Decisive By Chip Heath

I love something that Tim Grover says about relentless people. As one of The Relentless 13 he says, “You make decisions, not suggestions.” With that in mind, I wanted to learn from this book and about this book. We all make thousands of decisions every day and I wanted to understand ways to improve the effectiveness of those.

The first thing that I took note of was a way to evaluate potential decisions. A pro and con list is not the best way to go. If we only make a pro and con list we might miss out on an opportunity that could be much greater than the pros on the list that we made. As the author said, that creates a narrow frame. As a result, I now look to evaluate an option but also look at the opportunity cost and the other potential opportunities.

Benjamin Franklin making a pros and cons list: striking out the pros and cons after identifying their respective weights to determine the end testily and the ultimate conclusion creates a narrow frame.

What people look for in others is not always the truth. Most people do not want to hear that the reason they failed a test was because they didn’t study enough, they’d rather hear the reassuring, “Ohoh you gave it your best.” Honesty, however, is much more impactful and provides better positioning in the long run.