74 ideas

Decision-Making

Every idea in Doomscholar on decision-making. Open any one to read it in layers, with its sources.

3-D NegotiationDavid A. Lax & James K. SebeniusMost negotiation training only covers tactics at the table (the first dimension) — the bigger wins come from designing the deal's structure (the second dimension) and shaping the setup before anyone sits down (the third dimension).
35 Things I Know At 35 I Wish I Knew At 25Sahil BloomA birthday-prompted reflection compiling 35 life lessons that cluster around a small number of repeated themes — action beats information-gathering, nobody is watching as closely as you fear, and durable things take longer to build than shortcuts promise.
80/20 Strategic PlanningJustin MechamMost underperformance isn't from doing too little — it's from spending time on the wrong 80% of tasks, so applying the Pareto principle deliberately to planning (identifying and prioritizing the 20% of actions that drive most results) outperforms simply working harder or longer.
A Theory of JusticeJohn RawlsA just society's rules are the ones rational people would agree to from behind a veil of ignorance — not knowing their own future race, class, talents, or position in that society — which Rawls argues would lead them to prioritize basic liberties for all and structure inequality so it benefits society's worst-off members.
Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking BrillianceFarnam Street (Shane Parrish)In 'loser's games' (like amateur tennis, and much of ordinary life and investing), success comes mainly from avoiding unforced errors, not from making brilliant plays — Charlie Munger's version: 'trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.'
Bargaining for AdvantageG. Richard ShellYour instinctive negotiation style is a variable, not a constant — and the biggest gains come from diagnosing it and deliberately adjusting it to the situation instead of running the same style everywhere.
Base RatesDaniel KahnemanAnchor to what usually happens before adjusting for what makes this case special.
Bayes' TheoremThomas Bayes (published by Richard Price)Belief should update in proportion to evidence — Bayes' theorem is the exact math for how much a new piece of evidence should move your confidence.
Chicken & BrinkmanshipBertrand Russell / Thomas SchellingThe game of Chicken models situations where each side wins most by not swerving, but mutual non-swerving is catastrophic — so the art is credibly committing to not swerving while leaving the opponent a face-saving exit.
Circle of CompetenceWarren BuffettIt isn't the size of the circle that counts, but knowing where its edge is.
Deterministic ChaosEdward LorenzFully deterministic systems — with no randomness anywhere in their equations — can still become practically unpredictable, because tiny differences in starting conditions grow exponentially over time until prediction becomes impossible.
EBITDA, DecomposedAbir HaddoudEBITDA strips out financing structure, tax jurisdiction, and accounting depreciation choices to expose a company's core operating performance — which makes it useful for comparing companies fairly, but only if you separately track the real cash flow and capital expense risks it deliberately ignores.
Expected ValueBlaise PascalChoose the option whose average outcome, weighted by probability, is highest.
Five Tips to Improve Your Critical ThinkingSamantha AgoosCritical thinking is a trainable skill built from five concrete habits — identifying a claim's origin, questioning your own information sources, spotting fallacies, considering other viewpoints, and evaluating your own reasoning process — not an innate trait some people simply have.
Friendship as Negative ROIPankaj (the2ndfloorguy)Treating friendship formation as a quantifiable investment — tracking the roughly 128-192 hours it takes to build a deep friendship from scratch against a fixed personal capacity for close relationships — makes an uncomfortable case that most new-friendship attempts are a worse use of time than deepening existing ones.
Full Guide: How To Unlock Extreme Focus On CommandDan KoeYou don't need more hours, you need one hour a day pointed at the right thing — and the mechanism for reliable focus is matching challenge to skill (flow), structuring days around building/maintenance/recovery, and deliberately resting, since the brain's Default Mode Network does its best idea-generation work when you stop working.
Game Theory (Bonanno)Giacomo BonannoNon-cooperative game theory formalizes strategic interaction — situations where your best move depends on what others do — starting from strategic-form games and building up to the equilibrium concepts that predict how rational agents behave under mutual interdependence.
Getting to YesRoger Fisher & William UryNegotiation goes better when you separate the people from the problem and argue over underlying interests instead of fixed positions.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of MoralsImmanuel KantAn action is morally right only if it's done from duty according to a principle you could will to become a universal law for everyone — the categorical imperative — consequences are irrelevant; what matters is whether the underlying rule you're acting on treats people as ends in themselves, never merely as means.
