Chapter 2: Open to Options — Escaping Tunnel Vision

Part 3 of 9 in How to Think Better: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition← Part 2Part 4 →

This chapter explains how narrow framing and anchoring can limit decisions by making the first idea or number seem more important than alternatives. It helps families, students, negotiators, and business teams create wider choices and examine risks more carefully.

The second major trap is narrow framing. Once we see a problem in a particular way, we stop looking for alternatives. Anchoring makes this worse: the first number or idea we encounter disproportionately influences our final answer. Daniel Kahneman’s classic experiments showed that even irrelevant numbers—such as the last digits of a phone number—can shift subsequent estimates.

In Indian family businesses and joint families, this is especially dangerous. The first suggestion from a senior family member or the first job offer often becomes the anchor. Subsequent discussion merely adjusts around that anchor rather than exploring genuinely different paths. Hierarchy and respect for elders further reduce the willingness to propose alternatives.

Indian Story: Career Choices and the Coaching Anchor

A bright Class 10 student in Kota, Hyderabad, or a major metro is told by a coaching institute that she should prepare only for JEE or NEET. That becomes the anchor. The family discusses which coaching institute is best, not whether engineering or medicine is the right path at all. The possibility of design, economics, entrepreneurship, skilled trades, or even a liberal arts education abroad is rarely examined seriously.

Years later, many of these students discover they dislike the field. The cost is not just money; it is years of life and the opportunity to develop genuine interests. The outside view would have included data on student satisfaction, dropout rates from engineering colleges, and the growing number of high-quality non-engineering careers that now exist in India.

Another Example: Negotiations and Anchoring

In real-estate negotiations across Indian cities, the first price mentioned—whether by the broker or the seller—often becomes the anchor. Buyers then negotiate downward from that number rather than independently assessing value based on recent comparable transactions. The same pattern appears in salary negotiations and in M&A discussions between Indian companies.

Practical Tools to Widen the Frame

• Explicitly list at least five genuine alternatives before choosing. Include at least one that feels uncomfortable or unconventional.
• Run a premortem: “It is two years from now and this decision has failed badly. What are the most plausible reasons?” Gary Klein’s premortem technique is one of the highest-leverage tools available.
• Seek genuine dissent. In Indian settings, this often requires creating psychological safety for junior team members or younger family members to disagree without social cost.
• Separate the generation of options from the evaluation of options. Do not kill ideas while you are still generating them.

Using AI to Generate Options and Run Premortems

AI is excellent at generating options without the social constraints that limit human discussion. It has no status to protect and no relationship to preserve.

• “I am a 22-year-old from a middle-class family in Pune considering joining the family real-estate business. Generate ten genuinely different career paths, including unconventional ones, with realistic pros, cons, and first steps for each. Include options that do not require a traditional degree.”
• “We are planning to acquire a smaller competitor in the Indian diagnostics space. Assume it is three years later and the acquisition has destroyed value. List the fifteen most plausible reasons, ranked by likelihood based on historical Indian M&A outcomes in healthcare.”
• Ask the AI to steelman the opposing view: “What is the strongest possible argument against the decision I am currently leaning toward? Argue as if you are a thoughtful critic who wants me to succeed.”
• “Generate five ways to structure this partnership that are not a standard equity split. Include options involving revenue share, performance milestones, or temporary arrangements.”

These prompts cost almost nothing and frequently surface considerations that groups of experienced people miss because of groupthink or hierarchy. The key is to treat the output as raw material for human judgment, not as a final recommendation.