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Decisions Quotes

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Decisions Quotes

“My daughter Josie was nine years old when she played basketball for the first time. She’d get the ball and hold it and pivot to the right, to the left, back to the right, but seemed paralyzed by indecision. She would think and think and think about what to do—pass or shoot—but never act. At some point, you have to take the shot. Where in your life do you pivot and pivot, but never take the shot? Maybe you need to have a tough conversation, and you’ve thought about it over and over again. You’ve identified how to start the conversation, and you’ve worked through all your talking points. But when you think you’re ready, you pivot. You decide that the situation isn’t so bad after all. You’re too afraid to have that conversation. What if I miss the shot? What if the ball is intercepted? What if the conversation doesn’t go well? After you Pause and Think, you must Act. This is what will help you overcome obstacles and create the turning point. When you don’t Act, you don’t make progress. Research on the highest-performing teams shows it’s better for leaders to make a decision and act quickly rather than wait until all circumstances are perfect.”

ThinkingPracticeProgressDecisionsThinkActionsPause
Book:Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success
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“Over time, from trial and error, and one experience after another, you start to become more familiar with yourself. You learn what excites you, and just as importantly you learn what repels you. You begin to develop that 'I could see myself doing this forever' feeling, whether it's about a line of work or a relationship. You want to look for clues as to what really matters to you. And you want to get better at making decisions accordingly.”

DecisionsAdulthoodKnowing Yourself
Book:Your Turn: How to Be an Adult
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“In the midst of World War II, Quincy Wright, a leader in the quantitative study of war, noted that people view war from contrasting perspectives: “To some it is a plague to be eliminated; to others, a crime which ought to be punished; to still others, it is an anachronism which no longer serves any purpose. On the other hand, there are some who take a more receptive attitude toward war, and regard it as an adventure which may be interesting, an instrument which may be legitimate and appropriate, or a condition of existence for which one must be prepared” Despite the millions of people who died in that most deadly war, and despite widespread avowals for peace, war remains as a mechanism of conflict resolution. Given the prevalence of war, the importance of war, and the enormous costs it entails, one would assume that substantial efforts would have been made to comprehensively study war. However, the systematic study of war is a relatively recent phenomenon. Generally, wars have been studied as historically unique events, which are generally utilized only as analogies or examples of failed or successful policies. There has been resistance to conceptualizing wars as events that can be studied in the aggregate in ways that might reveal patterns in war or its causes. For instance, in the United States there is no governmental department of peace with funding to scientifically study ways to prevent war, unlike the millions of dollars that the government allocates to the scientific study of disease prevention. This reluctance has even been common within the peace community, where it is more common to deplore war than to systematically figure out what to do to prevent it. Consequently, many government officials and citizens have supported decisions to go to war without having done their due diligence in studying war, without fully understanding its causes and consequences. The COW Project has produced a number of interesting observations about wars. For instance, an important early finding concerned the process of starting wars. A country’s goal in going to war is usually to win. Conventional wisdom was that the probability of success could be increased by striking first. However, a study found that the rate of victory for initiators of inter-state wars (or wars between two countries) was declining: “Until 1910 about 80 percent of all interstate wars were won by the states that had initiated them. . . . In the wars from 1911 through 1965, however, only about 40 percent of the war initiators won.” A recent update of this analysis found that “pre-1900, war initiators won 73% of wars. Since 1945 the win rate is 33%.”. In civil war the probability of success for the initiators is even lower. Most rebel groups, which are generally the initiators in these wars, lose. The government wins 57 percent of the civil wars that last less than a year and 78 percent of the civil wars lasting one to five years. So, it would seem that those initiating civil and inter-state wars were not able to consistently anticipate victory. Instead, the decision to go to war frequently appears less than rational. Leaders have brought on great carnage with no guarantee of success, frequently with no clear goals, and often with no real appreciation of the war’s ultimate costs. This conclusion is not new. Studying the outbreak of the first carefully documented war, which occurred some 2,500 years ago in Greece, historian Donald Kagan concluded: “The Peloponnesian War was not caused by impersonal forces, unless anger, fear, undue optimism, stubbornness, jealousy, bad judgment and lack of foresight are impersonal forces. It was caused by men who made bad decisions in difficult circumstances.” Of course, wars may also serve leaders’ individual goals, such as gaining or retaining power. Nonetheless, the very government officials who start a war are sometimes not even sure how or why a war started.”

WarDecisionsStatisticsTrendsData Science
Book:Resort to War: 1816 - 2007
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“According to a report in Harvard Business Review, research shows that “Reflection gives the brain an opportunity to Pause amidst the chaos, untangle and sort through observations and experiences, consider multiple possible interpretations, and create meaning.”2 If we can create that Pause in the chaos, we can make more thoughtful decisions.”

