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NARRATOR: Decision making is the process of selecting a belief or course of action among several alternative possibilities. People make hundreds of decisions every day— choices that can range from mundane to crucial.

GABE TOLLIVER: Suicide bombers had infiltrated the base, and the base was on lockdown. I saw somebody moving between some shipping containers. I'm thinking, man, I mean, I might actually have to shoot somebody. And I yelled out, identify yourself! And it was a stupid— somebody by himself who was making his way back from the hospital. It could have been a case of friendly fire.

NARRATOR: In order to make good decisions, we need to understand how decisions are made. According to psychologist Daniel Kahneman's widely accepted theory, humans use two basic systems to make a decision. System 1 is a fast, automatic, intuitive approach to a decision. System 2 is a slower, analytical approach where reason dominates.

JOANNA DAVILA: Both kinds of decision making are healthy and useful. But both can also lead to problematic decisions, particularly when people use those strategies rigidly. The best kind of decision making, though, does come when both your head and your emotions are present, because they work to inform each other.

GABE TOLLIVER: Joining the US Army at 41 years old back in 2007— that was a snap judgment in some ways. Nowadays I approach decision making in a way where I'll sometimes write things out. I use 3 by 5 cards. I write down one-sentence things. So I kind of run through a matrix.

NARRATOR: There are many factors that can influence and streamline decision making. Concept formation is our innate ability to mentally group together similar events, ideas, people, and things so the brain can interpret new experiences using existing patterns. Heuristics, meanwhile, is a type of trial and error thinking in which our minds seek to limit the number of possible solutions to a problem.

JOANNA DAVILA: We develop heuristics as we go throughout life as a way to simplify decision making. But we can also be taught them.

NARRATOR: Insight is the ability to understand the true nature of a situation.

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While insight is intuitive and can strike when we least expect it, we can also develop insight.

JOANNA DAVILA: Insight comes when you have information that just comes naturally to you. Sometimes we have to seek that out and build our base of that so that we can use it in a more regular way.

NARRATOR: There are many factors that skew our decision making as well, such as stress.

GABE TOLLIVER: Too much stress renders you ineffective. It's just a matter of management, being honest with yourself about what you can honestly handle or take on.

NARRATOR: Other factors that hamper good decision making may be difficult to recognize or control, such as our own biases and emotions.

JOANNA DAVILA: Our biases and our emotions are definitely happening mostly outside of our awareness. So we often have to stop and slow down and think about them more. And then we make better decisions.

NARRATOR: One of the most common biases is overconfidence, the tendency to overestimate our knowledge and ability. Another common example is confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms our preconceptions.

JOANNA DAVILA: And this is very common. And that can absolutely lead to poor decisions.

NARRATOR: Some strategies can help us make better decisions, such as keeping an open mind, listening to alternative viewpoints and evaluating those perspectives, asking advice of people we respect, and devoting enough time to important decisions.

GABE TOLLIVER: Probably the most prominent big decision I've made in the past year was to make the transition out into the Bay Area to study journalism. It's very easy to get stuck in a rut, go to work, have the same lunch, hang out with the same people. Why not be impulsive?

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