Shadowing Practice: If You Only Read One Book This Year, Make It This - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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This book changed the way I make decisions.
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It didn't come from a CEO or a business school professor or a billionaire investor.
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It came from Annie Duke, a world-class poker player who spent 20 years at the table and won millions.
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Now, poker is interesting because that's where you can make a right decision and still lose money.
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You can make a terrible decision and still be rewarded.
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So you never know for sure whether you're smart or lucky or just emotional.
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That's why thinking in vets matters.
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Because your career, your money, your relationships, your biggest life choices work the same way.
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But this video is not just a book summary.
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I'm going to turn Duke's ideas into a practical system for making better decisions when you don't have all the information.
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How to avoid emotional pitfalls, how to separate skills from luck.
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And I'll share a framework called AVA that can help you when you can't see around the corner.
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This might save you years of heartache.
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So let's dive in.
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The most counterintuitive insight we miss is this.
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Good results are bad teachers.
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The most dangerous teacher in your life is accidental success.
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Let's say someone gets really drunk and it's late at night and he decides to drive home instead of calling an Uber.
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He might speed through three red lights at 2 a.m and still gets home safely.
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Now that's a good outcome, it's a great outcome, but it was still a terrible decision.
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When something works out in your favor in spite of you, your brain assumes that you made a smart bet.
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But the biggest mistake here is that we adjust the quality of the decision by the result it produces.
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But they may not be connected.
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That drunk driver will convince himself that nothing Something happens when you drive under the influence of alcohol, and that could prove fatal to him and others.
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And this is one of the central ideas of the book.
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In poker, you can play the right bet and still lose the hand.
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And you can make a terrible bet and still win.
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That gap is where people get confused about their own judgment.
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This happens in business, in our careers, on Wall Street, in relationships, everywhere.
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There are traders who I know who believe they have a magic touch
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and their trades never go the wrong way until of course they do and they lose their shirt.
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And same for founders and CEOs.
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I was the CEO of an AI company and we became the 20th fastest growing tech company in the US.
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And was that because I was a visionary CEO?
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I wish.
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We were the right company solving the right problem at the right time.
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And it worked out.
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Five years before and five years after, the same company wouldn't have worked.
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The tide is way more important than who's rowing the boat.
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Our decisions might be clean, but outcomes are rarely clean.
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They're usually a mix of skills and luck and timing and emotions,
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so that should give us humility and it should help us watch out for our self-serving bias.
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When we win, we think it's because of our skills.
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When we lose, we blame our luck.
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But when others win, we say, ah, they got lucky.
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And when they lose, we say, oh, well, they didn't have enough skills.
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So the results may come back amazing or awful.
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It does not make you a genius or a victim.
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The only useful move is to pull the result apart and ask what part was skill,
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what part was luck, And what can I do better next time?
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These questions sound pretty simple, but they're so hard to put in practice.
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So let's first figure out how our skills and luck get tangled up when we make decisions.
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That's where we'll find our first tool for decision-making.
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That's where we go next.
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A few years ago, I had a choice between two paths.
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One was a CEO role at a very, very cool tech company.
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It was a startup.
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We'll call it Company A.
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There were about 150 people growing fast.
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I had been at the CEO chair before, so it felt right.
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The board and I had many conversations.
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The chairman already had sent me the offer with compensation and equity, all of that stuff.
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And then just before the day I was about to sign, another option showed up.
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It was a C-level role at a company B.
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Now that company was a public company, much bigger, with a very strong market position and already worth about 10 billion dollars and counting in market cap.
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And I loved the CEO.
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I loved the mission.
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So I went through my decision framework carefully and thoughtfully and I ended up choosing company B.
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In the next few years, company A surprisingly faced tremendous growth challenges.
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It eventually had to shut down, but company B's stock went through the roof, up by more than 500%.
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In retrospect, the decision I made looks like a brilliant move, right?
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But here's the twist.
