Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition

Raise your Awareness.

At their core, most of the recommendations have the same message: be mindful of what is going on around you.

The second is a functional relationship between X and Y, including the requirement that cause and effect take on two or more values. For example, the statement “smoking causes lung cancer” says that smoking increases the chances of lung cancer versus not smoking. So a scientist must consider all the relationships between the variables: does the per

Firstborns are generally ambitious, close minded, and conventional, while later-born children are venturesome, agreeable, and open minded (i.e., born to rebel).1

Be aware of your situation. You can think of this in two parts. There is the conscious element, where you can create a positive environment for decision making in your own surroundings by focusing on process, keeping stress to an acceptable level, being a thoughtful choice architect, and making sure to diffuse the forces that encourage negative beh

Warren Buffett said: “Virtually all surprises are unpleasant.”9 So considering the worst-case scenarios is vital and generally overlooked in prosperous times.

each team has good local information but poor global information.

person holds two cognitions—ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions—that are psychologically inconsistent.”15 The dissonance causes mental discomfort that our minds seek to reduce.

The idea is to estimate your chances of success and failure. For all the reasons that I’ve discussed, the chances are good that your prediction will be too optimistic.