Title: Decision Making — LearnCoachAssist

Q: What is decision making?
A: Decision making is the process of choosing a course of action from multiple options based on goals, evidence, and trade-offs.

Q: Why is decision quality important?
A: Better decisions compound over time, improving outcomes, team trust, and resource allocation.

Q: What is the difference between a reversible and irreversible decision?
A: A reversible decision can be changed cheaply later; an irreversible decision is costly or difficult to unwind.

Q: Why should teams make reversible decisions quickly?
A: Fast decisions preserve momentum when the downside of being wrong is manageable.

Q: What is a decision criterion?
A: A decision criterion is a standard used to judge options, such as speed, cost, risk, or customer impact.

Q: What is a trade-off in decision making?
A: A trade-off is the acceptance that gaining one benefit usually means giving up something else.

Q: What is analysis paralysis?
A: Analysis paralysis is a delay caused by overthinking options or waiting for certainty that will never fully arrive.

Q: What is satisficing?
A: Satisficing means selecting an option that is good enough for the situation instead of optimizing endlessly.

Q: What is a decision memo?
A: A short written document that states the choice, context, options, evidence, and rationale.

Q: Why should important decisions be written down?
A: Writing improves clarity, exposes weak logic, and creates a record for later learning.

Q: What is first-principles thinking?
A: Breaking a problem into fundamental truths and reasoning up from them instead of copying existing assumptions.

Q: What is second-order thinking?
A: Thinking beyond the immediate effect of a choice to its likely downstream consequences.

Q: What is the cost of delay?
A: The value lost by postponing a decision or action that could have created progress earlier.

Q: What is opportunity cost?
A: Opportunity cost is the value of the best alternative you give up when choosing something else.

Q: What is a pre-mortem?
A: A pre-mortem asks the team to imagine the decision failed and then list the most likely reasons why.

Q: Why is a pre-mortem useful?
A: It surfaces hidden risks early, before the team becomes emotionally attached to a plan.

Q: What is confirmation bias in decisions?
A: The tendency to favor evidence that supports your existing belief while discounting conflicting signals.

Q: What is the role of dissent in decision making?
A: Thoughtful dissent improves decisions by testing assumptions and reducing groupthink.

Q: What is a decision owner?
A: The person accountable for making the call after gathering input.

Q: What is the difference between consultation and consensus?
A: Consultation gathers input before a decision; consensus requires broader agreement before moving forward.

Q: What is bounded rationality?
A: The idea that people make decisions with limited time, information, and cognitive capacity rather than perfect logic.

Q: What is a decision log?
A: A running record of major decisions, rationale, assumptions, and review dates.

Q: Why review past decisions?
A: Reviewing decisions improves judgment by comparing expected outcomes with what actually happened.

Q: What is a high-leverage decision?
A: A decision whose effects materially shape many later outcomes, options, or constraints.

Q: What is a simple decision-making question for prioritization?
A: "Which option creates the most upside for the least irreversible downside?"

Q: What is an escalation path in decisions?
A: A predefined way to raise a decision to a higher authority when stakes, uncertainty, or conflict exceed local ownership.

Q: What is principle-based decision making?
A: Using a small set of agreed principles to guide choices when situations are ambiguous.

Q: What makes a decision actionable?
A: A clear choice, named owner, next steps, and a timeframe for execution or review.

Q: What is a decision deadline?
A: A decision deadline is the latest useful point to choose before delay becomes more expensive than uncertainty.

Q: Why can too many options hurt quality?
A: Too many options increase cognitive load and often make comparison slower and less clear.

Q: What is a decision frame?
A: A decision frame defines the problem, constraints, stakeholders, and success criteria before options are judged.

Q: Why should assumptions be named explicitly?
A: Named assumptions are easier to test, challenge, and revisit when results differ from expectations.

Q: What is scenario planning in decision making?
A: Scenario planning explores how a choice might perform across multiple plausible futures instead of one forecast.

Q: What is expected value thinking?
A: Expected value thinking weighs likely upside and downside by both impact and probability.

Q: What is local optimization?
A: Local optimization improves one part of a system while accidentally harming the larger whole.

Q: What is a tie-breaker principle?
A: A tie-breaker principle is a pre-agreed rule used when options seem equally good on the main criteria.

Q: What is a one-way door decision?
A: A one-way door decision is hard to reverse and therefore deserves more analysis and alignment.

Q: What is a two-way door decision?
A: A two-way door decision can be adjusted later, so speed and learning often matter more than perfection.

