Give Yourself a Nudge: Helping Smart People Make Smarter Personal and Business Decisions

by Ralph L. Keeney

The best way to improve your quality of life is through the decisions you make. This book teaches several fundamental decision-making skills, provides numerous applications and examples, and ultimately nudges you toward smarter decisions. These nudges frame more desirable decisions for you to face by identifying the objectives for your decisions and generating superior alternatives to those initially considered. All of the nudges are based on psychology and behavioral economics research and are accessible to all readers. The new concept of a decision opportunity is introduced, which involves creating a decision that you desire to face. Solving a decision opportunity improves your life, whereas resolving a decision problem only restores the quality of your life to that before the decision problem occurred. We all can improve our decision-making and reap the better quality of life that results. This book shows you how.

Genres: Psychology

Kindle Edition

Published April 15, 2020

About the author

Ralph L. Keeney received Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is Research Professor Emeritus of Business Administration, Duke University, and Research Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Southern California. His areas of expertise are the decision sciences, risk analysis, and systems management. He is an authority on decision analysis, decision making with multiple objectives, and value-focused thinking. During his professional career, Dr. Keeney has consulted on a wide range of decisions including corporate management problems, public policy, environmental problems, and energy decisions.

He has been a consultant for several organizations including Fair Isaac, Seagate Technology, American Express, British Columbia Hydro, Pacific Gas and Electric, BC Gas , Kaiser Permanente, Hewlett-Packard, the Electric Power Research Institute, Greater Vancouver Regional District, Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG (Germany), Ministry of Public Works (Mexico), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria), U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Professor Keeney's books, which have been translated into numerous languages, include Decisions with Multiple Objectives with Howard Raiffa (1976, 1993), ValueFocused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking (1992), and Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions, with John S. Hammond and Howard Raiffa (1999). He recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo in Canada and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering of the U.S.

Reviews

[Anthony Landreth · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most practical books out there on decision making

There’s a lot of wisdom in Keeney’s value-focused approach to decision making. No gimmicks. Just sensible and straightforward advice on when and how to deliberate about life’s most important decisions. I loved Smart Choices, which Keeney wrote with Hammond and Raiffa. I like this book even more. I plan on reading more of his books after this one.

[Jonathan Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want everyone to read this book! I think it would make your life and the world a better place.

[Lukasz]

recommended: [Episode 238: Prof. Ralph Keeney: Decision Analysis and Value-focused Thinking — Rational Reminder](https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/238)