My Thoughts on Maxims for Thinking Analytically
by Dan Levy
- book of a list of heuristics to approach situations
- there were so many anecdotes of students of dr richard zeckhauser using these maxims it felt salesy at times
- short read, very covid focused – black swan events and hindsight bias prevails throughout
- however if you do have any important decisions coming up that weigh on you, you should very much filter it through these maxims
- hard to remember to use maxims consistently until/if they become habitual
- my favorite maxims:
- weight errors of commission and omission equally
- the shape of regret in our minds vs reality – what actually happened
- reframe anticipation as happiness
- looking forward to something is enjoyable – often we want then to be now, but we can learn to appreciate the then now too
- uncertainty is the friend of the status quo &
- dont judge your decisions on results
- we want things to stay as they are in the bounds of reasonability
- we judge ourselves on our best intentions as opposed to the facts of the matter
- these two work together for some weird scenarios like adding features to a product just to feel like you’re doing anything at all so we can look back and say we tried