Q: What is decision hygiene?
A: Decision hygiene is the practice of reducing bias and noise through better structure, evidence, and review.

Q: What is a decision journal?
A: A decision journal captures reasoning, predictions, and emotions at the time a choice is made.

Q: What is decision-making?
A: The process of identifying alternatives and selecting one based on values, preferences, and beliefs.

Q: What is a rational decision model?
A: Define problem → identify criteria → weight criteria → generate alternatives → evaluate against criteria → choose best.

Q: What is optimizing?
A: Searching for the best possible option — costly when alternatives are many or evaluation is expensive.

Q: What is the difference between satisficing and optimizing?
A: Satisficing accepts "good enough"; optimizing seeks "the best."

Q: What is decision fatigue?
A: Quality of decisions degrades with the number of decisions made — especially late in the day.

Q: How to counter decision fatigue?
A: Make important decisions early; reduce trivial decisions (uniforms, defaults); recover with rest and food.

Q: What is choice architecture?
A: The way options are presented; subtle design choices shape decisions without removing freedom.

Q: What is the default effect?
A: Default options are disproportionately chosen — applies to organ donation, retirement plans, software.

Q: What is the nudge?
A: Thaler & Sunstein — light interventions in choice architecture that influence behavior while preserving freedom.

Q: What is libertarian paternalism?
A: Designing defaults to guide better choices while keeping people free to opt out.

Q: What is anchoring in decisions?
A: First number or option presented becomes a reference point unduly shaping subsequent judgment.

Q: What is the contrast effect?
A: Comparing options changes how each is judged — a moderately priced item looks cheap next to expensive ones.

Q: What is the framing effect?
A: Same information leads to different choices based on how it's presented (gain vs. loss framing).

Q: Tversky's "Asian disease" framing example?
A: Saving 200 of 600 lives feels different from "400 will die" — same outcomes, opposite preferences.

Q: What is loss aversion in decisions?
A: Losses feel ~2x as bad as equivalent gains feel good — explains many risk-averse choices.

Q: What is prospect theory?
A: Kahneman & Tversky's model showing how people actually evaluate gains and losses, departing from expected utility theory.

Q: What is the certainty effect?
A: Outcomes seen as certain weighted more heavily than merely probable ones, even when expected values are equal.

Q: What is hyperbolic discounting?
A: Future rewards heavily discounted; steep early decay leads to short-term bias.

Q: What is present bias?
A: Overweighting immediate outcomes vs. delayed ones — root of procrastination and overconsumption.

Q: What is intertemporal choice?
A: Decisions involving trade-offs between immediate and future consequences.

Q: What is the marshmallow test?
A: Mischel's classic study of delayed gratification in children; later replications suggest context matters more than originally thought.

Q: What is the planning fallacy?
A: Underestimating time and cost of future tasks while overestimating benefits.

Q: How to counter the planning fallacy?
A: Reference-class forecasting: estimate based on actual outcomes of comparable past projects.

Q: What is reference-class forecasting?
A: Bent Flyvbjerg's technique — anchor on the distribution of similar past projects, not your specific plan.

Q: What is the inside vs. outside view?
A: Inside view: project-specific reasoning. Outside view: typical outcomes for similar projects. Use both.

Q: What is overconfidence bias?
A: Subjective certainty exceeds objective accuracy — pervasive in forecasting and self-assessment.

Q: What is the Dunning-Kruger effect in decisions?
A: Low expertise people overestimate their judgment; high expertise often underestimate it.

Q: What is the availability heuristic in decisions?
A: Judging probability by ease of recall — vivid recent events feel more likely.

Q: What is the representativeness heuristic?
A: Judging by similarity to a stereotype, often ignoring base rates.

Q: What is base-rate neglect?
A: Overemphasizing specific case features while ignoring how common the condition is.

Q: What is the affect heuristic?
A: Letting current emotion shape risk and benefit judgments.

Q: What is somatic marker hypothesis?
A: Antonio Damasio's idea — bodily emotional signals guide decisions, especially under uncertainty.

Q: What is intuition in decisions?
A: Pattern recognition from accumulated experience — works well in stable predictable domains, fails in chaotic ones.

Q: What is Kahneman's "system 1 vs. system 2"?
A: Fast automatic thinking (System 1) and slow deliberate thinking (System 2) — most decisions use System 1.

Q: When does intuition fail?
A: In novel domains, with poor feedback, when complexity exceeds pattern recognition. Domains like stock-picking are notoriously bad.

