I MAKE POOR DECISIONS PROFESSIONAL

Mindfully acknowledging our feelings serves as an “emotional thermostat” that recalibrates our decision making. Anxiety makes us more risk-averse than we would be regularly and more deferential. Stress makes us prone to tunnel vision, less likely to take in the information we need.

They simply ceded their power to decide to the expert.Īnxiety, stress and fear - emotions that are part and parcel of serious illness - can distort our choices. The results were extraordinary: when confronted with the expert, it was as if the independent decision-making parts of many subjects’ brains pretty much switched off. scanner gauged their brain activity as they did so. In a 2009 experiment carried out at Emory University, a group of adults was asked to make a decision while contemplating an expert’s claims, in this case, a financial expert. Yet people are loath to challenge experts. In the United States and Canada it is estimated that 50,000 hospital deaths each year could have been prevented if the real cause of illness had been correctly identified. Studies have shown that up to one in five patients are misdiagnosed. Physicians do get things wrong, remarkably often. Not just in my field but also in neuroscience, psychology, sociology, information science, political science and history. So in between M.R.I.’s, CT scans and spinal taps, I dove into the academic literature on decision making. But up until then I hadn’t thought much about the process of decision making. As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions - prime ministers, presidents and chief executives - and so I’m all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere. Treatments suggested ranged from a five-hour, high-risk surgery to remove a portion of my stomach, to lumbar spine injections to numb nerve paths, to a prescription of antidepressants.įaced with all these confusing and conflicting opinions, I had to work out which expert to trust, whom to believe and whose advice to follow. But many other possibilities remained on the table, from autoimmune diseases to rare viruses to spinal conditions to debilitating neural illnesses. Cancer was quickly and thankfully ruled out. I was offered a vast range of potential diagnoses. Trying to find the answer, I saw doctors in London, New York, Minnesota and Chicago. I did not know whether I had an illness that would kill me or stay with me for the rest of my life or whether what was wrong with me was something that could be cured if I could just find out what on earth it was.

I MAKE POOR DECISIONS PROFESSIONAL

Delivering on my academic and professional commitments became increasingly challenging. The pain got worse, a white heat in my belly that made me double up unexpectedly in public and in private. I experienced searing stomach pain, felt utterly exhausted and no matter how much I ate, I couldn’t gain an ounce. My weight dropped by 30 pounds in three months. LONDON - SIX years ago I was struck down with a mystery illness.

I make poor decisions