Noreena Hertz Quotes

Never bring the problem solving stage into the decision making stage. Otherwise, you surrender yourself to the problem rather than the solution.

Thinking. A process by which I use my brain to make a rational decision.

If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

Objective leaders identify their unproductive mental models and tweak them for greater effectiveness.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

Empathy has some unfortunate features - it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it.

Regardless of the magnitude of the decision, our brains make it hard for us to keep the perspective we need to make good choices.

It's hard to do that with people who think emotionally. A lot of people think in terms of people, emotions, and feelings. That's more complicated. Engineering mentality makes it, in theory, a little easier.

I'm bad at rationalisation - very bad.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

There is a dearth of thinking skills - people are taught what to think, not how.

Policy makers, like most people, normally feel that they already know all the psychology and all the sociology they are likely to need for their decisions. I don't think they are right, but that's the way it is.

I'm generally slow to anger, quick to forgive, and I take in information before making decisions. So no matter how controversial the decision, my general demeanour is to put on white lab coat and gloves and look at the evidence, weigh the arguments and see what makes sense.

Mostly, I try to take a rational approach to life.

My research career has been devoted to understanding human decision-making and problem-solving processes. The pursuit of this goal has led me into the fields of political science, economics, cognitive psychology, computer science and philosophy of science, among others.

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

We mostly feel fearful because we feel powerless. We feel powerless, I contend, because of a style of thinking that splits information in two poles that makes us lose all the operative information we need to solve the problem.

I like to think that since I was about 19, I have studied human decision-making and problem-solving.

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.

One of the biggest challenges we have, as business owners and people, is that we think in linear terms.

If you can get rid of the emotion and concentrate on the problem, you can solve the problem.

I'm not sure people would think of me in this light, but frankly, what I enjoyed most about Bain & Company, the consulting firm, was the analytical process of solving tough problems.

I have always tended to over-think things and that had come into my game. That's good in certain moments but not when you have to make a quick decision.