When you analyze happiness, it turns out that the way you spend your time is extremely important.

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.

All of us roughly know what memory is. I mean, memory is sort of the storage of the past. It's the storage of our personal experiences. It's a very big deal.

An executive might have a very strong intuition that a given product has promise, without considering the probability that a rival is already ahead in developing the same product.

Finally, the illusions of validity and skill are supported by a powerful professional culture. We know that people can maintain an unshakeable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. Given the professional culture of the financial community, it is not surprising that large numbers of individuals in that world believe themselves to be among the chosen few who can do what they believe others cannot.

In strategic decisions, I'd be really concerned about overconfidence.

If people can construct a simple and coherent story, they will feel confident regardless of how well grounded it is in reality.