Discusses a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so you can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the Silicon Valley innovators and Stanford University design educators in their hugely successful course, Designing Your Life, have helped thousands change the way they live. Burnett and Evans believe that in order to change, people need a process--a design process--to help them figure out what they want and how to create it. In this long-awaited book, Burnett and Evans make clear, step by step, how to think like a designer,...

Examines the history of behavioral economics, discussing the theory of Israeli psychologists who wrote the original studies undoing assumptions about the decision-making process and the influence it has had on evidence-based regulation. Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in...

"Poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions as a result. In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a hand off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost....

The authors introduce a four-step process designed to counteract the biases that inevitably creep into the decision-making process.

"By digging into the data, [Emily] Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even great challenge: decision making in the early years of parenting. As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep,...

Why do smart people make irrational decisions every day? The answers will surprise you. This book is a look at why we all make illogical decisions. Why can a 50-cent aspirin do what a penny aspirin can't? If an item is "free" it must be a bargain, right? Why is everything relative, even when it shouldn't be? How do our expectations influence our actual opinions and decisions? In this book, the author, a behavioral economist cuts to the heart of our...

Offering a study of the application of the science of choice, a guide that uses examples from all aspects of life demonstrates how it is possible to design environments that make it more likely for us to act in our own interests.

What do these scenarios have in common: a professional tennis player returning a serve, a woman evaluating a first date across the table, a naval officer assessing a threat to his ship, and a comedian about to reveal a punch line?
In this counterintuitive and insightful work, author Frank Partnoy weaves together findings from hundreds of scientific studies and interviews with wide-ranging experts to craft a picture of effective decision-making...

On the heels of the success of "The Wisdom of Crowds" and "Predictably Irrational" comes a thoughtful and persuasive celebration of human fallibility that examines what it means to be right or wrong--and why it matters so much to us.