If you find yourself mapping a “whether or not” question, you’re almost always better off turning it into a “which one” question that gives you more available paths.

scenario-based exploration of a potential move to the suburbs would take the elements that are most uncertain, and imagine different outcomes for each of them.

you can’t draw up a list of things that will never occur to you. But you can play your way into that kind of list.

When facing a decision that involves multiple, independent variables, people have a tendency to pick one “anchor” variable and make their decision based on that element.

The three-part structure turns out to be a common refrain in scenario planning: you build one model where things get better, one where they get worse, and one where they get weird.

But Sommers found that the mere presence of non-whites in the jury room made the white jurors more contemplative and open to other possible interpretations. Just the idea that there were diverse perspectives in the room helped the group build more accurate maps.

To me, the parable of the basement fire teaches us how important it is to be aware of our blind spots, to recognize the elements of a situation that we don’t understand.

“One thing a person cannot do, no matter how rigorous his analysis or heroic his imagination,” the Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling once observed, “is to draw up a list of things that would never occur to him.”

confirmation bias and overconfidence just like the rest of us. Our brains naturally project outcomes that conform to the way we think the world works. To avoid those pitfalls, you need to trick your mind into entertaining alternative narratives, plot lines that might undermine your assumptions, not confirm them.