2026.08.23

How to make better decisions?

We make decisions every day. Some have almost no consequence, others can completely change our trajectory. And yet, we often try to make them by looking for the right answer, as if it existed somewhere.

But in most important decisions, you never have all the information. So the point is not to be certain, but to have a better process for deciding despite uncertainty.

After several readings on the subject, I tried to summarize a way to make an important decision in three questions:

1. What is my goal?
2. What are my chances of reaching it?
3. How do I increase those chances?

It seems very simple, but these three questions bring together a big part of what I take away from Thinking in Bets, Clear Thinking and How to Do Great Work.

1. What is my goal?

Before looking for the best decision, you already have to know what a "good decision" means for you. Because a decision is never good in absolute terms. It is good in relation to what you are trying to get.

You may want to maximize your salary, build a big career, have a lot of freedom, start a business, travel, have time for your family…

The problem, as Shane Parrish explains in Clear Thinking, is that we sometimes pursue goals we never really chose: out of ego, social pressure or simply inertia.

One question lets you test that:

If no one could see my choice, would I still choose the same thing?

If yes, you are probably starting to define your own game.

And it is after that that the first principles thinking becomes useful. Instead of asking "what do others do to succeed?", ask yourself: "now that I know what I want, what is actually necessary to get it?"

Your goal then becomes the filter through which you can evaluate all the following decisions.

2. What are my chances of reaching it?

Once the goal is defined, you have to accept something much less comfortable: you will never know with certainty whether your decision is the right one.

In Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke compares life to poker: you can play a hand perfectly and lose. Conversely, you can play very badly and win. So: good decision ≠ good result. A good decision simply increases your probabilities of getting the result you are looking for.

Let’s imagine that your goal is to become Product Manager at Meta. Instead of asking "am I going to manage to get into Meta?", ask yourself: "given my current situation, what are my chances?" 20 %? 40 %? 70 %?

The number will necessarily be approximate. That is okay. What is interesting is what this estimate forces you to do next.

If you say 60 %, you also have to look at the 40 % where it does not work out. Why could you be wrong? Lack of experience? Wrong skills? No network? Wrong path? Too much competition?

The percentage matters less than the assumptions that let you arrive at that percentage.

You can even go further with a premortem:

Let’s imagine that I could not get into Meta. Why?

The goal is not to predict the future perfectly. It is to look honestly at what is working for you and what is working against you. And it is precisely this analysis that lets you move on to the most important question.

3. How do I increase my chances of success?

If today you estimate your chances at 30 %, the real question becomes: "what can I do to go from 30 % to 50 %?" And there, your decisions become much more concrete.

Better allocate your resources? Create more options? Learn faster?

That is essentially how we gradually shift the probabilities in our favor.

To become PM at Meta, maybe a certain master’s degree increases your chances. Maybe it is better to go through a startup first. Develop a particular skill. Find a mentor. Meet more people in the industry. Each choice becomes a way to move the probabilities in your favor.

But you have to look at each decision as a whole. First, its opportunity cost.

If your company spends 20 000 € to defend a brand, the question is not only "is defending this brand worth 20 000 €?", but "among all the possible uses of these 20 000 €, which one increases my chances of reaching my goal the most?"

Defend the brand? Do marketing? Produce more? Keep cash? Every yes necessarily means a no somewhere else.

Then, you have to look at what the decision opens up for what comes next. A career fair may bring you nothing today. But it can create a meeting, which creates an opportunity, which changes your trajectory two years later.

That is why, with a comparable immediate benefit: favor the choice that increases your future options the most. That is what Shane Parrish calls improving your position: the more skills, relationships, resources and options you have, the easier your next decisions become.

And sometimes, the best way to increase your chances is simply to act. Paul Graham explains that you cannot always think your way into finding the right direction, because some information only exists after you have tried.

You are hesitating between finance and tech? You can think for six months. Or test one of the two. If you like it, you continue. If not, you just obtained information that you could never have obtained only by thinking.

So, when a decision is reversible, action can be more rational than endless reflection. Some answers only appear after you have acted. And you can then ask yourself another question:

What am I most likely to regret: having tried, or never having known?

Finally, once you have acted, the result becomes new information. But be careful: do not automatically judge your decision from that result. If it fails, ask yourself: "with the information I had at that moment, had I made the best possible decision?"

If yes, maybe you simply fell on the wrong side of the probabilities. If not, identify what you had evaluated badly. Then update your reasoning.

In the end, making better decisions can almost become a loop:

Quel est mon objectif ?
        ↓
Quelles sont mes chances aujourd’hui ?
        ↓
Qu’est-ce qui peut augmenter ces chances ?
        ↓
J’agis. J’observe. J’apprends.
        ↓
Je réévalue mes probabilités.

So the goal is not to become certain of your decisions. It is to know which game you want to play, then to make, again and again, the decisions that gradually put the probabilities on our side.