Argue the other side
Before you commit, write the strongest case against your view. If you can't, you don't know the question well enough yet.
▶ Watch it in 30 secondsSources: Lord, Lepper & Preston (1984) · Koriat, Lichtenstein & Fischhoff (1980)
8 habits that catch most biases
You can't switch biases off, but a few checks catch most of them. Use these before decisions that are expensive or hard to undo.
Start from the base rate
Ask how things like this usually turn out before you look at what makes this case special.
▶ Watch it in 30 secondsSources: Kahneman & Lovallo (1993) · Wikipedia
Run a pre-mortem
Imagine it is a year from now and the plan failed. List the likeliest reasons, then fix what you can today.
▶ Watch it in 30 secondsSources: Klein (2007) · Mitchell, Russo & Pennington (1989)
Decide what would change your mind
Set the evidence you would need before you go looking. Moving the bar afterwards is a warning sign.
▶ Watch it in 30 secondsSources: Ditto & Lopez (1992) · Nosek et al. (2018)
Grade decisions by what you knew
Good choices can end badly and bad ones can get lucky. Judge the reasoning with the information available at the time.
▶ Watch it in 30 secondsSources: Baron & Hershey (1988) · Wikipedia
Write predictions down
A dated note beats memory, which tends to edit itself to match what happened.
▶ Watch it in 30 secondsSources: Fischhoff & Beyth (1975) · Wikipedia
Borrow other eyes
Ask someone with different incentives or a different background to find the hole. Your own blind spots are hard to see from the inside.
▶ Watch it in 30 secondsSources: Pronin, Lin & Ross (2002) · Schwenk (1990)
Put distance between you and the choice
Sleep on it, or ask what you would tell a friend in the same spot. Strong emotion and time pressure push you toward snap judgments, where many biases thrive.
▶ Watch it in 30 secondsSources: Grossmann & Kross (2014) · Kross & Ayduk (2017)