The art and science of making better decisions: Lesson 1

Welcome to Lesson 1 of 'The art and science of making better decisions'!

This week we will get started with an introduction to choices and what makes them difficult. In particular, we will explore the “paradox of choice,” which helps explain why less can be more when it comes to decision making. In particular, you will watch a fascinating Ted Talk by Professor Schwartz after which we will do a brief reflection exercise to help you lock in the behavioral insights from today’s session.

Required

1. Read an introduction to this week's topic (1-2 mins)

How many choices have you made today?

How many of them could you have made better?

From choosing what to wear in the morning to deciding where your organisation’s time and resources are best invested, life in the public sector bombards us with decisions that range from the mundane to the pivotal at a hurried pace. As a result, it is sometimes difficult to feel confident in having made the right choice, in particular when the stakes are high.

Not all decisions are made equal, and some choices are objectively harder than others. For most of us, particularly difficult decisions are those that we have had to make with either too little time or too few options.

However, it is rarely the case that decisions are difficult because of constraints in time or alternatives. On the contrary, we have good reason to believe that neither more choices nor additional time improve our decisions.

Instead, some of the most difficult decisions in life are those that can have only a handful of options and an unlimited amount of time to consider, such as the classic example of choosing your life-partner, where to call home or whether to have children. We will look more closely at what makes problems difficult in week 4.

2. Watch a video about the paradox of choice (19 min)

In this TED Talk, Professor Barry Schwartz explains why limiting the amount of choices we have sometimes makes sense and how our fixation on increasing the quantity of available choices is not always in our best interest.

After watching the video, take a few moments to think of how you deal with the ‘paradox of choice’ in your professional life. Do you tend to rationalize difficult decisions out on an excel sheet or do you cut through the ambiguity with your instincts and gut? Why can an increase in choices paralyze you just as well as empower you?

Building upon your natural strengths and tendencies is an essential strategy for improving your decision-making skills, which is a topic we will get to next week when we take a closer look at us.

3. Complete a short reflection exercise (5 min)

For this week's activity, complete a one paragraph reflection on the paradox of choice. Submitting these reflections each week is an excellent way to ensure that you get long-term results from this boot camp. Click here to fill in a short online form, where you will be presented with the following prompt:

• Reflect on a time where you would have been better off by having fewer choices rather than more (e.g. recent trip to the grocery store, difficult hiring decision etc.).
• Why is it that more choices usually hurt us rather than help us?

If you can't access the form, or if you would prefer, you can write your reflection down on a piece of paper.

Take your learning further

1. Week 1 Book Club

In his book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz discusses how modern consumers suffer from too much choice.

2. Read an article (6 mins)

This New York Times article, Too Many Choices: A Problem That Can Paralyze, talks about information and choice overload and shares research highlights on the ‘choosing experience’.

3. Watch a video (22 mins)

In this Columbia Business School video on Overwhelming Consumer Choice, Sheena Iyengar speaks about the dangers of having too many choices and how to optimize the choosing experience for the average consumer.

4. Learn how decisions are made at the UN (5 mins)

This Model UN guide explains how the United Nations makes decisions at the General Assembly.

Picture credit: Pexels