Book - Make Better Decisions

About the Book

Make Better Decisions
How To Improve Your Decision-Making in the Digital Age

‍Written by Helen Edwards and Dave Edwards

An essential guide to practicing the cognitive skills needed for making better decisions in the age of data, algorithms, and AI.

‍Data promised to make decisions easier. Algorithms promised to reduce how many decisions we need to make. AI promises—or threatens—to make human decisions obsolete. Yet, the opposite is happening because modern data makes decisions harder and AI makes human judgment more—not less—valuable.

All decisions contain an implicit prediction about the future which seems increasingly unpredictable, even chaotic. Data is supposed to help but it doesn't if it's too complex for humans to find meaningful. Data that is confusing, inaccessible, or ambiguous will leave humans relying on their intuition. The result is an evolutionary mismatch between how we think and how machines help us decide.

Make Better Decisions contains 50 nudges that have their lineage in scholarship from behavioral economics, cognitive science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. Each nudge prompts the reader to use their beautiful, big human brain to notice when our automatic decision-making systems will lead us astray in our complex, modern world, and when they'll lead us in the right direction.

You already know how to make bad decisions … as do we all. This is the book you've been looking for to help you grow the skills and the confidence to make better decisions more of the time.

— Michael Bungay Stanier
author of The Coaching Habit and How to Begin

So much research on biases in judgment and thinking; how to make use of it? The Edwards have done just that, distilled the numerous disparate phenomena into a practical guide that you can use.

— Barbara Tversky
Emerita Professor of Psychology, Stanford University, Professor of Psychology at Teachers College at Columbia University, and author of Mind in Motion

The book takes a novel and creative approach to a problem that has been investigated from every angle. It's refreshing, both in the focus on data and in the clever use of expert recommendations. I'll be scouring it for ideas for my decision-making courses and for my own writing and research.

— Steven Sloman
Professor of Cognitive Linguistic & Psychologic Sciences, Brown University and co-author of The Knowledge Illusion

With Make Better Decisions, Helen and Dave have provided an elegant guide for reducing the complexity of the modern digital world that makes decision-making so hard. The 50 nudges they have crafted are instantly useful and serve as concrete techniques for making better decisions by yourself or with others..

— Tim Leberecht
Co-CEO, House of Beautiful Business and author of The Business Romantic

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