still making guesses.
- Make peace with the fact that in many things, we cannot be sure–and that is okay.
- Redefine what it means to be wrong. If you have a 10% chance of your strategy failing, then your strategy fails, you were not wrong. Your bet just didn't work out. That was always a possibility.
- Sometimes long shots land. Blaming the bookie misses the point.
- Beware of resulting-second guessing your decision if it ends badly. If you analyzed the data available and made a sound decision, then the outcome was bad, it doesn't mean you made a bad decision. Luck and/or incomplete data may change the outcome. The decision may still have been sound.
- All decisions are bets.
- We have a predisposition to believe things we hear are true, even if they are not.
- Motivated reasoning is interpreting new information based on your existing beliefs. This is dangerous, but it is our default. It is very hard not to do.
- The purpose of fake news is not to change views or opinions. It's to entrench already held beliefs.
- We are rarely 100% or 0% confident in our beliefs. Thinking in probabilities or percentages brings this to mind. Saying you are 70% confident on a decision reminds us of this and makes it easier change our minds in light of new information. It feels bad to go from, ‘I am 100% convinced,' to ‘I am wrong.' It's much easier to go from, ‘I am 65% confident,' to ‘I am 40%' or ‘There was a always a 35% chance this was going to work out differently than I anticipated.' This way conflicting information isn't a threat.
- Calculate the expected value of new ventures/customers. If there is a 75% chance of landing a $1 million account, that account is worth $750,000. If there is a 5% chance of landing a $25 million account, that account is worth $1.25 million.
- Do a ‘pre-mortem'. Before embarking on a project, imagine you are at the end. What could have gone wrong? This allows you to spot pitfalls but also makes it much easier for people to share dissenting views.

Not enough thought-nourishing “juice” in this book to make it worth reading. I don't think I came away with any new insights.

I read this after liking her last book Quit. Gotta say, the writting improved a lot, because I much preferred the way Quit was written.

This is a good book, but it could be narrowed down to a couple of pages. The main point is simply that life is like poker, not like chess. This makes it unpredictable, and we should be thinking in probabilities certain events will happen and base our decisions on those numbers. They can still go the other way, but this way we'll be confident in ourselves that we looked at all the possibilities and decideded on the best outcome for us based on the information we had at the time.

She provides some practical strategies for separating outcome quality from decision quality, identifying and overcoming cognitive biases, and embracing a mindset of learning from our experiences. Ultimately, “Thinking in Bets” teaches readers how to become more rational and effective decision-makers in both personal and professional contexts.

I liked the ideas in the book. I should have enjoyed the book in general - but I didn't, and I honestly don't know why. I found myself skipping and skimming a lot of sections.
Still, the core premise of the book is great!

This was a good summary of how to avoid ROT, self-serving bias, and the fundamental attribution error, not only when playing poker but in other situations as well. I'd like to think I already do that fairly well, but I recognize that the self-serving bias is probably causing me to think I'm better at it than I actually am.

A good introduction to the habits of mind required to be a more rational decision-maker.

3.5

Concrete advice and tangible examples on how to make better decisions. This book offers a practical view for day to day life on top of findings of behavioral-economics giants like Kahneman.

I can tell this book will stick with me for a long time. Most notably, I'll remember the idea that we should reject a world of “definitely will” and “definitely won't.” Probability is all around us and we should acknowledge that we're rarely 100% certain. For that matter, we're also rarely 0%, we often have a guess. Simply making a bet with yourself can be a good way to think about potential outcomes.

There are great lessons on ego and bias. And mistakes and learning and scenario planning. There are plenty of poker stories, but less than I'd have guessed. The writing leaned more academic than I thought it would. Some passages were dense and I found myself skimming.

But there were valuable insights the whole way through. I read a hard copy and kept a document open on my phone to take notes. That's not a habit for me with hard copy books, but there was enough interesting in here that I was compelled to commit it to memory.

Excellent book. Annie Duke does a great job framing decision making through the lens of uncertainty. Bringing in the mindset and perspective of a power player adds to the richness of the content and insights.

Really important book to help people understand probabilities and practical steps in helping people improve outcomes of their decisions.

The book proposes some very interesting ideas about decision making. The two that stuck with me the most: framing decisions as bets and measuring the quality of a decision separate than the quality of the outcome.

The only downside is that this book might fall into the bucket of books that could be summarized in a long podcast episode or a couple of blog posts.