How do we make long-term decisions that concern us?

        How do we make long-term decisions that concern us?

f he worked as an intelligence agent in 2010 and found conclusive evidence that Osama bin Laden might be hiding in a Pakistani suburb, he would suddenly face a series of difficult and difficult decisions, each with serious drawbacks. What would you do?

It's a question that goes to the heart of "Vision of the Future," Steven Johnson's fascinating new book on how we make difficult long-term decisions. The good news is that you will probably never face a choice with bin Laden level bets. The bad news is that you have reached many times of bifurcation on the road that forever alter the future. Which school to choose, what work to take, where to live, who to marry, when to have children.

Spoiler alert, of some kind: Johnson believes he is not ready for all these decisions.

You should not be. In the last two decades, popular knowledge about the science of decision-making has exploded. Behavioral economists and Nobel Prize-winning psychologists have taught us that we are prone to "We behave badly" (Richard Thaler) and do not do enough like "Think fast and slow" (Daniel Kahneman). But as Johnson astutely points out, these books are primarily about the choices we make in the "Blink" (Malcolm Gladwell) of an eye as we move through our daily lives. Surprisingly, there is little guidance on how to approach the great moments that shape our futures.