Picture credit - Achal Arora
Day 31 - Decision-Making Skill
10 May 2020
─
sirurp@gmail.com
My learning for the day
Today I want to summarise two TED talks about decision making.
3 ways to make better decisions — by thinking like a computer
Speaker - Tom Griffiths, Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness and Culture, Princeton
Summary -
Whether it's as basic as trying to decide what restaurant to go to or as important as trying to decide who to spend the rest of your life with, human lives are filled with computational problems. Therefore we have to think like a computer.
Tom talks about these 3 ways to make a decision, thinking like computers
1. Explore-Exploit Trade-off
Take the example of trying to decide what restaurant to go to. The computer scientist will ask you to use the "explore-exploit trade-off” option. You have to make a decision about whether you're exploring (trying something new) or exploiting (going to go to a place that you already know).
2. The 37% Rule
Take the example of selection of a secretary. If you have 100 candidates to interview for the position of your secretary, interview the first 37. Stop at this point and identify the best in this lot. She becomes the benchmark.
Then start conducting the next interviews. Stop at a point when you meet the first person better than the benchmark person. Select this person as your secretary.
This process of decision making will save you from interviewing all 100 candidates. (The number 37% is the result of 1/e, where e the constant 2.718281828 was discovered in 1683 by mathematician Jacob Bernoulli)
3. Optimising limited capacity
Fast memory system has limited capacity. The computer should therefore decide which unnecessary things it should remove from the fast memory.
The computer, therefore, uses the famous four Martha Stewart questions related to decision making when clearing the wardrobe - How long have I had it? Does it still function? Is it a duplicate of something that I already own? And when was the last time I wore it or used it?
How to make hard choices
Speaker - Ruth Chang, Philosopher, The Chair and Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford
What is a hard choice?
An easy choice is when one alternative is better than the other.
In a hard choice, one alternative is better in some ways, the other alternative is better in other ways, and neither is better than the other overall.
For most people, making a hard choice is an agony and dread. But Ruth says, hard choices are precious opportunities for us to celebrate what is special in us.
In the space of hard choices, we have the power to create reasons for ourselves.
Understanding hard choices uncovers something about ourselves we didn't know. It is an opportunity to become the authors of our own lives.
Definition of Decision-Making Skill
Decision-Making Skill is the ability to use a decision making process/ technique to arrive at a decision.
My learning so far about this topic
Day 1 post - How to Make Decisions
Day 11 post - Decision Tree Examples
Day 21 post - Edward De Bono’s Thinking tools - A.P.C. (Alternatives, Possibilities, Choices) and CAF (Consider All Factors) and a few examples of bad decision from history
How to improve this skill?
Set a goal to become a go-to person by mastering the art and science of Decision making.
Follow the LAST model to build your personal brand as a Guru of Decision making.
Learn - Invest time in learning different frameworks/ models/ techniques of Decision making
Apply -
Identify a model suitable to you
Create a template to document the flow of the process
Find opportunities to use the selected method/ template
Maintain record/ process flow of every important activities you did with respect to Decision making
Maintain notes of your thoughts/ insights/ failures/ challenges…. to be used for sharing/ training others
Share - Share the insights captured in step 2 above in a planned manner (social media posts, blogs, videos, study notes…)
Train - Generate opportunities to train your peers and team members so that, over time, your organization benefits from your efforts
Purpose of this document
I took a 66 day challenge to study Life Skills last year (10 April 2019). To my astonishment, I succeeded in studying for 66 days one skill a day.
My objectives of learning these skills were - To strengthen my mind to face life’s challenges with ease, To use these skills in my worklife for a better performance, To use these skills in my personal life for enriching my relationships, To open new possibilities to surprise myself.
This is my next 66 day challenge (from 10 April 2020) - To share my Life Skills learning with my social media friends.
I pray that my toil helps you in your success journey.
What are Life Skills?
UNICEF defines Life skills as - psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. They are loosely grouped into three broad categories of skills
- cognitive skills for analyzing and using information,
- personal skills for developing personal agency and managing oneself,
- inter-personal skills for communicating and interacting effectively with others.
Which LifeSkills are covered?
The World Health Organisation identified these basic areas of life skills that are relevant across cultures:
1. Decision-making
2. Problem-solving
3. Creative thinking
4. Critical thinking
5. Communication
6. Interpersonal skills
7. Self-awareness
8. Empathy
9. Coping with emotions
10. Coping with stress.
Some trivia
‘Life skills’ was never part of the school curriculum. WHO/ UNESCO mandated academia to teach these skills in all schools across the globe in 1993.
Different countries educate their children in these skills with different objectives
- Zimbabwe and Thailand - prevention of HIV/AIDS
- Mexico - prevention of adolescent pregnancy
- United Kingdom - child abuse prevention
- USA - prevention of substance abuse and violence
- South Africa and Colombia - positive socialization of children.
No comments:
Post a Comment