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A few years later, I had already moved on from the company and I had retired,
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but the industry dynamics changed so suddenly that the company's stock plummeted and it wiped out almost 90% of its value.
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I still had stocks in there.
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I should have sold the remaining positions, but I didn't.
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And it cost me a fortune.
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And this is the heart of what Annie Duke teaches in thinking in bets.
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You can play a hand with perfect skills and get lucky and still lose.
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We have to get ruthless about separating what is skill and what is luck.
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So let's unpack my decision process way she would.
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The first decision to choose company B was a skill.
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I suppressed my ego, I didn't get seduced by the CEO role, and made the right choice.
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But that rise in stock price that followed, that was pure luck.
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And finally, not selling the stock at the right time was just my dumb mistake.
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It was my greed and my emotional attachment to the company, and literally my delusion that it will come back.
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It wasn't some bad luck, it was just a dumb mistake.
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So this has happened to me many times and it will happen to me again.
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And if you are ambitious enough to play the high-stakes games, it will happen to you too.
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So here's the tool.
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Don't ask was I skilled or lucky because you're most likely both
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and also because your self-serving bias has already rigged that answer.
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Picture someone else making the same exact move and then put them on a dial from pure luck to pure skill.
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90-10, 50-50, that's the most honest number you can come up with.
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Your job is not to look back
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and beat yourself over the luck you couldn't control or the skills you had or you didn't have.
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Your job is to audit the process, learn the lesson, and get ready for the next bet
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and more importantly know when to fold
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that was my mistake i didn't get out on time
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and by the way if you like reading more about tools
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and frameworks like these you can subscribe to my newsletter as
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well i write it every tuesday one insight one tool one practice the link is below
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and it's totally free the key takeaway is this sometimes the same decision can be smart
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or lucky or foolish at different points in your life story.
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That's life.
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So now some of you may say, well then you have to wait until you have all the information so then you'll know which one is which.
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Well that's a fallacy and we'll see why next.
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We keep waiting to feel certain before making big decisions and that's why we wait forever.
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So in thinking in bets, Annie Duke makes a simple point.
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Every decision is a bet against the future.
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You're choosing between multiple futures you cannot fully see.
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A job, a house, a partner, a company.
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You're not supposed to know everything.
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If you knew everything, it wouldn't be called a bet.
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You never have perfect information.
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Also, having more information doesn't always help.
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A Columbia researcher named Sheena Iyengar found something very interesting in a grocery store.
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She set out a table with six jams to taste.
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Next weekend, she came back to the same station, set up the same table, but put out 24 jams for people to taste.
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The bigger display and more options attracted more people to the table.
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But when it actually came time to buy, the people who saw six jams bought more than the people who saw 24.
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More information and more options didn't give them more certainty to buy the product, it just made the decision harder.
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Sometimes more information can feel safer, but most of the time it's just causing analysis paralysis.
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It's just another excuse not to move forward.
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And I think this is the key difference between chess and poker.
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Chess is hard, but the entire board is clearly visible.
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You can see every piece.
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You can see the current positions.
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But when it comes to poker, the truth is hidden.
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You don't know the other person's cards.
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You don't know what card will come next.
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And you don't know when someone is bluffing.
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And that is way more closer to our lives.
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Because in life, you never get to see the full board.
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So here's one practical move I use.
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I make a two column decision table.
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In the first column, I write all the known facts.
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What is actually visible?
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What do I know?
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And in the second column, all the hidden cards.
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What is unknown?
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What am I assuming?
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What I'm hoping to be true?
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Once you separate what is known from what is unknown, your decision gets cleaner.
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Now, even if you don't have all the information, you still have to make the bet and ask what beliefs you're going to be betting on.
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That's where we go next.
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There is a famous study called They Saw a Game.
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There are two universities, Dartmouth and Princeton.
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They're both in Northeast America.
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Researchers had students from both universities watch the same football game.
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Their own universities were playing against each other.
