Decisive cover art

Decisive

How to make better choices in life and work

Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Decisive

By: Chip Heath, Dan Heath
Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £11.20

Buy Now for £11.20

LIMITED TIME OFFER

£0.99/mo for 3 months - terms apply. Offer ends 24 August 2026.

The New York Times-bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick offer a fascinating tour through the workings of our minds to reveal how to make smarter decisions.

Research in psychology has revealed that our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities. We're overconfident. We seek out information that supports us and downplay information that doesn't. We get distracted by short-term emotions. When it comes to making choices, our brains are flawed instruments. So, how can we do better?

In Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath draw on cutting-edge psychological research to introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these biases. They reveal how we can stop the cycle of agonizing over our decisions, how can we make group decisions without destructive politics, and how to ensure that we don't overlook precious opportunities to change our course. Along the way, they demonstrate how relatively easy it is to avoid the pitfalls and find the best answers.

Written in a compulsively readable style, Decisive takes us on a tour from a rock star's ingenious decision-making trick, to a CEO's disastrous acquisition, to a single question that can often resolve thorny personal decisions, in order to offer fresh strategies and practical tools that will enable you to make better choices. Because the right decision, at the right moment, can make all the difference.

© Chip and Dan Heath 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Career Success Decision-Making & Problem Solving Management & Leadership Negotiating Personal Development Personal Success Business Career Management Leadership
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Critic reviews

A well-written, thought-provoking book.
A leader's most important job is to make good decisions, which - minus perfect knowledge of the future - is tough to do consistently . . . The Heath brothers explain how to navigate the land mines laid by our irrational brains and improve our chances of good outcomes.
The writing is humorous and often surprising . . . coupled with their insightful analyses, the book proves particularly insightful.
All stars
Most relevant
This book is brilliant.

At the start, they humbly state their goal is to make you slightly better at making decisions. That is an understatement. It could make you much, MUCH better at the making the toughest decisions.

I thought of myself as a fairly rational, good decision maker prior to listening to this book and I'm also fairly well read on the psychology literature. Nonetheless, the tools and strategies I learned were new and invaluable.

They boil the big ideas down into simple frameworks you can adopt in your daily life and they have a free workbook available to download summarising the key ideas that I was willing to pay for.

This book should be on every book shelf because decisions dictate fate and we can all do with a better fate!

Finally, the quality of the audio reading was top notch, they hired the best for the job.

Improve your decisions, improve your life!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Awesome book for decisionsin organizations and personal life i reccomebt it to anyone who want to learn more on how to take better decissions

Perfect

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

the book contains good tangible strategies, and excellent examples of successful decision making processes. I'm maybe lacking a few anti patterns of the application, and maybe examples of turnarounds in those situation

good tangible strategies

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I think it is really relevant to making daily decisions, although intensity of applying the process might vary, but maybe those tiny little decisions might make life much better in a long run.

Interesting Insight

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.