Kahneman told me his favorite rule was never to…

Kahneman told me his favorite rule was never to say yes to a request on the phone. He knows that he wants people to like him, so he wants to say yes in the moment, but after filling up his schedule with things that didn't make him happy, he decided to be more vigilant about what he agrees to do and why. When people ask him for things over the phone now, he says something along the lines of, "I'll have to get back to you after I think about it." Not only does this give him time to think without the immediate social pressure, but it also allows a lot of these requests to just drop away because people choose not to follow up. He rarely gets back to any of these people and says yes.

— from The Mind in the Cockpit · Clear Thinking: The Art and Science of Making Better Decisions by Shane Parrish

In the book

And get comfortable being unsure, holding the question open rather than grabbing the first answer. When you need the real reason buried under a problem, ask why five times in a row until you strike bedrock; and protect the slow system from the fast one the way Kahneman did, refusing on principle to say yes to a request on the phone, because the quick answer is so rarely the wise one. Manage the inner voice. When a thought is strangling you, learn to step back and see it as just a thought — a passing appearance of words, not a fact; practice changing your inner dialogue, or stopping it altogether for stretches of the day. — The Mind in the Cockpit

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