How Highly Effective People SpeakPeter AndreiHigh performers use identifiable, learnable psychological tactics — emotional priming, tactical language, and structured argument — to influence people, rather than relying on raw charisma.
How To Fix Your Entire Life In 1 DayDan KoeNew Year's resolutions fail because they target actions (second-order) instead of identity (first-order) — 'you must have the lifestyle that creates the outcome long before you reach it' — and Koe offers a full-day journaling protocol to surface the unconscious goals actually running your behavior.
How to Select a Valuation MethodBojanFin.comThe correct valuation method depends jointly on a company's lifecycle stage and the purpose of the valuation — the same startup might be valued by the Berkscore method when raising funds and by a DCF when being acquired, because different purposes demand different assumptions.
How To Think Like A Strategic Genius (5D Thinking)Dan KoeIntelligence is not what you know (horizontal 'lines' of knowledge) but how you think about what you know (vertical 'levels' of development) — and 'genius thinking' is the ability to keep thinking rather than stopping once you've reached a comfortable answer.
Human 3.0 — A Map To Reach The Top 1%Dan KoeKoe's synthesis model for self-development maps four life domains — Mind, Body, Spirit, Vocation, adapted from Ken Wilber's AQAL model — against three levels of consciousness (Conformist, Individualist, Synthesist), arguing most self-help fails because it develops one domain while ignoring the others.
I Knew It Would Happen: Remembered Probabilities of Once-Future ThingsBaruch Fischhoff & Ruth BeythOnce we know how something turned out, we systematically misremember how predictable it felt beforehand — inflating our recalled certainty to match the now-known outcome, which creates a false sense that events were more foreseeable than they actually were.
Judgment Is the Scarcest ResourceNaval RavikantIn an age of near-infinite leverage, judgment — not effort or intelligence alone — becomes the scarcest and most valuable resource, since small differences in being 'right' get massively amplified.
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Anchoring)Amos Tversky & Daniel KahnemanWhen estimating an unknown quantity, people rely heavily on the first number they're exposed to, the anchor, and adjust insufficiently away from it — even when that anchor is arbitrary, irrelevant, or explicitly randomly generated.
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Availability)Amos Tversky & Daniel KahnemanPeople estimate how frequent or likely something is by how easily examples come to mind — which means vivid, recent, or heavily-reported events get judged as far more common than they actually are, while common but unremarkable events get systematically underestimated.
Make a PACT, Not a SMART GoalAnne-Laure Le CunffSMART goals fixate on an outcome you do not control. Le Cunff's alternative, the PACT — Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, Trackable — commits you to a repeatable output for a set period, turns the result into data, and is the unit of what she later called tiny experiments.
Mechanism Design & AuctionsLeonid Hurwicz / William VickreyMechanism design reverses game theory: instead of predicting play given rules, it engineers rules so that self-interested play produces the outcome you want — most cleanly in auctions where truthful bidding can be made the best strategy.
MeditationsMarcus AureliusPeace of mind comes from rigorously separating what's in your control — your judgments, intentions, reactions — from what isn't — external events, other people, outcomes, even your own body — and directing all effort at the former while accepting the latter without resistance.
Motivated StoppingEliezer YudkowskyWhen you want to believe something, you stop looking for evidence at the first confirming fact. When you don't want to believe it, you demand impossible proof.
Nash EquilibriumJohn NashIn any strategic game, a stable outcome exists where no player can improve their result by changing strategy alone — everyone is already playing their best response to everyone else.
Negotiate Like a CEOEric Partaker (compiling Lewicki, Fisher, Ury, Hiam)Effective negotiation combines four established frameworks — a four-phase structure, a clear BATNA (walk-away alternative), a relationship-versus-outcome matrix for choosing your approach, and the Harvard Principled Negotiation method of separating people from the problem — rather than relying on instinct or aggression alone.
Negotiating the ImpossibleDeepak MalhotraDeadlocks that look unsolvable through direct bargaining usually get broken by changing the game itself — the frame, the players at the table, or the process — rather than by pushing harder within the existing structure.
