How to better understand the world around you, make smarter decisions, and ultimately live a more fulfilling life? Harvard Professor Dan Levy discusses with me today some practical tools to answer all these questions. We talk about his new book Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser and how to make better decisions under uncertainty.
Last week I did a review of the book Maxims for Thinking Analytically. With this interview, my intention is that you listen directly from the author. His views, reflections, and lessons from the book. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed with decision making this interview will help you gain some perspective.
Listen to the interview:
About Professor Dan Levy
He is a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and the faculty director of the Public Leadership Credential both at the Harvard Kennedy School. He’s the author of Teaching Effectively with Zoom and he recently launched his new book Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser.
The world is much more uncertain than you think
If you think you have this one clear, Professor Levy challenged us to think of the times when we were absolutely sure something will happen and didn’t, or the times we thought something will never happen and did. It’s not about just recognizing uncertainty but being able to assess it. How to do that?
Thinking probabilistically to assess uncertainty
Professor Levy talks about three steps to think probabilistically:
- Understanding probabilities
- Assigning probabilities to make better decisions
- Update these probabilities
He discusses them in the interview with some practical examples.
We also talked about the fact that good decisions sometimes have poor outcomes and some decisions have a high probability of a bad outcome. Understanding that you only control your decision-making process but not the outcome can be liberating.
Long division is the most important tool for policy analysis
Before you roll your eyes, listen to the example Prof. Levy gives in the interview. Essentially what this means is that when evaluating a policy, you have to assess if the additional benefit you get from that policy would compensate the additional cost of implementing it.
Gain perspective
You know keeping things simple is Better Gov’s motto. There are two maxims when dealing with complex decisions that can help you gain some perspective. When you are having trouble getting your thinking straight, go to an extreme case or go to a simple case.
Simple reminders to make better decisions
The maxims of the book, these one-sentence nuggets of wisdom, are a reminder to ourselves of what we need to do when facing complex decisions. Internalizing the maxims is a powerful way to think analytically in our daily lives.
I highly recommend reading the book, hit play in the interview to listen to the author directly, and don’t forget to download your one-pager as a reminder of these maxims. If you liked this format, please let me know in the comments below.
Resources mentioned in the interview:
- Summary of the maxims for thinking analytically
- Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser.
Credits: Intro “Too Cool” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
