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Big Irreversible Life Decisions How to make the handful of choices you cannot practise and cannot easily undo: reversibility first, forecasting a future self who will differ from you, choosing a partner, a place, a career pivot, children, and care, then living with the choice once made.
45 cards · space to flip · 1–4 to grade · d to go deeper
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Reading list The works this deck draws on, in the order worth reading them. Cards point to a specific chapter or paper where one fits.
01 Book Decisive · Chip Heath and Dan Heath The best single process for a big decision: widen your options, reality-test your assumptions, get distance before deciding, and prepare to be wrong. Start here. 02 Book Stumbling on Happiness · Daniel Gilbert Why your forecasts of how you will feel are wrong in predictable ways, and why asking someone who is living the outcome beats imagining it. The research behind the forecasting cards. 03 Book Transformative Experience · L. A. Paul A philosopher's short argument that some choices (children, emigration, a new vocation) cannot be made by imagining the outcome, because the choice changes the person doing the imagining. 04 Book The Paradox of Choice · Barry Schwartz Maximisers against satisficers, and why more options and a higher standard leave people less happy with what they chose. The chapters on regret and adaptation matter most here. 05 Book Working Identity · Herminia Ibarra A study of people who changed careers in midlife, finding that the ones who succeeded acted first and reflected after, through small experiments rather than a plan. 06 Book Algorithms to Live By · Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths Chapter 1 on optimal stopping and chapter 2 on explore and exploit, with the assumptions stated plainly enough to see where they fit a life and where they do not. 07 Book Quit · Annie Duke The case that people leave jobs, cities, and relationships too late, and the tools (kill criteria, a quitting coach) that make leaving on time possible. 08 Book The All-or-Nothing Marriage · Eli Finkel What people now ask of a marriage, why the average one has got harder and the best ones better, and what that implies for choosing one and investing in it. 