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Decision-Making

How to … Plan in a Time of Uncertainty

January 25, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Planning in a Time of Uncertainty In periods of much uncertainty and ambiguity, move away from annual plans and focus on the next three months. Reflect on the unpredictability of the future and stay on your toes by forging plans for unexpected scenarios so you won’t be caught flat-footed when that time comes.

Establish “trigger points” and “accelerate, maintain, or terminate criteria” in advance and keep an eye on key indicators to “wait and see” or “stay the course” should one of your planned-for scenarios materialize.

Idea for Impact: When the horizon is much shorter, operate with agility and allocate your resources in real-time.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  2. This Hack Will Help You Think Opportunity Costs: Goals and Anti-Goals
  3. Be Smart by Not Being Stupid
  4. Tylenol Made a Hero of Johnson & Johnson: A Timeless Crisis Management Case Study
  5. How Stress Impairs Your Problem-Solving Capabilities: Case Study of TransAsia Flight 235

Filed Under: Leadership, MBA in a Nutshell, Mental Models Tagged With: Adversity, Conflict, Decision-Making, Persuasion, Problem Solving, Risk

Our 10 Most Popular Articles of 2022

December 30, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Top Blog Articles of 2022 Here are our most popular exclusive features of 2022. Pass this on to your friends; if they like these, they can sign up to receive our RSS feeds.

  • Choose a better response. Don’t accept reflexive reactions. Instead, learn to know there is a “space” before responding.
  • To be more productive, try doing less. The best way to get lots of things done is to not do them at all.
  • The good of working for a micromanager: be aware of the details your manager cares about and expect to learn a lot.
  • A hack to resist temptation: commit to not giving in for 15 minutes. Even a simple distraction can break the trance.
  • Get good at things by being bad first. If you aren’t willing to be bad initially, you’ll never get started on anything new.
  • Get rid of relationship clutter. Make room for more supportive and nurturing relationships.
  • Don’t be a prisoner of the hurt done to you. While you are the victim of another who has caused you some suffering, she herself is also a victim of suffering.
  • Nothing like a word of encouragement to provide a lift. Everyone needs hope. Look for honest ways to offer even a little nudge of encouragement.
  • The secret to happiness in relationships is lowering your expectations. You’d be happier to accept other people’s difficult behaviors when you expect less from them.
  • Cancel culture has a condescension problem. If we can’t stand up for the right to speech that we dislike, why keep the right to the speech we do like?

And here are some articles of yesteryear that continue to be popular:

  • Lessons on adversity from Charlie Munger
  • If you’re looking for bad luck, you’ll soon find it
  • The power of negative thinking
  • Fight ignorance, not each other
  • The Fermi Rule & Guesstimation
  • Don’t let small decisions destroy your productivity
  • How smart companies get smarter
  • How to manage smart, powerful leaders
  • Care less for what other people think
  • Expressive writing can help you heal
  • Accidents can happen when you least expect

We wish you all a healthy and prosperous 2023!

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  2. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  3. Lessons from David Dao Incident: Watch Out for the Availability Bias!
  4. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head
  5. Rapoport’s Rules to Criticize Someone Constructively

Filed Under: Managing People, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Getting Along, Mindfulness, Thought Process

“Fly the Aircraft First”

December 29, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Attention Prioritization: Lessons from Eastern Airlines Flight 401 Today is the 50th anniversary of the Flight 401 disaster. I’ve previously cited how the crew of the ill-fated Eastern Airlines Lockheed L-1011 got so single-mindedly preoccupied with tackling a nose landing gear indicator light malfunction that they didn’t pay attention to the fact that their airliner was descending gradually into the Florida Everglades.

In summary, the pilots were simply too distracted to fly the aircraft. Human factors, specifically cognitive impairments, can precipitate distractions away from vital tasks.

The incident led to a breakthrough called Crew Resource Management (CRM.) This “human nature innovation” actively orients pilots to prioritize tasks in order of operational safety. The adage “Aviate, Navigate, and Communicate (A-N-C)” reinforces the ‘fly the aircraft first’ behaviors until they’re internalized and become routine.

