Issue 30 |💡Add a Data-Driven Approach to Your Life Decisions
Harness the Power of Big Data to Design a Better Life.
IoNTELLIGENCE is the Playbook for Professional Success, Personal Transformation, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
🚨 The Big Idea: Data can help us avoid thinking traps and make more informed decisions.
🔧 What To Do Next: Learn to accept the “what" without the “why.” Add Big Data to your decision-making toolkit—but only as another input.
🔬 Go Deeper: Read “Don’t Trust Your Gut.”
📖 Reading Time: 7 Minutes
I had a perpetually single friend who would only date men over 6 feet tall, and she’s not close to that height herself. Exasperated, I asked her one day: What percentage of American men do you think are in that category?
“I don’t know. 40%?”
I replied: “14.5%. Your fixation on this one measure excludes 85% of American men from your possibilities. Is that a smart dating strategy?”
This was an example of not using Big Data for small but important life decisions.
The anecdote is a little flippant, but it’s directionally accurate: Most people make decisions based on a combination of facts, reflection, arbitrary preferences, and a heavy dose of guesswork. They don’t ground themselves in data that might be extremely helpful in making better choices.
Every day, we outsource decisions from which toaster to buy to where to eat dinner to algorithms and crowdsourced recommendations. But for the most important personal determinations, we often rely on a single person - us - and our gut. That’s a mistake.
For one, we are incredibly susceptible to dozens of thinking traps - from the well-known confirmation and anchoring biases - to the lesser-understood endowment effect.
According to data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “We are frequently too optimistic; overestimate the prevalence of easily remembered stories; latch on to information that fits what we want to believe; and wrongly conclude that we can explain events that, at the time, were unexplainable.”
The typical way we make choices frequently leads us astray. In other words, our brains are predictably imperfect at judiciously weighing the pros and cons.
But a second reason this is foolish is that we live in an unprecedented era of Big Data. Thanks to the “datafication” of nearly everything, we can now access quantitative insights that reveal previously invisible patterns. Businesses have been leveraging Big Data for over a decade, but today, individuals can access data sets to help them make better decisions.
As Yuval Noah Harari points out, “In the twenty-first century, feelings are no longer the best algorithms in the world.” We can now turn to another tool in the arsenal. Data can help us make better life decisions, just as it’s helped organizations steer their strategic choices.
As always, this is food for thought to help you perform, transform, and flourish. I’m not recommending that you turn everything over to algorithms—just that you use Big Data to make more informed judgments and design a more fulfilling life. Here’s how.
Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash
🚨 The Big Idea
The term “Big Data” refers to the practice of applying math to vast quantities of data to infer probabilities. We then use the patterns it exposes to inform our choices rather than make our judgments for us. In this way, Big Data can be a new and valuable input to your decision-making toolkit.
Let’s explore a few practical examples to demonstrate this process in action.
What Makes People Happy?
This question has vexed people since at least Aristotle's time and will likely continue to do so forever. However, in the era of Big Data, we can supplement Aristotelian thinking with new insights into what seems to improve people’s well-being.
Happiness researchers have used iPhone-based questionnaires through the “Mappiness Project” to collect troves of data on how joyful people are at any one time and what they’re doing to achieve that state of bliss. Here are some of the surprising insights they uncovered.
Do you know what doesn't make people very happy? Getting your “dream job” or winning the lottery. Why? Humans are so adaptable that we adjust to good fortune as much as we are resilient to challenging circumstances. The “hedonic treadmill” that we run on ensures that we are terrible at predicting what would make us happy or staying excited after it happens.
One result that resonated with me as a long-suffering fan of the Dallas Cowboys was this: sports fans feel more pain from their teams’ losses than they gain from their wins. I touched upon a related concept - the “Power of Bad” in a past issue of the newsletter - so the conclusion is surprising but not shocking. The insight from the study is that if you want to maximize happiness, you should be a casual fan (“Let’s root for Taylor Swift’s BF”) rather than a passionate supporter like me.
What does make us surprisingly happy? Going to a concert is very high on the list, as is playing sports or exercising. Socializing with friends is right up there, and playing with pets comes just below playing with kids, giving validation to fur parents everywhere. Being in nature ranks considerably higher than binge-watching TV, even if, like me, you really enjoyed the most recent episode of the “Shogun” reboot. Near the absolute bottom was “commuting” (no surprise there) and being on social media, which might be more shocking to TikTok aficionados.
The throughline to this data is that experiences trump things, social activities beat solo ones, and playing sports is better than watching them (active beat passive). Remember this the next time you’re determining what to do, and you can make a data-driven decision to maximize your happiness.
The Myth of the Tech Bro Unicorn Founder: you’re not too old to be a successful entrepreneur.
You’re forgiven for thinking you must be young to make it big as a start-up founder. Popular culture has driven a narrative that most unicorn CEOs are like Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman. That’s the media myth: the reality is that data shows that the average successful one is 42 years old. In fact, the odds of starting a successful business increase up until the age of 60. If you think about it, that makes sense: an older executive is more experienced, has a more extensive professional network to draw upon, has more resources and capital to invest, and has presumably learned from their previous mistakes. Fifty may be the new thirty regarding physical fitness and “founder fitness.” Don’t believe the hype; follow the data and start that business.
The ideal vacation length for peak relaxation, according to experts.
Is there a magic number of days for a vacation? I’ll answer like an accountant: it depends.
A 2012 study found that a traveler’s health and well-being peak on the eighth day of a holiday - but that does not imply that this would be the optimal vacation length.
It does suggest that you should avoid vacations that are too short or too long. On too-brief vacations, people are often unable to fully disengage from work or truly reconnect with loved ones. On lengthier travels, they risk falling into a routine.
One recommendation is to take several shorter vacations throughout the year instead of blowing all our time off on one epic trip. Research shows relationships between the frequency of vacations and feelings of well-being. So, all else being equal, you should take more vacations.
🔧 What To Do Next
One downside to Big Data decision-making is that we must accept the what without the why. It’s all about correlation, not causation.
Sophisticated algorithms crunch thousands of variables and millions of data points to produce their statistically probable recommendations - but without being able to explain the cause-and-effect relationship. Big Data conclusions can be described as “dumb” because they can tell what will happen but not why.
This is a philosophical and psychological challenge to the way we’re used to operating. Humans are hard-wired to look for the why in everything, even when it’s not there (conspiracy theories, for example). So, there is a tension that we will have to tolerate going forward. Sometimes, we'll have to accept suggestions without convincing narratives, but we must also guard against mindlessly turning to Big Data for the answers to everything.
Add Data to your decision toolkit. It’s an excellent input, but it shouldn’t be everything.
Ronald Reagan popularized the realpolitik phrase “trust, but verify” when he negotiated an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. I propose we use a similar principle to our data-driven decision-making: apply but verify.
Involving data in everyday decisions is just one more lens to use in our ongoing attempt to think more clearly and strategically. Just as we shouldn’t choose by flipping a coin or following our feelings, we can’t outsource our agency to the algorithm. In other words, it’s not “either-or” but “and”: Use logic, gut instincts, and data to make decisions. Before you choose, see if there are any data sets you can draw upon - from some of the resources below to newer sources like Claude from Anthropic to Gemini-enhanced Google search.
🔬 Go Deeper & Get Smart Fast
If you have a few hours, 👓 “Don’t Trust Your Gut” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. This is the definitive book on what he calls “Moneyball for your life.” You will be shocked at how big a difference there is between how we think the world works and how it does.
If you have under 1 hour, 👓 this video from the Irrational Labs YouTube Channel.
If you have under 10 minutes, 👓 this interview with the author.
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