ReflectionChaosDecisionsThoughtfulnessPause
Book:Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success
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“I see a bird like a cock, which means good news, but you yourself are very agitated. A road that looks bright. And you are on the first step. You are thinking of a hundred things at the same time. One road is closed and dark, and the other is open and full of light. Both could happen; it is your choice. There is a key; a problem will be solved. ... A small ship that is still in the harbor and has not yet started to set sail.”

FutureAnxietyDecisionsChoiceFortunes
Book:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
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“Life decisions—making too many and/or making them too easily is as dangerous as not making them at all. How clearly mania and depression outline the extremes of the dilemma of us all before the terrible fact of choice: indecisiveness in depression—nothing can be done; overdecisiveness in mania—everything is to be done and nothing gets done. We are doomed to choose, Sartre said, yet we don’t know when to choose and when not to choose.”

DepressionDecisionsChoiceExistentialPsychiatryManiaSartre
Book:The Concepts of Psychiatry: A Pluralistic Approach to the Mind and Mental Illness
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“In 2004, I was working toward my master’s in organizational development at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School and decided to write my thesis on the effectiveness of life coaching. Two years of extensive research with almost one hundred former US Senate interns showed what I already knew from personal experience. Regardless of age, gender, level of self-awareness, or degree, three months of coaching increased their life satisfaction and improved their personal growth. The key conclusions that emerged from this study include: •Life coaching makes a significant difference in overall life satisfaction. •Coaching is an effective approach to goal attainment and personal development. •Coaching helps clients be more effective in setting concrete, measurable goals instead of being overwhelmed by large tasks. •Asking challenging questions encourages the client to look at a problem in new, creative ways. I knew coaching was effective, and this research proved it.”

ChallengesGoalsDecisionsCoachingHelpLife Coaching
Book:Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success
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“I’m so afraid of starting something new outside of Chad, the norm, everything, but I can’t be stagnant, Tyson. I feel like I have no idea where I’m going in life anymore. The page is unwritten, and that scares me, but I’m going to be strong and face it head-on with a pen, not a pencil. Mistakes are bound to happen, but that’s life—you grow and you learn from it. Hurt, that’s inevitable, and so is growth. You have to let yourself grow and be happy—you can’t wallow in this state that you’re in.”

Life LessonsDecisionsStarting NewNew Initiative
Book:A Love Hate Thing
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“I don’t remember the particulars but when he [Dr. Hichiro Shimanuki, aka ‘Shim’] was nearly finished he offered an observation that was, for the most part, missed by the majority of those present. … Answers and dogma, went the feeling, saves bees, money, and time. … Shim’s observations were, however, profound, and any beekeeper who listened carefully to his challenge is probably doing quite well today. Basically, his observation was this: He called it the Rule of Rights. — If you produce the right number of bees that are the right age and the right condition, and are in the right place at the right time, you will be successful. The complexity of achieving this goal is well hidden in the simplicity of his statement. But to accomplish this requires making intelligent and correct decisions based on sound planning, correct timing, and getting the balance of business and biology to work in an operation. There’s little how-to hidden within this simple statement. Rather, it is a goal to strive for in many ways. It is, in the real world, not easy and it is not often that it will be achieved. [From the ‘Introduction.’]”

ChoicesBusinessObservationDecisionsBiologyBeesTimingRightHoneybeesBeekeeping
Book:Better Beekeeping: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Stronger Colonies and Healthier, More Productive Bees
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“Looking back on that conversation, Rina asked herself if what he had said was true, She had been shiny once as a young girl, when they'd first met, as one if before decisions are made and opportunities are lost. She would never be that way again, but then Sato had never really believe in her shine, had he? He had seen through it from the very beginning, through her to the woman waiting, the fighter beneath.”

DecisionsInner StrengthWomanhood
Book:What's Left of Me Is Yours
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“We can freely imagine several teleological futures before we act, each with a roughly equal likelihood of being enacted, and then evaluate them and reach our decision as to which is best. The smarter, the more imaginative and creative we are, the more futures we can conceive. Until we carry out our evaluation of the futures that we have freely conceived, we cannot know what we will do. An android cannot conceive futures, and carries out a program written for him by its Creator (programmer). Sam Harris keeps slipping into the tacit claim that humans are programmed machines rather than free people.”

PhilosophyScienceDecisionsFree Will
Book:The Sam Harris Delusion
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“If we believe that we have control over life, we’re living in an illusion. And if we attempt to protect, strengthen, and expand this illusion, our influence on what’s genuinely happening becomes increasingly smaller; mired in resistance, our life would become a cycle of anxious complaining, postponed decisions, and missed opportunities.”

LifeInfluenceIllusionComplainingResistanceDecisionsControlOpportunities
Book:The Mosaic: Realizations about Our Life, Consciousness, and Existence
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“But in order to give yourself the space to receive clarity, maybe you need to let go of the expectation that clarity will come in a particular way or at a particular time. This could be difficult, especially if you’re not used to holding so much in your heart all at once without being able to move on it.”

ExpectationsClarityDecisionsMaking DecisionsClarity Of Thought
Book:The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions
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