The top priority—always—is to aviate. That means fly the airplane by using the flight controls and flight instruments to direct the airplane’s attitude, airspeed, and altitude. Rounding out those top priorities are figuring out where you are and where you’re going (Navigate,) and, as appropriate, talking to ATC or someone outside the airplane (Communicate.) However, it doesn’t matter if we’re navigating and communicating perfectly if we lose control of the aircraft and crash. A-N-C seems simple to follow, but it’s easy to forget when you get busy or distracted in the cockpit.

Idea for Impact: “Fly the aircraft first.” Know when to set aside the seemingly important things to accomplish the more vital ones.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Lessons from the World’s Worst Aviation Disaster // Book Summary of ‘The Collision on Tenerife’
  2. How Stress Impairs Your Problem-Solving Capabilities: Case Study of TransAsia Flight 235
  3. What Airline Disasters Teach About Cognitive Impairment and Decision-Making Under Stress
  4. Pulling Off the Impossible Under Immense Pressure: Leadership Lessons from Captain Sully
  5. Lessons from the Princeton Seminary Experiment: People in a Rush are Less Likely to Help Others (and Themselves)

Filed Under: Business Stories, Effective Communication, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Anxiety, Aviation, Biases, Conflict, Decision-Making, Mindfulness, Problem Solving, Stress, Worry

Be Smart by Not Being Stupid

December 12, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Be Smart by Not Being Stupid No superhuman ability is usually required to dodge the many foolish choices to which we’re prone. A few basic rules are all that’s required to shield you, if not from all errors, from silly errors.

Charlie Munger often emphasizes that minimizing mistakes may be one of the least appreciated tricks in successful investing. He has reputedly credited much of Berkshire Hathaway’s success to consistently avoiding stupidity. “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage we have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent.” And, “I think part of the popularity of Berkshire Hathaway is that we look like people who have found a trick. It’s not brilliance. It’s just avoiding stupidity.” They’ve avoided investing in situations they don’t understand or summon experience.

As a policy, avoiding stupidity in investing shouldn’t mean avoiding risk wholly; rather, it’s taking on risk only when there’s a fine chance that you’ll be properly rewarded for assuming that risk.

Idea for Impact: Tune out stupidity. Becoming successful in life isn’t always about what you do, but what you don’t do. In other words, improving decision quality is often more about decreasing your chances of failure than increasing your chances of success.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  2. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  3. More Data Isn’t Always Better
  4. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head
  5. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking

Filed Under: MBA in a Nutshell, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Biases, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Problem Solving, Risk, Thinking Tools, Thought Process, Wisdom

Change Your Mindset by Taking Action

November 17, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Change Your Mindset by Taking Action While it is helpful to be motivated and get into the right mindset to, say, exercise, it’s far easier to just show up at the gym and get started on a small quest, even when you don’t really feel like doing it. You’re likely to habituate to new behaviors in a way that circumvents your innate resistance to change.

Minor adjustments can add up and make a big difference. As Harvard psychologist Susan David writes in Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life (2016,)

Traditional self-help tends to see change in terms of lofty goals and total transformation, but research actually supports the opposite view—that small, deliberate tweaks infused with your values can make a huge difference in your life. This is especially true when we tweak the routine and habitual parts of life, which then afford tremendous leverage for change.

Idea for Impact: Waiting for the right mindset to “show up” can be a losing strategy. Taking action is often easier than controlling your mental state. Don’t overly focus on the very thing that’s harder to control. Take the next baby step forward.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist
  2. This New Year, Forget Resolutions, Set Intentions Instead
  3. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus
  4. Get Good At Things By Being Bad First
  5. Doing Is Everything

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Decision-Making, Discipline, Getting Things Done, Goals, Motivation, Procrastination

Books in Brief: “Hell Yeah or No” Mental Model

November 15, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'Hell Yeah Or No' by Derek Sivers (ISBN 1988575060) American entrepreneur and blogger Derek Sivers popularized the “Hell Yeah or No” mental model (YouTube Synopsis): unless you’re super excited about something, don’t commit to it.