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Same place, same penalties, yet Dartmouth fans swore Princeton played dirty.
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And Princeton fans saw the exact opposite.
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They saw the game through the team they already believed in.
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That's why some beliefs can start distorting what you see.
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That is also one of the core ideas in thinking in bets, that every decision is a bet built on what you believe.
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This is why fake news works, really.
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It feeds into what we already want to believe.
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For example, for years, people have clung to this headline that red wine is good for your heart.
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Why?
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Because people like drinking red wine when they come home and they want to relax in the evening.
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Research has since debunked that myth clearly many, many times over.
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But the belief has stuck around because it tells us what we want to hear.
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What's the action?
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Use these two moves.
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Number one, replace your binary thinking with probabilities.
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Instead of saying right or wrong or good or bad decision, ask, how confident am I?
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Am I 70% sure or 80% sure?
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And number two, ask the key question to yourself.
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You wanna bet?
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That's a great question.
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It's from the book.
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When you feel certain about some beliefs, imagine putting $100 or $1,000 dollars on that belief.
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It will force you to examine and define exactly what you believe in and based on what evidence.
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So it's better to start asking why you believe it.
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Okay, so we've thought about our luck, our skills, our beliefs, and now we've come to a point where we're ready to make a decision
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and we're going to need a framework for it.
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That's where we go next.
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In In the Odyssey, the protagonist knew about the siren's song.
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He knew it would hijack his mind.
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Sailors who had heard it before had lost control and crashed into the rocks.
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So before he heard those songs, while his head was still clear,
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he asked his crew to tie him to a ship's mast and ignore anything he said once the song began.
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Today, psychologists call it the Ulysses Contract, a rule your present self makes to protect you from your future self.
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The book gives us the same type of principle, but we have to go beyond the book now and build our own practical framework to put that advice into action.
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This is where I use a decision-making framework I call AVA, Expected Value Analysis.
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Emotions can have a seat at the table, sure, but AVA gets the first vote.
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It's a four step process.
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First, before making any decision, map out the scenarios.
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Put four or five branches on paper.
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Great success, moderate success, minor failure, a catastrophic failure.
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Once these possibilities are on paper, the fog starts to clear.
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Second, assign payoffs to each of these options.
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Put a dollar figure on each branch.
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How much will your gain be if it's a success?
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How much will you lose if it's a failure?
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And by the way, you don't have to value your payoffs in terms of hard cash.
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Include whatever matters to you.
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your time, your reputation, your health, impact on your family, anything.
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And third, assign the odds.
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Give each branch a probability score.
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What is the likelihood of that outcome happening?
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Do it based on the information you have today.
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And the fourth and final step is to calculate the expected value, which is to multiply the payoff by the probability.
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The evaluation process is more important than the actual numbers because you can stress test all the scenarios, look at the worst case scenario,
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figure out once you put the numbers down, imagine it's 12 months out from now and everything has failed completely.
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You can write down your version of how it failed and what happened.
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When you script that detailed disaster story before it has happened,
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your brain builds the exit ramps before the crash ever occurs.
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That is the point of Ava.
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It doesn't make your decision certain.
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It helps you understand why it's uncertain.
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And it helps you manage the most dangerous side effect of your decision.
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And that's where we go next.
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In poker, there is a condition called tilt.
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It's the exact moment your last hand completely infects your next move.
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You play a hand correctly, lose anyway, and your anger and your fear and your frustration
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and your wounded pride all of them take over or the exact opposite might happen too.
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You win so big and you start betting like you're invincible and both extremes are illusions.
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This is one of the book's key messages and here's where the biggest trap is.
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When you start tilting it is obvious to everyone else but it's invisible to you because tilt
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serves you a very toxic self punishment.
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When you fail, you start thinking, why do I always screw things up?
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And you're locked into that world.
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You can't see outside of it.
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And that is one of the biggest enemies of making great bets.
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Regret.
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That's what keeps the last hand alive inside the next one.
