This will make you a better decision maker | Annie Duke (Thinking In Bets, former pro poker player)

Duke discusses turning implicit preferences into a rubric and a structured process before using intuition. Writing the criteria makes them easier to inspect and compare. Her reported hiring improvement is not independently checked here, so the practical point is structure rather than a promised increase in accuracy.

She recommends getting ideas or judgments before people hear the group's answers. Independent, asynchronous input preserves differences that discussion can otherwise hide. Send a clear question and collect private responses, then share the set for a conversation.

Her three-part distinction asks what a meeting is actually for. Discovery can happen independently beforehand; discussion examines the differences; a decision uses that input. A group meeting does not have to perform all three jobs at once.

Duke gives examples of ranked priorities and forecasts with a written explanation. A number alone does not reveal the assumptions behind it. Use short rationales to learn why two people see the same project differently rather than treating disagreement as a problem to erase.

For a timeline, she recommends a point estimate plus lower and upper bounds. Independent estimates can expose uncertainty that a confident first speaker would otherwise anchor. These are judgments to examine, not commitments or guarantees.

She argues that a discussion should convey information and explore models, not make everyone agree. Interruptions and declarations that someone is wrong can shut down useful input. Ask for clarification and understand the reasoning before deciding what to do.

In her account, people can accept a decision they would not have picked when they see the real spread of views and feel heard. Listening does not require pretending everyone agrees. Explain the decision and the trade-offs without claiming consensus that is not there.