https://blog.thomas-bray.com/tags/decision-making/Recent content in Decision-Making on Rabid CuriosityHugoen-usThomas BrayThu, 23 Apr 2026 06:30:00 -0500https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/monetary-discount-rates-and-depression/Thu, 23 Apr 2026 06:30:00 -0500https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/monetary-discount-rates-and-depression/<h2 id="the-performance-of-planning">The Performance of Planning</h2> <p>In my worst depressive episodes, making plans felt like church youth group theatre. I was performing.</p> <p>The audience was a small cast: authority figures who needed to believe I had my life together, and myself — the harshest critic, who knew exactly how hollow the performance was. I would map out courses each semester with the same enthusiasm I might bring to a role I did not want. To my professors and advisors, I appeared organized. To my peers, I seemed to have it figured out. The secret was that planning itself had become a coping mechanism, a way to generate the appearance of forward motion while standing perfectly still.</p>https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/personal-finance-investing-and-long-term-thinking/Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0500https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/personal-finance-investing-and-long-term-thinking/<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2> <p>Most personal finance advice is technically correct and psychologically useless. Spend less than you earn. Invest early and consistently. Don&rsquo;t time the market. These are right, but they don&rsquo;t address the harder problem: humans are bad at long-term thinking by default, and investing is almost entirely a long-term game. The skill worth building isn&rsquo;t picking stocks—it&rsquo;s training your own cognition to make better decisions across long time horizons.</p> <h2 id="key-points">Key Points</h2> <ul> <li>Why standard personal finance advice fails to change behavior</li> <li>The psychological obstacles to long-term thinking: hyperbolic discounting, loss aversion, availability bias</li> <li>How to build the habit of thinking in decades rather than quarters</li> <li>The investing principles that actually hold up once you account for human psychology</li> <li>Connecting personal finance decisions to broader life goals rather than treating them in isolation</li> </ul> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>The goal of personal finance isn&rsquo;t to optimize a spreadsheet—it&rsquo;s to give your future self more options. Getting there requires building a cognitive skill: the ability to treat future outcomes as real and worth protecting. That skill, once built, turns out to be useful far beyond money.</p>https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/monetary-discount-rates-and-depression-2025/Sat, 29 Nov 2025 14:35:00 +0000https://blog.thomas-bray.com/posts/monetary-discount-rates-and-depression-2025/<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2> <p>This post will delve into the relationship between monetary discount rates and depression.</p> <h2 id="key-points">Key Points</h2> <ul> <li>Explain monetary discount rates and their significance.</li> <li>Discuss how depression can affect decision-making and discount rates.</li> <li>Explore potential solutions or interventions.</li> </ul> <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> <p>Wrap up the discussion and highlight the importance of understanding this relationship.</p>