

Book Notes: Smart Choices – a Practical Guide to Making Better Life Decisions - jasonshen
http://www.jasonshen.com/2012/book-notes-smart-choices-a-practical-guide-to-making-better-life-decisions/

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fitandfunction
Nice article, Jason.

With regards to this point:

 _The most common ... mistake people make ... is that they just don’t think
about it._

... while that is true, I think the root problem is that people don't _think
about it for themselves_.

In other words, people are apt to use analogies or proxies to simplify the
decision process. This is useful short-hand for a lot of things in life (no
need to think too much about uber), but leaves much to be desired for pivotal
decisions. Silicon Valley is an echo chamber ... are you ideas really your
own? or are you parroting someone else?

I think Elon Musk says it best in his interview with Kevin Rose:
<http://youtu.be/g92rP1Mi_oQ>

His main point is to take time to think from first principals (e.g. the raw
materials of rockets cost less than <1% of the finished product ... therefore,
something is wrong!) and to try to come to your own conclusions.

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cdjarrell
Thanks Jason for the notes. I too highlight important bits and pieces that I
read and type them up later. Having a cliff notes document on each book is
useful if I ever need to go back and find some specific detail (I know this
seems redundant in that I could just read the kindle version and use the
highlight feature but there's something about books in paper form that I can't
drop).

Does anyone know of a good website that has similar cliff notes on books?
Maybe one where you can read notes by others and contribute your own. Thanks

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jasonshen
Yeah, actually this wiki is a good one. Just added my summary here:
<http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422658/FrontPage>

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cdjarrell
This is great, thank you!

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bravoyankee
Seems like good advice when having to make weightier decisions, but when it
comes to decisons of the heart, not so much.

On a related note, I remember hearing about a study (this is going back almost
a decade now) showing that those who live in poverty were often found to have
poor decision-making skills.

The findings sounds both obvious and patently unfair, but I wonder if anyone
else has heard of a study like that. A link would be great.

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c0riander
A quick Google search turns up several interesting studies. Here's a link to a
good APA overview of a few of them: [http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower-
poverty-financial.pd...](http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower-poverty-
financial.pdf)

