This will make you a better decision maker | Annie Duke (author of “Thinking in Bets” and “Quit”, former pro poker player)

Annie Duke is a former professional poker player, a decision-making expert, and a special partner at First Round Capital. She is the author of Thinking in Bets (a national bestseller) and Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away and the co-founder of the Alliance for Decision Education, a nonprofit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. In our conversation, we cover:

• What Annie learned from the late Daniel Kahneman

• The power of pre-mortems and “kill criteria”

• The relationship between money and happiness

• The power of “mental time travel”

• The nominal group technique for better decision quality

• How First Round Capital improved their decision-making process

• Many tactical decision-making frameworks

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Find the transcript at: www.lennysnewsletter.com

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Where to find Annie Duke:

• X: twitter.com

• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com

• Website: www.annieduke.com

• Substack: www.annieduke.com

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: twitter.com

• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Annie’s background

(03:53) Lessons from Daniel Kahneman: humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness

(09:15) The importance of unconditional love in parenting

(15:15) Mental time travel and “nevertheless”

(20:06) The extent of improvement possible in decision-making 

(24:54) Independent brainstorming for better decisions

(35:36) Making sure people feel heard

(42:41) The “3Ds” framework to make better decisions

(44:49) Decision quality

(55:46) Improving decision-making at First Round Capital

(01:05:05) Using pre-mortems and kill criteria

(01:10:15) Making explicit what’s implicit

(01:10:55) The challenges of quitting and knowing when to walk away

(01:19:23) Where to find Annie

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Referenced:

• Daniel Kahneman, Who Plumbed the Psychology of Economics, Dies at 90: www.nytimes.com

• Adversarial collaboration: en.wikipedia.org

• Does more money correlate with greater happiness?: penntoday.upenn.edu

• Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

• Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?: www.mckinsey.com

• Cass Sunstein on X: twitter.com

• Dr. Becky on Instagram: www.instagram.com

• A framework for finding product-market fit | Todd Jackson (First Round Capital): www.lennysnewsletter.com

• First Round Capital: firstround.com

• Brett Berson on X: twitter.com

• Renegade Partners: www.renegadepartners.com

• Renata Quintini on X: twitter.com

• Roseanne Wincek on X: twitter.com

• Josh Kopelman on X: twitter.com

• Bill Trenchard on X: twitter.com

• Linnea Gandhi on X: twitter.com

• Maurice Schweitzer on X: twitter.com

• Problems with premortems: sjdm.org

• Create a Solid Plan on How to Fail Big This Year: www.forbes.com

• Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away: www.amazon.com

• Richard Thaler on X: twitter.com

• Stewart Butterfield on X: twitter.com

• Glitch: en.wikipedia.org(video_game)

• How the Founder of Slack & Flickr Turned Colossal Failures into Billion-Dollar Companies: medium.com

• The Most Fascinating Profile You’ll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup: www.wired.com

• The Alliance for Decision Education: alliancefordecisioneducation.org

• Make Better Decisions course on Maven: maven.com

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.