fhe

the reason I don't find this article useful is that it's not 'specific' (and I will be more specific on what I mean by that). my observation is that, most people's problem is not that they can't give out a reasonable sounding methodology like you outlined, but that they are unable to carry it through. A most simple example is staying on a diet, or going to the gym. The deciding factor is not knowing how it should be done, but actually doing it.

Now let me be more specific. Here's one place I felt it's glaringly unspecific. To quote you (from "making firm commitment"): "Requirements: Decisiveness, a bit of willpower."

But that's the... (read 415 more words →)

I can think of at least 3 ways that people fail to make strategic, effective decisions.

1. (as the above post pointed out) it's difficult to analyze options (or even to come up with some of them), for any number of reasons: too many of them (and too little time), lack of information, unforeseeable secondary consequences, etc.. One can do one's best in the most rational fashion, but still comes out with a wrong choice. That's unfortunate, but if this is the only kind of mistakes I am making, i am not too worried. it's a matter of learning better heuristics, building better models, gathering more data... or, in the limit, admitting that