How to Make Decisions by Annie Duke
Workbook on how to make better choices. Many of the ideas I've been exposed to in the past, but still, especially early on the exercises are interesting. For instance, I clearly use "outcoming" to decide on the quality of my decisions. I especially like that its a workbook with exercises.
Despite this, I struggle to use the book in practice. For instance
(1) One chapter deals with using priors to help decide on the probabilities of outcomes. Their example was to find priors for going to the gym to see if that was a good way to lose weight. It was a bit of a struggle to find the numbers for that example. And I think for most decisions in life its hard to find priors. For instance, the prior that buying a house works financially.
(2) The analysis paralysis section is very good. And has a nice framework for when to go quickly or slowly. But maybe sometimes you need psychological help not practical advice. For instance, it suggests if you have two good decisions just flip a coin between them. But that's hard to do
(3) Any analysis explodes in complexity quickly. Each problem has 2 to 3 solutions. Then each solution has at least two things in the outcome space. Which have probabilities. And it just explodes