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24 Different Ways to Make a Decision
A handy guide to the most useful frameworks for work and life
All you do, every day, is make decisions.
At work, you might decide to spend time on problem A instead of problem B. You might decide to use this product strategy over that product strategy. You might decide to place pixels here, not there.
But how do you make those decisions? Yes, you use intuition. Yes, you use experience. But you can never be 100% certain of the outcome. The only thing you can be certain of is the quality of the process you use to make your decisions.
And that is exactly what frameworks are for.
A framework is a mental model used to solve problems. It is a representation of a problem space, the relationship between the various parts in that space, and a person’s perception of her actions and the consequences within that space. You can use frameworks to think more intelligently about any challenge or opportunity that lies before you, and ultimately make better choices.
I’ve collected the frameworks that our team at Article Group have found most essential, both personally and in our day-to-day work. This guide has been organized into four sections: managing yourself, managing teams, creative problem solving, and client thinking.
Managing yourself
How to reason
First-principles thinking
When you reason via first principles, you break everything down to component parts and fundamental truths and then build back up again logically. This “why, why, why” process is intended to get away from convention, or similarities to prior experiences. By starting with what is actually true instead of simply using intuition, you clear pathways for creativity and solution-finding.
How to learn from experience
Double-loop thinking