Q: What is "good judgment under uncertainty"?
A: Combination of evidence weighing, calibrated probability estimates, and updating when new info arrives.

Q: What is calibration?
A: Match between expressed probability and actual outcome — well-calibrated forecasters say 70% when they're right 70% of the time.

Q: What is Brier score?
A: Forecasting accuracy metric — average squared error between predicted probability and outcome.

Q: What is a superforecaster?
A: Philip Tetlock's term — people who outperform on prediction; characterized by open-mindedness, granular probabilities, frequent updates.

Q: What are the GJP "Ten Commandments" of forecasting?
A: Tetlock's guidelines: triage hard questions, decompose, balance inside/outside views, use granular probabilities, etc.

Q: What is Bayesian updating?
A: Adjusting probability of a hypothesis given new evidence using Bayes' theorem.

Q: What is a prior probability?
A: Initial belief about a hypothesis before new evidence.

Q: What is a posterior probability?
A: Updated belief after applying new evidence.

Q: What is the likelihood ratio?
A: How much more (or less) likely the evidence is under the hypothesis vs. its negation.

Q: What is the base-rate fallacy in medicine?
A: A positive test with 99% accuracy can still mean low probability of disease if disease is rare.

Q: What is the conjunction fallacy?
A: Believing a specific compound event is more probable than a more general single event.

Q: What is the disjunction fallacy?
A: Underestimating the probability that one of multiple events happens.

Q: What is the cognitive reflection test?
A: Three short questions designed to surface System 1 errors when correct answer requires System 2.

Q: What is the difference between risk and uncertainty?
A: Risk has known probabilities; uncertainty has unknown probabilities (Knight's distinction).

Q: What is ambiguity aversion?
A: Ellsberg paradox — preferring known risks to unknown ones, even at worse expected value.

Q: What is Knightian uncertainty?
A: Frank Knight — unmeasurable uncertainty (genuine unknowns) vs. quantifiable risk.

Q: What is a black swan?
A: Nassim Taleb's term — rare high-impact event unforeseen until it happens.

Q: What is a known unknown?
A: Risk you know exists but can't quantify; needs scenario planning.

Q: What is an unknown unknown?
A: Risk you don't even know to look for — Donald Rumsfeld's framing.

Q: What is the McNamara fallacy?
A: Trusting only what's measurable; ignoring immeasurable factors leads to bad decisions.

Q: What is Goodhart's law?
A: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Q: What is the streetlight effect?
A: Looking for answers where it's easy, not where the answers are — joke about searching for keys under the lamp.

Q: What is the WRAP framework?
A: Heath brothers' decision process: Widen options, Reality-test assumptions, Attain distance, Prepare to be wrong.

Q: What is "widen your options"?
A: Generate more alternatives instead of binary choices — usually possible with effort.

Q: What is the "vanishing options" test?
A: Imagine the current options are unavailable — what else could you do? Surfaces hidden creativity.

Q: What is "ooch"?
A: Heath brothers' term for small reversible experiments before big commitments.

Q: What is "prepare to be wrong"?
A: Tripwires, premortems, and reversibility — assume your plan won't survive contact with reality.

Q: What is a tripwire?
A: Pre-set signal triggering reassessment — "if metric X drops below Y, we revisit."

Q: What is a premortem?
A: Imagining the decision has failed in 6 months; listing reasons why. Surfaces hidden risks.

Q: What is the post-mortem?
A: After-the-fact review of what happened, why, and lessons learned.

Q: What is the OODA loop?
A: John Boyd: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — fast iterative loop especially relevant under adversarial conditions.

Q: What is the Cynefin framework?
A: Dave Snowden's domains: Simple, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, Disorder — guides decision approach per context.

Q: What's the Simple Cynefin domain?
A: Clear cause-effect; best practices apply; sense-categorize-respond.

Q: What's the Complicated Cynefin domain?
A: Cause-effect requires expert analysis; good practices apply; sense-analyze-respond.

Q: What's the Complex Cynefin domain?
A: Cause-effect only visible in retrospect; emergent practices; probe-sense-respond.

Q: What's the Chaotic Cynefin domain?
A: No cause-effect relationships; novel practices; act-sense-respond.

Q: What's the Disorder Cynefin domain?
A: Unclear which domain you're in — first task is to identify.

Q: What is type 1 vs. type 2 decisions (Bezos)?
A: Type 1 are irreversible (slow, deliberate); Type 2 are reversible (fast, biased to action).

