Why Most Smart People Still Make Bad Decisions (And What Actually Fixes It)
Intelligence does not protect you from bad decisions. Here is what actually does, and why the best decision-makers in the world use a completely different appr
Chris Awoke28 July 2026 · 1-minute read
The meeting that changed how I think about decisions
Three years ago, I sat across from someone who had just made a decision that cost him two years and everything he had built. He was not careless. He was not reckless. He was, by any reasonable measure, one of the sharpest people I had met, sharp enough to have built a real business from nothing, sharp enough to have seen opportunities others missed.
And he had made a catastrophically bad call anyway.
When I asked him what happened, he said something I have not forgotten: "I knew everything I needed to know. I just did not think it through properly."
That sentence stayed with me. Because it is not just his story. It is the story of most of the significant mistakes I have watched smart people make. Not ignorance. Not lack of information. A failure to think the decision through properly before committing.
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