Lecture Notes: Managing Stress and Making Better Decisions

Introduction

• Personal anecdote about breaking into own house in cold winter
• Circumstances: Lost keys, cold weather, early flight next day
• Resulted in breaking a window to get in

Stress and Its Effects on Decision Making

• Neuroscience background: Stress releases cortisol
  • Effects: Raises heart rate, modulates adrenaline, clouds thinking
• Realization of forgetting passport at airport

Prospect of Preventing Mistakes: Pre-Mortem

• Conversation with Danny Kahneman about "prospective hindsight" or "pre-mortem"
• Concept: Anticipate potential failures to prevent disasters
• Difference from post-mortem analysis
  • Post-mortem: Analyze what went wrong after the fact
  • Pre-mortem: Look ahead to identify what could go wrong

Strategies for Prevention

• Home Organization

  • Designate specific places for easily lost items (keys, passport, glasses)
  • Leverage brain's spatial memory (hippocampus) to remember locations

• Travel Tips

  • Take photos of important documents (credit cards, passport) and store in cloud

Medical Decision Making

• Importance of clear thinking in medical decisions

• Example: Discussing high cholesterol with a doctor

  • Statins: Widely prescribed but have a statistical basis for efficacy
  • Number Needed to Treat (NNT): Number of patients needed to treat before one benefits
    • Example: 300 need to take statin to prevent one adverse event
  • Side effects: 5% chance of serious side effects (muscle pain, gastrointestinal issues)
  • Important to discuss risks and benefits with doctors

• Comparison to prostate cancer surgery

  • NNT of 49 for surgeries, with 50% experiencing side effects

Preparing for Stressful Situations

• Importance of thinking through decisions beforehand
• Quality of life considerations
  • Choices between pain-free shorter life vs. longer life with pain
• Training ourselves to think ahead and create systems to manage stress

Conclusion

• Acknowledgment of human flaws and potential for failure
• Encouragement to implement systems to minimize damage and prevent mistakes
• Personal takeaway: Installed combination lock for easier access
• Ongoing journey towards better organization

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• Key Takeaway: By anticipating challenges and creating systems, we can make better decisions and potentially avoid negative outcomes.