title: Decisions, Decisions: The Art of Effective Decision Making
author:  David A. Welch 
description: Welch, an academic, offers a nine-step plan for making effective decisions in everyday life and then demonstrates how to apply these steps to real world situations; these nine steps include identifying your objective, doing a preliminary survey of options, focusing <b>on</b>the values involved, assessing the importance of the decision, budgeting your time and energy, and making your choice. In developing habits of good decision making, we learn the importance of adroitly handling uncertainty; the author believes that the ability to handle uncertainty is the best predictor of success. Selfreflection is very important in skilled decision making, and we also need to understand principles and strategies, money and probability, and some psychology, philosophy, and sociology, in addition to learning to assess the needs of others and their reaction to our choices. This is a "must read"--a thought-provoking book written for a broad audience in an easy and entertaining manner. <i>Mary Whaley</i><br /><i>Copyright  American Library Association. All rights reserved</i>
zlib_text: Table of Contents
  Cover
  Preface
  How a Mistake Made Me a Better Investor
  About the Author
  Part I: Decision Analysis
  Chapter 1: Marginal Improvement, Significant Impact
  Decision‐Making as a Skill
  Spectators in Our Own Decisions
  Marginal Improvement and Its Outcomes
  Marginally Speaking
  The Power of Avoiding Mistakes
  Chapter 2: Blinded by Bias
  Mistakes and Markets
  Blind to Our Blindness
  Minimizing Effort
  Chapter 3: Rational Decisions
  The Science of Decision‐Making
  Swing Analysis for Portfolio Managers
  Asking the Right Q uestions
  Mistakes in Common
  Descriptive versus Prescriptive Decision Theory
  Chapter 4: Decision Analysis
  We Are All Students of the Same Game
  Decision Analysis
  The Biggest Mistake in Decision‐Making
  
  Chapter 5: How to Solve Any Problem
  Close Enough
  We See What We Are Shown
  Stay Home, See the World
  ABQ s of Research (Always Be Q uestioning)
  Working Smarter, Not Harder
  How Information Can Lead Us Astray
  Postscript
  Chapter 6: Cerebral Junk Food
  10 Reasons Listicles Are Bad for