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But regret after a loss is part and parcel of how we all feel as human beings, right?
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There is nothing you can do to change what was gone, what is lost.
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But regret should heal, not harm.
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If you lose money, it doesn't mean you get out of the market just when it's recovering.
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I've done that.
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If you get fired, it doesn't mean you stop applying to the next amazing job.
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I've done that too.
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If someone breaks your heart, it doesn't mean you stop believing you could be loved again.
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This happens to all of us, but this is where we have to go beyond the book.
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The real lesson is not about card games.
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It's about realizing that outcomes can lie to you,
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your beliefs can distort you and your past regrets can paralyze you.
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All of it is inevitable.
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It's going to happen.
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But a regret is only wasted if it doesn't improve your next bet.
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One of my favorite songwriters, John Prine, has a song with this phrase I love, the blind spot of regret.
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because the past follows you everywhere you go.
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We hang it like a relic on our rearview mirror and we keep glancing at it while we're trying to drive forward.
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But the rearview mirror can't steer the car.
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You can hang your regrets where you can see them and then drive forward.
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Take the new turn, make the new bed.
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The road ahead only cares about how lucky you can get.
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I'll see you next week.
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Thank you and I love you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “If You Only Read One Book This Year, Make It This”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: decision, bet, skill, luck. This video has 252 sentences and 2847 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:21. The speaker talks at a natural 155 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| poker noun | /ˈpoʊkɚ/ | A metal rod, generally of wrought iron, for adjusting the burning logs or coals in a fire; a firestick. |
| tilt verb | /tɪlt/ | To slope or incline (something); to slant. |
| probability noun | /ˌpɹɑ.bəˈbɪl.ə.ti/ | The state of being probable. |
| jam noun | /ˈd͡ʒæm/ | A sweet mixture of fruit boiled with sugar and allowed to congeal. Often spread on bread or toast or used in jam tarts |
| scenario noun | /sɪˈnɛəɹioʊ/ | An outline or model of an expected or supposed sequence of events. |
| distort verb | /dɪsˈtɔːt/ | To bring something out of shape, to misshape. |
| rearview adjective | /ˈɹɪɹvjuː/ | That provides a view from or to the rear. |
| assign verb | /əˈsaɪn/ | To designate or set apart (something) for some purpose. |
| researcher noun | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | One who researches. |
| chess noun | /t͡ʃɛs/ | A board game for two players, each beginning with sixteen chess pieces moving according to fixed rules across a chessboard with the objective to checkmate the… |
| bias noun | /ˈbaɪ.əs/ | Inclination towards something. |
| insight noun | /ˈɪnsaɪ̯t/ | A sight or view of the interior of anything; a deep inspection or view; introspection; frequently used with into. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| counterintuitive adjective | /ˌkaʊntəɹɪnˈtuɪtɪv/ | Contrary to intuition or common sense. |
| debunk verb | /dɪˈbʌŋk/ | To discredit, or expose to ridicule the falsehood or the exaggerated claims of something; to refute. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| look back verb | To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight). |
| move forward verb | To cause to make progress. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- That's where we go next.
- You're choosing between multiple futures you cannot fully see.
- What I'm hoping to be true?
- How much will your gain be if it's a success?
- How much will you lose if it's a failure?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has happened · has already rigged · have clung |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be rewarded · may not be connected · be called |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who saw · value, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 53 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thoughtfully /ˈθɔtfəli/, ruthless /ˈɹuːθləs/, myth /mɪθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, delusion /dɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, visionary /ˈvɪʒəˌnɛɹi/, foolish /ˈfuː.lɪʃ/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: probability /ˌpɹɑ.bəˈbɪl.ə.ti/, counterintuitive /ˌkaʊntəɹɪnˈtuɪtɪv/, invincible /ɪnˈvɪn.sə.bəl/, paralysis /pəˈɹæləsəs/, visionary /ˈvɪʒəˌnɛɹi/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like poker, tilt, probability.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.