The one-sentence summary
You can make better choices by widening your options, testing your assumptions, attaining distance before deciding, and preparing to be wrong.
Can’t be bothered to read it? Listen to the 5-minute summary.
WHAT THE BOOK SAYS 
· You can make better choices in life and work by following four simple principles (as ever, they encapsulate these in a mnemonic, WRAP)
· Widen your options
· Reality-Test your assumptions
· Attain distance before deciding
· Prepare to be wrong
· Stage 1 means avoiding a narrow time frame, multitracking (considering more than one option simultaneously), and finding someone who has already solved your problem.
· Stage 2 involves considering doing the opposite, zooming in and zooming out (big picture and detail), and ooching (a Southern US word for running small experiments to test theories).
· Stage 3 includes overcoming short-term emotion and honouring your core priorities.
· Stage 4 is bookending the future (setting a range of outcomes from very bad to very good) and setting up tripwires.
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT
· It’s another good synthesis of all things behavioural, well laid out with clear chapter summaries that you can grab.
· If you are a well-adjusted individual, you can navigate yourself through poor choices:
~ You encounter a choice – don’t let narrow framing exclude decent options.
~ You analyze your options – don’t let confirmation bias make you gather only self-serving information.
~ You make a choice – don’t let short-term emotion tempt you into the wrong one.
~ You live with it – don’t let overconfidence about the future warp your view.
· There is a decent blend of corporate and personal examples, and the narrative rolls along well, as ever with these authors.
WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH
· Pretty much all of this has been discussed before elsewhere:
~ Framing has been covered extensively by Daniel Kahneman and others.
~ Ooching is the same as ‘First bullets, then cannonballs’ from Jim Collins.
~ Zooming in and out was also posited by Collins in Great by Choice.
~ The premortem (envisioning a disastrous outcome) was originated by Gary Klein.
~ …and tripwires were first suggested by me in Tick Achieve in 2008 (!)