Never Split the DifferenceChris VossThe FBI's top hostage negotiator argues that logic loses to emotion in real negotiations — so the job is to hear and label the other side's feelings before you ever propose a number.
Opportunity CostFriedrich von WieserThe true cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative you gave up to make it.
P vs NP & Computational ComplexityStephen Cook / Leonid LevinCook and Levin formalized the most important open question in computer science: if a solution can be verified quickly (NP), can it also be found quickly (P)? Most experts believe no — and that gap explains why many optimization, routing, and scheduling problems have no efficient perfect solution.
Pre-MortemGary KleinImagine the failure has already happened. Then explain why.
Predicting the Future with Bayes' TheoremFarnam Street (Shane Parrish), after Thomas BayesGood judgment under uncertainty means continuously updating your probability estimates as new evidence arrives, weighting that new evidence against what you already knew (your 'priors') rather than either ignoring new evidence or overreacting to it as if nothing else mattered.
Put the Pressure on YourselfThomas Edison (quoted); compiled excerptExternal motivation rarely arrives on schedule, so the people who actually reach their potential are the roughly 2% who can work without supervision — putting pressure on themselves rather than waiting for someone else to demand it of them.
Regret MinimizationJeff BezosProject yourself to 80 and choose the option you'll regret least.
Repeated Games & Axelrod's TournamentsRobert AxelrodAxelrod invited game theorists to submit programs for iterated prisoner's dilemma and the simplest — Tit for Tat, cooperate first then copy the opponent — won, showing cooperation can evolve without central authority when the shadow of the future is long enough.
Revenue, Profit, and Cash Are Not the Same NumberNathan Liao, CMARevenue, profit, and cash measure three different things at three different points in a transaction's lifecycle, and conflating them is the single most common misconception in reading a business's financial health.
Second-Order ThinkingHoward MarksFirst-level thinking says 'and then what?' once. Second-level thinking keeps asking.
Split the PieBarry NalebuffFairness in negotiation isn't dividing based on who has more leverage or a bigger existing pie — game theory shows the value created jointly by a deal should be split equally, regardless of each side's size or starting power.
Start with NoJim CampChasing agreement makes you weak — a negotiator who needs a 'yes' has already given up leverage, while one who invites 'no' keeps the decision, and the deal, fully in the other side's honest control.
Strong Opinions, Weakly HeldPaul SaffoCommit hard to a view so you can update fast when it's wrong.
The 5 Whys MethodSakichi Toyoda / Toyota Production SystemRepeatedly asking 'why' about a problem — typically five times — peels back surface symptoms to reach the actual root cause, preventing teams from implementing fixes that address symptoms while leaving the underlying issue free to resurface.
The Art of WarSun TzuThe greatest victories come from winning before the fight starts — through positioning, information, and denying the opponent a fight worth having — not from superior force applied in direct confrontation.
The Casino's Four Gears: Edge, Volume, Sizing, and BankrollJohn Kelly Jr.; Edward ThorpA tiny, repeatable statistical edge becomes a near-certain profit only when combined with three other things — enormous volume, bets sized to the edge rather than to conviction, and a bankroll large enough to survive a bad stretch. Miss any one of the four and having an edge stops mattering.
The Cynefin FrameworkDave SnowdenYou cannot manage a complex system the same way you manage a complicated one. You must adapt your decision-making to the domain you are in.
The Demon of Reason: Logical FallaciesTED-EdLogical fallacies are structural flaws in an argument's reasoning, independent of whether the conclusion happens to be true — which means an argument can be both persuasive and invalid at the same time, and learning to spot the structure is what protects you from the persuasion.
The Eisenhower MatrixAttributed to Dwight D. EisenhowerTasks fall into four categories along two independent axes — urgent versus not urgent, important versus not important — and most people's schedules are dominated by the urgent-but-unimportant quadrant, which crowds out the important-but-not-urgent work that actually compounds.
The Hard Choice ModelRuth ChangHard choices aren't hard because you are stupid; they are hard because there is no objectively 'best' option. You must become the author of your own life by choosing what matters to you.
The Kelly Criterion & Position SizingJohn L. Kelly / Edward ThorpKelly derived the fraction of bankroll to bet to maximize long-run logarithmic growth — bet too little and you compound slowly, bet too much and a single bad run wipes out the geometric advantage even with a positive edge.
