On Decision Making
Ability to make good decisions is key to just about everything from work to relationships to investing. And yet, the process of how we educate and raise young people is woefully absent of any useful decision making training and is arguably actually sabotaging any chance that good decision making may emerge. As young people grow up, all decisions are made for them from what they eat to what they wear to how they spend their time. Through teenage years the only "decisions" they get to make are about what electives to take at school and even that only towards the end of high school. Not surprisingly, they yearn for more freedom and the more structure is imposed on them the more they rebel against it. What if instead of depriving them of decision making authority we were to do more to teach them the skills of making better decisions? Starting with simple things such as that every decision is a trade-off. What if instead of saying "you can play computer games for not more tha