What was the best decision you made this year?

Think a moment about it.

I bet you chose a decision that led to a great outcome.

Didn't you?

Well, so did I, when I was being asked that same question by Annie Duke

while reading her book “Thinking in Bets”., In fact, everyone does it.

It's due to what Annie Duke calls resulting.

Resulting is the term that she uses to describe what happens when we

evaluate a decision from its outcome.

After all, when the outcome was great it must have been a great decision, right?

But that take ignores luck and, of course, bad luck.

Because what if the great outcome was due much more to luck than

to the quality of your decision.

Take, for example, hiring.

Hiring your best employee has as much to do with her applying as it has to do

with you choosing her over someone else.

That she applied in the first place had nothing to do with how you decided,

but it influenced the outcome heavily.

It's just as likely that another decision of yours didn't turn

out so well because of bad luck.

She actually was the best candidate.

But nobody, including you and her, could have predicted that she would be

diagnosed with cancer two weeks after.

Once you see this, you can’t unsee it anymore.

The quality of a decision is not the same thing as the quality of its outcome.

What was the best decision you made this year?

Can you think of a situation where you feel like you made a good decision, even

though the outcome wasn't that good?

Or how about the opposite?

And after reflecting on these questions, what can you learn from

that for your upcoming decisions?