Lessons from Annie Duke

Annie Duke, a former professional poker player turned author and consultant in the cognitive science of decision-making, has become a leading voice on how to make better choices in a world of uncertainty. Drawing from her experiences at the high-stakes poker table and her background in psychology, Duke offers a practical framework for thinking in bets, embracing uncertainty, and learning from the complex interplay of skill and luck. Her insights, primarily detailed in her bestselling books "Thinking in Bets," "How to Decide," and "Quit," provide a roadmap for navigating life's most challenging decisions.

On Decision Quality vs. Outcome Quality

One of the cornerstones of Duke's philosophy is the critical distinction between the quality of a decision and the quality of its outcome. She argues that we often fall into the trap of "resulting"—judging a decision's merit solely by its result, ignoring the role of luck.

"What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge." [1][2]
"Improving decision quality is about increasing our chances of good outcomes, not guaranteeing them." [1][3]
"Outcomes don't tell us what's our fault and what isn't, what we should take credit for and what we shouldn't. Unlike in chess, we can't simply work backward from the quality of the outcome to determine the quality of our beliefs or decisions." [1][3]
"Resulting is a routine thinking pattern that bedevils all of us." [4] It is a poor mental shortcut in which we use the quality of an outcome to figure out the quality of a decision. [5]
"Good decisions can lead to bad outcomes, and bad decisions can occasionally get rewarded. If we only ever judge our decisions based on the results, we never improve our decision-making process." [2]
"We want outcome quality to align with decision quality." [3]
"Just because I got a good outcome from going through a red light I hardly think that I should assume that going through a red light is a good decision. And yet this is what we do." [6]
"When the outcome turns out poorly, it's easy to focus on the details that suggest the decision process was poor. We think we are seeing the decision quality rationally because the bad process is obvious." [3]

Thinking in Bets and Embracing Uncertainty

Duke advocates for reframing our decisions as "bets" to better reflect the probabilistic nature of reality. This mindset encourages a more objective and less emotionally reactive approach to decision-making.

"Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about." [1][3]
"In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing." [1][3]
"Decisions are bets on the future, and they aren't 'right' or 'wrong' based on whether they turn out well on any particular iteration." [4]
"Getting comfortable with 'I'm not sure' is a vital step to being a better decision-maker. We have to make peace with not knowing." [7]
"The secret is to make peace with walking around in a world where we recognize that we are not sure and that's okay." [1][8]
"Admitting that we don't know has an undeservedly bad reputation." [9]
"Thinking in probabilities instead of assuming everything is a sure thing... helps you avoid that tricky thing called hindsight bias." [10]
"To become a better decision-maker, you need to be willing to estimate... probabilities." [11]

Learning, Experience, and Self-Correction

Experience is a powerful teacher, but only if we process it correctly. Duke emphasizes the need to actively learn from both good and bad outcomes, free from the distortions of cognitive biases.

"Experience can be an effective teacher. But, clearly, only some students listen to their teachers." [3][7]
"A lot of experience can be an excellent teacher. A single experience, not so much." [3]
"Self-serving bias has immediate and obvious consequences for our ability to learn from experience." [3]
"The only real failure is not to learn from it." [9]
"Identifying a negative outcome doesn't have the same personal sting if you turn it into a positive by finding things to learn from it." [1]
"We are in a perpetual state of learning, and that can make any prior fact obsolete." [7]
"Keeping a decision journal can counter the fallibility of memory and lead to better learning and decisions over time." [5]
"The worst player at the table has something to teach you." [9]

The Power of Quitting

Contrary to popular wisdom, Duke argues that quitting is a crucial skill for success. Knowing when to walk away from a losing hand—or a failing project—is as important as knowing when to persevere.

"Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot. That's how they win." [1][3]
"Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest." [1][3]
"If you feel like you've got a close call between quitting and persevering, it's likely that quitting is the better choice." [3]
"Grit is great, but it's not a silver bullet. Sometimes, the grittiest people are the ones who stick with the wrong things for too long."
"Before starting a project, imagine failure and what early warning signs might have predicted it. Commit in advance to reassess or pivot if you notice those red flags later on." [12] This is also known as setting "kill criteria". [12]

Cognitive Biases and Mental Models

Duke provides practical tools and mental models to combat the cognitive biases that cloud our judgment.

"Hindsight bias is the tendency, after an outcome is known, to see the outcome as having been inevitable." [5][13]
"Just as we can't unsee an illusion, intellect or willpower alone can't make us resist motivated reasoning." [1]
"The smarter you are, the better you are at constructing a narrative that supports your beliefs, rationalizing and framing the data to fit your argument or point of view." [8]
"Incorporate negative visualization makes us more likely to achieve our goals." [1][8]
"The 10-10-10 rule: think about how you'll feel in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years - you can navigate life's uncertainty with greater clarity." [14]
"The Only-Option Test clears away the debris cluttering your decision. If you'd be happy if Paris were your only option, and you'd be happy if Rome were your only option, that reveals that if you just flip a coin, you'll be happy whichever way the coin lands." [1][11]
"Pros and cons lists are a poor tool as they are missing two key pieces of information, the probability or likelihood and the size of the payoff." [5]

Improving our decisions is not a solo endeavor. Duke highlights the importance of creating "truth-seeking" groups to challenge our assumptions and provide objective feedback.

"Having the help of others provides many decision-making benefits, but one of the most obvious is that other people can spot our errors better than we can." [7]
"If we're going to improve our beliefs, we'll be better off if we include people and information sources we're likely to disagree with." [7]
"A productive truthseeking group has at least three people: 'two to disagree and one to referee.'" [15]
"The goal is to be accurate rather than be right about your prior views." [9]
"Replace confrontational language like 'I disagree' or 'you're wrong' with phrases like 'I don't understand' so everyone feels heard and valued." [12]

On Risk, Luck, and Strategy

Duke's poker background provides a rich source of analogies for managing risk and understanding the role of luck in our lives.

"Over time, those world-class poker players taught me to understand what a bet really is: a decision about an uncertain future." [1][3]
"You cannot make luck go your way. You can improve the probability that you will have good outcomes by improving your decision-making, but that is not making your own luck." [9]
"The wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time they don't." [9]
"There's a quick and easy way to test whether an activity involves skill: ask whether you can lose on purpose." [9]

General Wisdom and Philosophy

"Mistakes, emotions, losing – those things are all inevitable because we are human." [7]
"When we work toward belief calibration, we become less judgmental of ourselves." [3]
"The quality of our life is the quality of our decisions." [5]
"When a decision is hard, that means it's easy since both options have similar upside and downside potential." [5]
"The Time-Accuracy Trade-Off: Increasing accuracy costs time. Saving time costs accuracy." [5]

Sources:

Books by Annie Duke:
Websites and Articles: The numbered citations throughout the text correspond to the search results used in compiling this information, which include Goodreads, QuoteFancy, and various analytical blog posts and interviews. [1][3]

Learn more:

Lessons from Annie Duke

On Decision Quality vs. Outcome Quality

Thinking in Bets and Embracing Uncertainty

Learning, Experience, and Self-Correction

The Power of Quitting

Cognitive Biases and Mental Models

On Risk, Luck, and Strategy

General Wisdom and Philosophy

Written by Antoine Buteau

Lessons from Scott Anthony

Lessons from Amy C. Edmonston

Lessons from Annie Duke

On Decision Quality vs. Outcome Quality

Thinking in Bets and Embracing Uncertainty

Learning, Experience, and Self-Correction

The Power of Quitting

Cognitive Biases and Mental Models

The Social Side of Decision-Making

On Risk, Luck, and Strategy

General Wisdom and Philosophy

Written by Antoine Buteau

Lessons from Scott Anthony

Lessons from Amy C. Edmonston