The Art of Choice (Paperback)

Every book begins with a question.

This one began with a simple but relentless one: Why do intelligent people make poor decisions — and how can they stop repeating them?

Across decades of research, leadership roles, and consulting with teams facing critical choices, I discovered a pattern that transcends industry, culture, and circumstance. People rarely fail because they lack intelligence, effort, or intent. They fail because they confuse motion with progress, activity with clarity, and intuition with insight. Somewhere along that journey, we forget a fundamental truth: every decision is, at its core, a choice — an act of selecting one path while discarding others. The words may differ, but the mechanism is identical. A choice is simply a decision in its most human form: intent crystallizing into direction.

The Art of Choice grew from a desire to close that gap — between what we know and what we do, between our good intentions and our effective decisions. It’s not a book about being right all the time. It’s a book about learning to be less wrong, faster.

The framework at the heart of this book — PSDM: Problem-Solving and Decision-Making — was born from necessity, not theory. I saw teams paralyzed by data but starved of direction. I saw leaders who could diagnose issues but not decide. I saw individuals who mistook hesitation for caution, and regret for reflection. PSDM became a compass — a practical way to find direction when logic, emotion, and pressure collide. It revealed that clarity emerges not from having more information but from learning how to choose deliberately when the noise is loudest.

You will find no magic formulas here. Instead, you will find principles, tools, and habits — tested across crisis response, business transformation, and personal decision-making. The methods are drawn from psychology, systems thinking, military planning, and behavioral economics, distilled into language that anyone can use.

Each chapter stands on its own, but together they form a journey — from awareness to mastery, from reaction to intention. The case studies, exercises, and frameworks are designed for reflection and application. Mark them, question them, adapt them. This is not a book to finish; it’s a book to work with.

Writing The Art of Choice has been a lesson in my own subject. Every paragraph demanded decisions — about clarity, tone, and truth. It reminded me that good judgment is not a destination but a discipline, renewed daily through curiosity and courage.

If this book helps you see problems more clearly, choose more wisely, or lead with greater confidence, then it will have achieved its purpose.

Thank you for choosing to read The Art of Choice.

May it serve as both mirror and map — reflecting how you decide today and guiding how you might decide tomorrow.