Q: Why mistake Type 1 for Type 2?
A: Treating reversible decisions as if they were irreversible — leads to slow execution and risk aversion.

Q: Why mistake Type 2 for Type 1?
A: Treating irreversible decisions as if reversible — leads to premature commitment and underanalyzed risks.

Q: What is the "disagree and commit" principle?
A: Once a decision is made, all execute fully, even those who disagreed — preserves momentum.

Q: What is regret minimization?
A: Bezos's framing — pick the option you'd regret least when looking back from 80.

Q: What is "the test of imagination"?
A: Bezos's variant — when faced with a hard decision, look ahead and ask which choice you can imagine being proud of.

Q: What is consensus vs. consent?
A: Consensus requires everyone agrees; consent requires no one objects (sociocracy).

Q: What is the consent-based decision?
A: Move forward when no one has principled objection; faster than seeking unanimity.

Q: What is the "advice process" (Buurtzorg, Reinventing Organizations)?
A: Anyone can decide, but must consult relevant experts and affected people; decision rests with the proposer.

Q: What is RACI?
A: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed — clarifies roles in a decision.

Q: What is the difference between responsible and accountable?
A: Responsible does the work; Accountable owns the outcome and decides.

Q: What is the "one throat to choke" principle?
A: A single decision-maker is named — avoids paralysis when group can't agree.

Q: What is decision authority?
A: Clearly assigning who has the right to make which decisions — prevents ambiguity and conflict.

Q: What is the difference between delegation and abdication?
A: Delegation: assign authority while staying accountable. Abdication: hand off without follow-through.

Q: What is the Vroom-Yetton decision model?
A: Choose from autocratic, consultative, or group decision modes based on situation features (quality, acceptance, time).

Q: What is the situational decision style?
A: Adjust decision-making approach to context — not one style fits all.

Q: What is the Eisenhower matrix?
A: Urgent/important grid for prioritizing tasks — do, schedule, delegate, eliminate.

Q: What is the Pareto principle in decisions?
A: ~80% of value comes from ~20% of decisions — focus accordingly.

Q: What is the 10/10/10 rule (Suzy Welch)?
A: Consider how you'll feel about a decision in 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years.

Q: What is the "decision journal"?
A: Record decisions, expected outcomes, and reasoning; review later to improve judgment.

Q: Why use a decision journal?
A: Combats hindsight bias; reveals patterns in your judgment; calibrates confidence.

Q: What is "Ulysses contract"?
A: Pre-committing to a course of action when calm to bind your future self under temptation.

Q: What is a commitment device?
A: Mechanism reducing future ability to deviate from chosen course (auto-savings, blocked sites).

Q: What is the "second-order thinking" of Howard Marks?
A: Asking "and then what?" — anticipate consequences beyond the immediate effect.

Q: What is the "inverted thinking" of Charlie Munger?
A: "Tell me where I'll die, so I'll never go there" — work backward from failure to prevent it.

Q: What is the "circle of competence"?
A: Know what you know and what you don't; decide within your competence; defer outside it.

Q: What is the "Lollapalooza effect" (Munger)?
A: Multiple biases or pressures combine to produce extreme behavior.

Q: What is the "first-principles thinking"?
A: Break a problem down to fundamental truths and build up from there — avoids analogical reasoning's blind spots.

Q: What is the "best-of-the-rest" anti-pattern?
A: Picking the strongest from a weak set instead of generating better options.

Q: What is the "false dichotomy"?
A: Treating a multi-option situation as a binary one — narrows judgment artificially.

Q: What is "either/or thinking"?
A: Same as false dichotomy — common mental shortcut that constrains options.

Q: What is "both/and thinking"?
A: Finding solutions that combine apparent opposites — often unlocks better outcomes.

Q: What is the "decision-forcing case"?
A: Scenario requiring a binding decision under uncertainty — used in training (military, medical, business).

Q: What is the "vanishing options" exercise?
A: Imagine the current options aren't available — what else could you do?

Q: What is the "yes/no decision" technique?
A: Frame as binary, then test by saying "yes" to each option mentally and noticing your reaction.

Q: What is the "small bets" approach?
A: Take many low-cost, reversible bets rather than few big irreversible ones.

Q: What is "real options" thinking?
A: Treat decisions like financial options — preserving optionality has value under uncertainty.

Q: What is "irreversibility cost"?
A: Cost of losing future flexibility — high for hard-to-reverse choices.

Q: What is "decision quality" (DQ framework)?
A: SDG Decision Quality — six elements: frame, alternatives, info, values, reasoning, commitment.

