Hello friends,
A few days ago, I read an article on the internet. I am reproducing some part of the article which stimulated my brain-
Scientists Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso analyzed 1,112 bench rulings in a parole court and plotted the proportion of favorable rulings over the course of the day. They found that judges were more likely to deny a prisoner's request and accept the status quo outcome as they advanced through the sequence of cases on a given day. More specifically, their proportion of favorable rulings started out high, at about 65% at the start of the day, but dropped off rapidly.
By the time a meal break came around, the proportion of favorable rulings was close to zero. When court was back in session, the pattern repeated itself, starting high and ending with almost zero favorable rulings. Interestingly, neither the judges nor the panelists who advised them were aware that mental energy is essential to careful deliberation and the later in the day, the lower such energy is, unless a lunch break allows judges to recharge.
Evidence for the same type of cognitive fatigue has been found in other contexts, including consumers choosing among various products and physicians prescribing antibiotics. Primary care doctors often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics for acute respiratory infections (ARI), researchers have found. As the physicians appeared to "wear down" during their morning and afternoon clinic sessions, the rates at which they prescribed antibiotics increased. About 5% more patients receive antibiotics at the end of a clinic session as compared to the beginning, this research shows. Thus, while clinicians make many patient care decisions each day, the cumulative demand of these decisions leads to more inappropriate choices later in the day.
End.
Unbelievable, isn't it?
But believe it, just take a little time and think about your how your yesterday went? How you started the day? What decisions did you take? Whether they were right? How did you felt while assessing the choices?
You will find it that some decisions you took were bad decisions, you could have made better decision if you were in better mood. Others were simply right, and you were in good mood while taking the decisions.
So what is this MOOD??
A good mood can be characterised by an energetic condition of brain and vice versa.
But why does the quality of decisions get's affected by condition of the brain??
Generally after enough sound sleep we wake up with an energetic brain. Everyone knows that we can grasp things easily in the morning. But then 2 things happen as we proceed through the day-
1) Decision fatigue-
As we wake up in the morning we start making a series of decisions, like on weekdays we might be thinking, how to reach the workplace on time? Am I running late? If running late then which things I can skip to save time? Or how can I move fast? How much I have to move fast? After reaching office, how to tackle the boss? How to tackle different problems at the workplace?
Then there are decisions related to relations with other people or about our health or different needs, different compromises, decisions about the family, financial planning, planning for shopping (grocery, clothes, vehicles, study material for kids, consumer durables, fuel for vehicles.....) the list of decisions we take goes on and on. There seems to be no end.
All this decision making process consume the processing power of our brain. As our brain thinks, it produces some chemicals which goes on accumulating in the brain. These chemicals inhibit the processing power of the brain. We can counter these chemicals temporarily by drinking tea or coffee, as the chemicals in the tea or coffee temporarily desensitize our brain cells to the build-up of the slowing chemicals.(but the builds up remains there.)
Along with this there is also a build-up of short term memories which we gather to take decisions. Our brain has to get rid of these two inhibiting factor to regain it's processing power. And the only way to achieve this is to get enough of sound sleep. During sleep, our brain classifies the things in the short term memory in to useful memory, which is then handed over to long term memory and the unwanted memory is discarded.
While we are asleep chemical changes also occurs in the brain. The inhibiting chemicals formed during decision making progress gets removed.
That is the reason why we feel fresh and in good mood after a good night's sleep.(along with the revitalised grasping power)
This explains somewhat why our decision making ability deteriorates through out the day.
Then there is a second reason responsible for bad decisions-
2) Preoccupation-
Our brain is not designed for multitasking. But we still try to multitask. For example you need to pick up the kids or spouse or some grocery item while going back home, and you try to do office work while keeping this information in your short term memory, which is like a RAM in the computer. As you know when the RAM gets crowded, the processing capacity of the computer slows. Similarly as our short term memory gets crowded our decision making ability dwindles.
So what happens when we have decision fatigue and preoccupation???
When our brain develops decision fatigue and is preoccupied it starts taking short cuts while making decisions. Sometimes it doesn't consider all the relevant things, other times it may fit the current problem with some other not so relevant solution, or it simply borrow solution from someone without knowing if it actually suits your problem.
For example even while taking big decisions like buying a car, one may simply chose a car owned by a colleague or neighbour, or best selling car in the country etc. This decision is taken without considering what features we actually need in a car or what type of car do I need to carry out my specific work etc.
How to get past this thing to make better decisions??
10 WAYS TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS (and live a better life)-
1) A simple answer would be make as few decisions as possible. Weed out the unnecessary ones.
2) Take important decisions when your mind is fresh i.e. in the morning time.
3) Avoid making decisions in bad mood.(remember those bad breakups with loved ones??)
4) Reduce the preoccupation with the help of smart phone reminders.
5) Get away from disturbances.
6) Stop multitasking.
7) Get enough sleep.(enough sleep also ensures good health along with fresh mind)
8) Maintain a good health. Exercise also helps in rejuvenating our mind.
9) Only make friendship with good people.
10) Take your time while making your mind.
A great billionaire and philanthropist- Warren Buffett have given a great advice to the investors -
"To make your investing decisions much better, I will give you a punch card with 20 slots in it, every time you make an investment you punch this card, you only have 20 investments to make in the life. This will dramatically increased the quality of your decisions. And 20 good decisions are enough to make you a lot richer in life."
Many renowned investors including Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger also agree that you only need to find one investment idea in a year or two to get awesome results.
That's it for now. See you again, till then have a nice day...
Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.
A few days ago, I read an article on the internet. I am reproducing some part of the article which stimulated my brain-
Scientists Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso analyzed 1,112 bench rulings in a parole court and plotted the proportion of favorable rulings over the course of the day. They found that judges were more likely to deny a prisoner's request and accept the status quo outcome as they advanced through the sequence of cases on a given day. More specifically, their proportion of favorable rulings started out high, at about 65% at the start of the day, but dropped off rapidly.
By the time a meal break came around, the proportion of favorable rulings was close to zero. When court was back in session, the pattern repeated itself, starting high and ending with almost zero favorable rulings. Interestingly, neither the judges nor the panelists who advised them were aware that mental energy is essential to careful deliberation and the later in the day, the lower such energy is, unless a lunch break allows judges to recharge.
Evidence for the same type of cognitive fatigue has been found in other contexts, including consumers choosing among various products and physicians prescribing antibiotics. Primary care doctors often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics for acute respiratory infections (ARI), researchers have found. As the physicians appeared to "wear down" during their morning and afternoon clinic sessions, the rates at which they prescribed antibiotics increased. About 5% more patients receive antibiotics at the end of a clinic session as compared to the beginning, this research shows. Thus, while clinicians make many patient care decisions each day, the cumulative demand of these decisions leads to more inappropriate choices later in the day.
End.
Unbelievable, isn't it?
But believe it, just take a little time and think about your how your yesterday went? How you started the day? What decisions did you take? Whether they were right? How did you felt while assessing the choices?
You will find it that some decisions you took were bad decisions, you could have made better decision if you were in better mood. Others were simply right, and you were in good mood while taking the decisions.
So what is this MOOD??
A good mood can be characterised by an energetic condition of brain and vice versa.
But why does the quality of decisions get's affected by condition of the brain??
Generally after enough sound sleep we wake up with an energetic brain. Everyone knows that we can grasp things easily in the morning. But then 2 things happen as we proceed through the day-
1) Decision fatigue-
As we wake up in the morning we start making a series of decisions, like on weekdays we might be thinking, how to reach the workplace on time? Am I running late? If running late then which things I can skip to save time? Or how can I move fast? How much I have to move fast? After reaching office, how to tackle the boss? How to tackle different problems at the workplace?
Then there are decisions related to relations with other people or about our health or different needs, different compromises, decisions about the family, financial planning, planning for shopping (grocery, clothes, vehicles, study material for kids, consumer durables, fuel for vehicles.....) the list of decisions we take goes on and on. There seems to be no end.
All this decision making process consume the processing power of our brain. As our brain thinks, it produces some chemicals which goes on accumulating in the brain. These chemicals inhibit the processing power of the brain. We can counter these chemicals temporarily by drinking tea or coffee, as the chemicals in the tea or coffee temporarily desensitize our brain cells to the build-up of the slowing chemicals.(but the builds up remains there.)
Along with this there is also a build-up of short term memories which we gather to take decisions. Our brain has to get rid of these two inhibiting factor to regain it's processing power. And the only way to achieve this is to get enough of sound sleep. During sleep, our brain classifies the things in the short term memory in to useful memory, which is then handed over to long term memory and the unwanted memory is discarded.
While we are asleep chemical changes also occurs in the brain. The inhibiting chemicals formed during decision making progress gets removed.
That is the reason why we feel fresh and in good mood after a good night's sleep.(along with the revitalised grasping power)
This explains somewhat why our decision making ability deteriorates through out the day.
Then there is a second reason responsible for bad decisions-
2) Preoccupation-
Our brain is not designed for multitasking. But we still try to multitask. For example you need to pick up the kids or spouse or some grocery item while going back home, and you try to do office work while keeping this information in your short term memory, which is like a RAM in the computer. As you know when the RAM gets crowded, the processing capacity of the computer slows. Similarly as our short term memory gets crowded our decision making ability dwindles.
So what happens when we have decision fatigue and preoccupation???
When our brain develops decision fatigue and is preoccupied it starts taking short cuts while making decisions. Sometimes it doesn't consider all the relevant things, other times it may fit the current problem with some other not so relevant solution, or it simply borrow solution from someone without knowing if it actually suits your problem.
For example even while taking big decisions like buying a car, one may simply chose a car owned by a colleague or neighbour, or best selling car in the country etc. This decision is taken without considering what features we actually need in a car or what type of car do I need to carry out my specific work etc.
How to get past this thing to make better decisions??
10 WAYS TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS (and live a better life)-
1) A simple answer would be make as few decisions as possible. Weed out the unnecessary ones.
2) Take important decisions when your mind is fresh i.e. in the morning time.
3) Avoid making decisions in bad mood.(remember those bad breakups with loved ones??)
4) Reduce the preoccupation with the help of smart phone reminders.
5) Get away from disturbances.
6) Stop multitasking.
7) Get enough sleep.(enough sleep also ensures good health along with fresh mind)
8) Maintain a good health. Exercise also helps in rejuvenating our mind.
9) Only make friendship with good people.
10) Take your time while making your mind.
A great billionaire and philanthropist- Warren Buffett have given a great advice to the investors -
"To make your investing decisions much better, I will give you a punch card with 20 slots in it, every time you make an investment you punch this card, you only have 20 investments to make in the life. This will dramatically increased the quality of your decisions. And 20 good decisions are enough to make you a lot richer in life."
Many renowned investors including Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger also agree that you only need to find one investment idea in a year or two to get awesome results.
That's it for now. See you again, till then have a nice day...
Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.
