Even though you might have had little or no training in the area of decision-making, it's a task you perform many times a day-often with significant consequences. Use these four quick steps to make intelligent decisions:

1. Frame. Define the choice and determine what criteria would cause you to prefer one option over another. Think about the viewpoint from which you and others will look at the issue, and decide which aspects they might consider important.

2. Gather intelligence. Seek the knowable facts and reasonable estimates of the“unknowables.” Avoid overconfidence and the tendency to seek information that confirms your biases.

3. Come to conclusions. Even with good data, people cannot make good decisions using seat-of-the-pants judgment. A systematic approach leads to better decisions than do hours of haphazard thinking.

4. Learn from feedback. Keep track of your expectations; systematically guard against self-serving explanations and review the lessons of your feedback.

Excerpt from: J. Edward Russo and Paul J.H. Schoemaker, Decision Traps: The Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision Making and How to Overcome Them, Doubleday, New York: 1989.