Q: What is the DQ "decision frame"?
A: The boundary of what the decision is about and what's outside its scope.

Q: What is the DQ "alternatives" quality?
A: Have we generated meaningful, distinct alternatives — not just trivially different versions?

Q: What is the DQ "information" quality?
A: Do we have reliable info appropriate to the decision's stakes?

Q: What is the DQ "values/preferences" quality?
A: Are tradeoffs explicit and aligned with what we actually care about?

Q: What is the DQ "reasoning" quality?
A: Are we using sound logic appropriate to the uncertainty?

Q: What is the DQ "commitment" quality?
A: Is the organization aligned and able to execute the chosen option?

Q: What is the "weak link" in DQ?
A: The lowest of the six elements limits the overall decision quality — improve the weakest first.

Q: What is "decision tree analysis"?
A: Diagramming decisions, chance nodes, and outcomes to compute expected values.

Q: What is "expected value" (EV)?
A: Sum of outcome values weighted by probability — guides decisions under risk.

Q: What is the "expected utility" model?
A: Generalizes EV by replacing dollar values with utility (subjective satisfaction).

Q: What is the "minimax" decision rule?
A: Choose the option whose worst outcome is the best — risk-averse decision under uncertainty.

Q: What is the "maximax" rule?
A: Choose the option with the best possible outcome — optimistic and risk-seeking.

Q: What is "regret minimization"?
A: Minimize the worst regret across possible futures — popular for one-time consequential decisions.

Q: What is "Pascal's wager" structure?
A: When potential loss is huge and probability nonzero, even unlikely catastrophes warrant precaution.

Q: What is the "precautionary principle"?
A: When an action could cause severe harm with scientific uncertainty, lean toward caution.

Q: What is "decision quality vs. outcome quality"?
A: A good decision can have a bad outcome; a bad decision can have a good outcome. Judge process, not just result.

Q: What is "resulting" (Annie Duke)?
A: Confusing outcome quality with decision quality — a single bad outcome doesn't mean the decision was wrong.

Q: What is "thinking in bets"?
A: Annie Duke — frame all decisions as probabilistic bets; this exposes confidence and assumptions.

Q: What is "the Buffer principle" in decisions?
A: Build in time and resource buffers for known unknowns — the planning fallacy guarantees they'll be needed.

Q: What is "decision velocity"?
A: Speed of decision-making — important in fast-moving environments but trades off against quality.

Q: What is "the 70% rule" (Bezos)?
A: If you wait for 90% information, you're probably too slow — most good decisions are made with ~70%.

Q: What is the difference between speed and haste?
A: Speed = swift action with adequate process. Haste = rushed action skipping process. Distinguish them.

Q: What is "Conway's law" in decisions?
A: Organizations design systems that mirror their communication structures — decision structures shape outcomes.

Q: What is "Chesterton's fence"?
A: Don't remove a fence until you understand why it was built — applies to changing existing decisions.

Q: What is "the lighthouse customer" technique?
A: Decide based on what a clear target user would value, not the loudest voice in the room.

Q: What is "the dollar test" for priorities?
A: Would you spend a real dollar on this? — checks if stated priorities match revealed preferences.

Q: What is the "calendar test" for priorities?
A: If your calendar doesn't show what you say is important, your real priorities are what your calendar shows.

Q: What is "decision debt"?
A: Accumulating cost of deferred decisions — eventually crowds out other work.

Q: What is "analysis paralysis"?
A: Inability to decide due to overanalysis — usually a sign more analysis won't help.

Q: What is the antidote to analysis paralysis?
A: Set decision deadline; commit to choosing among options visible by then; accept residual uncertainty.

Q: What is the "satisficer vs. maximizer" personality?
A: Barry Schwartz — satisficers tend to be happier; maximizers tend to be more accomplished but less satisfied.

Q: What is the "paradox of choice"?
A: More options can decrease satisfaction through regret, decision fatigue, and inflated expectations.

Q: What is "decision regret"?
A: Negative emotion comparing actual outcome to what could have been with other choices.

Q: What is "anticipated regret"?
A: Pre-experiencing regret to inform decision — useful in moderation, paralyzing in excess.

Q: What is "consider the opposite" technique?
A: Actively construct the case against your current preference — counters confirmation bias.

Q: What is "steel-manning"?
A: Articulating the strongest possible version of an opposing view before responding.

Q: What is "red-teaming a decision"?
A: Assigning someone to attack the proposed decision — surfaces flaws cheaply before commitment.