The Law of Large NumbersJacob Bernoulli / Andrey KolmogorovAs you take more independent draws from the same process, the average of what you see converges to the true underlying expectation — which is why small samples routinely mislead and large samples quietly correct.
The Map is Not the TerritoryAlfred KorzybskiOur mental models of reality are reductions. When the model contradicts reality, the model is wrong, not reality.
The Monty Hall Problem & Conditional ProbabilitySteve Selvin / Marilyn vos SavantSwitching doors in Monty Hall doubles your chance of winning from 1/3 to 2/3 — because the host's action of opening a losing door is not random, it leaks information about where the prize isn't.
The Most Important Skill To Learn In The Next 10 YearsDan KoeThe one skill that stays relevant regardless of which specific skills get automated is agency — the ability to act, iterate, and adapt without permission — because access to knowledge has never been the bottleneck; the willingness to act on it has.
The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate DecisionsFarnam Street, after Col. John BoydFast, high-stakes decisions are best made through a repeating four-step loop — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — where speed and comfort with uncertainty matter more than exhaustive analysis, and where 'orienting' (stripping away your own cultural and cognitive biases) is the decisive, most-overlooked step.
The Prince: Power as It Actually WorksNiccolò MachiavelliRulers should be judged by whether their methods preserve power and stability, not by whether those methods are conventionally virtuous.
The Prisoner's DilemmaMerrill Flood and Melvin DresherTwo rational actors who cannot communicate or trust each other will often choose mutual betrayal even when mutual cooperation would leave both better off.
The Psychology of Human MisjudgmentCharlie MungerThe human brain relies on roughly two dozen hardwired psychological tendencies that, while evolutionarily useful in isolation, routinely combine to cause catastrophic misjudgment in modern, complex environments.
The Psychology of Sunk CostHal Arkes & Catherine BlumerPeople irrationally continue investing time, money, or effort into a failing course of action specifically because of what they've already invested — even though that past investment is gone regardless of what they do next, and only future costs and benefits should matter to the decision.
The Self-Help TrapTim FerrissAfter two decades of professional 'optimizing,' Tim Ferriss argues self-help can become its own trap — the compulsive pursuit of self-improvement can substitute for actually living, making the cure worse than the original problem.
The Wheel of FocusSuren SamarchyanConcentration is not a single skill you either have or lack — it is the output of four separate systems (mindset, energy, environment, technique) that all have to be tuned at once.
Thinking, Fast and SlowDaniel KahnemanTwo systems drive human judgment — System 1, fast and intuitive, and System 2, slow and deliberate — and most systematic biases occur when System 1 quietly substitutes an easy question for the hard one actually being asked.
To Solve a Tough Problem, Reframe ItHarvard Business ReviewMany 'unsolvable' problems are actually poorly framed ones — changing the question you're asking often surfaces a solution that was invisible under the original framing, making reframing a higher-leverage move than harder analysis of the original question.
Twenty Finance Terms Everyone ConfusesWealth (thecapitalistt0)A working financial vocabulary — knowing the precise difference between terms like liquidity and solvency, or nominal and real returns — prevents the specific category of investing mistakes that come from conflating two related but distinct concepts.
UtilitarianismJohn Stuart MillThe right action is whichever produces the greatest net happiness for the greatest number of people affected — an act is judged entirely by its consequences, not by the intentions behind it or any rule it follows.
Waiting for the Fat PitchWarren BuffettInvesting has no called strikes. Buffett borrows Ted Williams' 77-cell strike zone to argue that returns come from swinging only at pitches in your best cell — and that the hardest discipline is standing at the plate for years with the bat on your shoulder while the crowd screams at you to swing.
You Can Negotiate AnythingHerb CohenEvery negotiation, no matter how it's dressed up, runs on just three variables — power, time, and information — and whoever understands them best usually wins, regardless of who seems to hold the stronger position.
Zero-Sum vs Positive-Sum GamesJohn von Neumann / Oskar MorgensternVon Neumann distinguished zero-sum games — where one player's gain is exactly another's loss — from positive-sum games where mutually beneficial moves exist, arguing that misclassifying a positive-sum situation as zero-sum is one of the costliest strategic errors.

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