If you’re ready to say ‘yes’ to the things that aren’t that great, you won’t have time, energy, and focus for the “hell yeah” stuff in your life. Sivers has summed up,

We tend to say yes to too many things. And because of this, we’re spread too thin. We’re so busy doing average things that we don’t have time for the occasional great thing.

So instead I propose raising the bar as high as you can, so that if you’re feeling anything less than, “oh, hell yeah, that would be amazing,” then just say, no.

By doing this, you will miss out on many good things, but that’s okay because your time will be quite empty. So then by saying no to the merely good things, you’ll have the time and the energy and the space in your life to throw yourself in entirely when that occasional great thing comes up.

Recommendation: Read this insight-dense book. The “Hell Yeah or No” mental model will reframe how you control impulses and consider life’s big decisions.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  2. Don’t Ruminate Endlessly
  3. Never Take the First Offer
  4. What Most People Get Wrong About Focus
  5. Quitting Something You Love But Isn’t Working

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Clutter, Decision-Making, Discipline, Negotiation, Persuasion, Wisdom

Are You Ill-Prepared for Being Wrong?

October 31, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Are You Ill-Prepared for Being Wrong? We spend so much of our lives being right that, I wonder if, we’re ill-prepared for being wrong.

Since childhood, we’ve been inured that being right is more acceptable than being wrong. Being wrong feels so unpleasant—repulsive even—that we instill a series of strategies to salvage ourselves when we are exposed as being wrong. We learn to trip from our forked tongues explanations, justifications, excuses, and blames for our errors and oversights.

What’s worse, we develop a deep-seated impulse to shirk responsibility and accountability for our actions. We become loath to change our beliefs or behaviors because change takes effort. We envisage change as a challenge to our identity. In the words of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, “People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot. They wake up and re-analyze things and change their mind. If you don’t change your mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot. People who are right a lot want to disconfirm their fundamental biases.”

Idea for Impact: What’s lost in all this is that being wrong is not only a central feature of being human. It’s one of the most potent ways of learning. Admitting we were wrong—and conceding we’ll be wrong again—can be so liberating and welcoming.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking
  2. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  3. How to Embrace Uncertainty and Leave Room for Doubt
  4. A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self
  5. 3 Ways to … Avoid Overthinking

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Confidence, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Mindfulness, Wisdom

Never Take the First Offer

October 24, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Never Take the First Offer in Negotiations Gently push back, at least for one round. Especially if you’re a less-aggressive personality type and are programmed to answer ‘yes’ to the first reasonable offer someone makes.

People seldom offer the best they can offer right away because the first offer “anchors” the negotiation. They risk “showing their cards” and divulging some bargaining zones.

If you don’t push back even once, you’ll wind up with a less-than-optimal deal. A straightforward question such as “Can you do better than that?” will help you fend off the first offer politely without being a pushover.

If the counterparty says ‘no’ and you feel you can sustain the process for another round, inquire, “I’d like your help to learn why the first offer is the best you can do.” The key to being a better negotiator isn’t simply presenting your demands but asking detailed questions designed to better understand the other side’s interests.

If their answers make no sense, share your confusion. Offer a strong counteroffer based on your ideal intended outcome and your appraisal of the counterparty’s options and their “reserve price.”

Idea for Impact: Beware of the trap of saying ‘yes’ too quickly. You’ll get farther with a bit of polite persistence than quick surrender.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. If You Can’t “Think on the Spot,” Buy Yourself Time
  2. The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Avoid Battle
  3. Competitive vs Cooperative Negotiation
  4. How to Make Others Feel They Owe You One: Reciprocity and Social Influence
  5. What Most People Get Wrong About Focus

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Mental Models Tagged With: Assertiveness, Conflict, Decision-Making, Likeability, Negotiation, Persuasion, Social Skills

3 Ways to … Avoid Overthinking

October 17, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Avoid Overthinking Overthinking and over-analyzing the causes and meaning of your thoughts can be tamed through greater self-awareness and mental disengagement.

