Outsmart Your Own Biases

Cognitive biases interfere with decision-making processes. Individuals tend to seek prompt solutions, which limits the ability to evaluate options, predict possibilities, and assess methods for achieving goals. Tips for broadening thinking and thereby making better choices are: make three estimates regarding the future, apply postmortems to failures, seek advice, think about goals separately, use joint evaluation, reduce number of options to encourage exploration of alternatives, and setting a "trip wire" - an established deadline that fosters logical thinking. To avoid misweighting information, refer to criteria checklists, use blinding to eliminate irrelevant factors, and apply algorithms to predetermine emphasis for each variable.