Q: What is "the devil's advocate"?
A: Designated dissenter testing the strength of a proposed decision.

Q: What is "groupthink"?
A: Group prioritizes harmony over critical evaluation, leading to poor collective decisions.

Q: What protects against groupthink?
A: Devil's advocate, premortem, diverse composition, anonymous input, separate brainstorming from evaluation.

Q: What is "the Abilene paradox"?
A: Group makes a decision no one actually wants because each member assumes others want it.

Q: What is "private polling before discussion"?
A: Ask members for view privately before group conversation — fights anchoring and conformity.

Q: What is "round-robin sharing"?
A: Each person shares their view in turn — ensures quiet voices are heard.

Q: What is the "decision-making meeting" structure?
A: Frame the decision, share input, debate, decide (or commit to next step), document.

Q: What is "decision documentation"?
A: Capturing what was decided, by whom, why, and what was considered — prevents re-litigation.

Q: What is "decision memo"?
A: A written brief: context, options, recommendation, risks, ask — used by Amazon and others.

Q: What is "the Amazon six-pager"?
A: A 6-page written narrative read silently at meeting start; replaces slides for serious decisions.

Q: What is "the one-page brief"?
A: A single page covering issue, options, recommendation, ask — for executive consumption.

Q: What is "the BLUF" structure?
A: Bottom Line Up Front — state the conclusion and ask immediately, support follows.

Q: What is "the SCQA" structure?
A: Situation, Complication, Question, Answer — opens with context before recommendation.

Q: What is the "MECE" principle?
A: Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive — categorize options without overlap or gaps.

Q: What is the "issue tree"?
A: Hierarchical decomposition of a decision into sub-questions — common in consulting.

Q: What is "decision criteria"?
A: Explicit factors used to evaluate options — should be set before considering alternatives.

Q: What is "weighting criteria"?
A: Assigning importance scores to each criterion — surfaces tradeoffs and forces clarity.

Q: What is the "weighted scorecard" approach?
A: Multiply criterion score by weight; sum per option; compare totals. Lightweight MCDA.

Q: What is "MCDA"?
A: Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis — formal methods for evaluating options against weighted criteria.

Q: What is the "Analytic Hierarchy Process"?
A: AHP — structured pairwise comparison technique deriving weights from stakeholder judgments.

Q: What is "decision under uncertainty"?
A: Choosing when probabilities are unknown or contested — different methods than decision under risk.

Q: What is the "minimax regret" rule?
A: Choose the option that minimizes the worst possible regret across outcomes.

Q: What is the "Laplace criterion"?
A: Assume all outcomes equally likely if no probabilities known; choose option with best average.

Q: What is the "Hurwicz criterion"?
A: Weighted blend of worst-case and best-case — α from 0 (pessimist) to 1 (optimist).

Q: What is the "decision threshold"?
A: Predefined trigger for action — removes in-the-moment hesitation.

Q: What is "preregistration" of decisions?
A: State criteria before action that would change your view — combats motivated reasoning.

Q: What is "decision asymmetry"?
A: When error costs differ — pay more for the less reversible direction.

Q: What is "the cost of inaction"?
A: What you lose by not deciding — often invisible but real.

Q: What is "the bias to action"?
A: Tendency to favor doing something over nothing — useful sometimes, costly when patience is needed.

Q: What is "the bias to inaction"?
A: Status quo bias — favors current state. Often misjudges that doing nothing has costs too.

Q: What is the "Buridan's ass" paradox?
A: Donkey starves between two equal hay bales — paralysis from inability to choose. Real decisions rarely require true optimality.

Q: What is "decision deadline"?
A: Self-imposed time limit forcing a choice — antidote to indecision.

Q: What is a "decision sprint"?
A: Time-boxed intensive process aimed at a specific decision — popularized by Google Ventures.

Q: What is "the design sprint"?
A: 5-day structured process from problem definition to tested prototype.

Q: What is "the lean experiment"?
A: Run a minimum-cost test of your assumption before scaling the commitment.

Q: What is the "test, learn, scale" pattern?
A: Small test → measure → adapt → larger test → adapt → scale only after validated.

Q: What is "decision archaeology"?
A: Studying how past decisions were made to learn from them — usually surfaces invisible influences.

Q: What is "the most important question"?
A: "What would change my mind?" — sets falsification standard, exposes confirmation-only thinking.

Q: What is the simplest decision-making advice?
A: Most decisions are reversible. Decide quickly, learn from outcomes, update. The few irreversible decisions deserve real care.