  1. Set a time limit for your “thinking time,” then make yourself move on to something else or force your decision. Vent your worries to the world, but there’s a risk that you’ll end up even more confused if you keep asking everyone’s opinion. Most of the time, things aren’t as complicated as you perceive them.
  2. Pause and take a step back. Interrupt the thinking process or distract yourself by diverting your attention to something very different. Focused distraction can calm your mind and help you have a coherent view of the whole situation.
  3. Accept that uncertainty is part of this life, and you’ll never have all the facts or know what’s further down the road. Studies suggest we fear an unknown outcome more than a known bad one. Not everything you plan will work out, and that’s ok. It’s often better to set a clear course today and tackle problems that arise tomorrow.

Idea for Impact: Right-size your expectations. Overthinking comes from trying to control what you can’t control.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking
  2. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  3. It’s Probably Not as Bad as You Think: The 20-40-60 Rule
  4. More Data Isn’t Always Better
  5. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Confidence, Conviction, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Thinking Tools, Wisdom

How to … Overcome the Tyranny of Your To-Do List

September 5, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Long before management consultants made the humble 2×2 matrix their stock-in-trade, President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the format to create one of the most powerful productivity tools of the 20th century: take your itemized to-do list, and dichotomize all the items on their importance and urgency. Then, classify these on a 2×2 with urgency on the x-axis and importance on the y-axis. The items in each bucket warrant a different kind of response.

How to Overcome the Tyranny of Your To-Do List

  • The urgent-and-important tasks in the ‘Do’ quadrant need doing now (e.g., call the fire brigade if your house is burning down.)
  • The urgent-but-not-important tasks in the ‘Delegate or Automate’ quadrant are best delegated where possible (think booking a hotel or clearing low-priority emails.)
  • The important-but-not-urgent tasks (strategic planning, training) in the ‘Schedule’ quadrant should take up most of your time. Eisenhower noted that truly vital yet immediate tasks are few and far between: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” That means committing to doing the tasks you schedule. Being effective can’t happen if you keep kicking the can down the road.
  • The neither-important nor-urgent tasks in the ‘Eliminate’ quadrant are usually time-wasting activities and must be eliminated forthwith. They don’t move you towards achieving your goals.

De-prioritize Stuff You Shouldn’t Be Doing in the First Place

'First Things First' by Stephen R. Covey (ISBN 0684802031) The Eisenhower Priority Matrix isn’t entirely ground-breaking. Still, it can help you recognize you can deliver yourself by knowing it’s okay not to complete them all, so long as you get the most vital ones done. The challenge lies in being able to determine what’s essential and what isn’t, as expounded tediously in Steven Covey’s First Things First (1994):

Urgent matters are those that require immediate action. These are the visible issues that pop up and demand your attention now. Often, urgent matters come with clear consequences for not completing these tasks. Urgent tasks are unavoidadable, but spending too much time putting out fires can produce a great deal of stress and could result in burnout.

Important matters, on the other hand, are those that contribute to long-term goals and life values. These items require planning and thoughtful action. When you focus on important matters you manage your time, energy, and attention rather than mindlessly expending these resources. What is important is subjective and depends on your own values and personal goals. No one else can define what is important for you.

The key to productivity is to be very selective in what you pick and execute your most important priorities. Be ready to delegate and be quick and not-to-perfection on as many things as possible. You really don’t need to give 110% on everything.

Idea for Impact: Use the Eisenhower Priority Matrix to Triage Your To-Do List

Get Your Priorities Straight The Eisenhower method can be an indispensable weapon in your efficiency arsenal. Your life will never be the same when you internalize clarity of habits. Once you’ve been using the matrix for a while, you can realize a pattern of your own behavior. With some discipline, you can change your behaviors to ensure you’re spending more time on the ‘Schedule’ and ‘Do’ quadrants, improving your ability to plan your work.

Try taking a few minutes each day and analyze your task list. Are there things on there that you can delegate or eliminate? Are you genuinely focusing on the right tasks? It’s incredible how much more productive you can be with a bit of planning and forethought.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus
  2. Everything Takes Longer Than Anticipated: Hofstadter’s Law [Mental Models]
  3. Get Your Priorities Straight
  4. Don’t Let Interruptions Hijack Your Day
  5. Warren Buffett’s Advice on How to Focus on Priorities and Subdue Distractions

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Decision-Making, Discipline, Efficiency, Goals, Procrastination, Task Management, Time Management

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!