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How many decisions do you make in a typical day? Lots, right?

How effective are those decisions in helping you achieving your goals? Probably less than you think.

One of my responsibilities in my role as an investment manager is to evaluate decisions. Good decisions are naturally expected to result in good outcomes, just as bad decisions would be expected to yield negative outcomes. People who consistently make good decisions would be considered skillful, and those who consistently make bad ones are probably in the wrong business. Due to life’s uncertainties, though, decisions can lead to unexpected outcomes. A good decision can lead to a bad outcome, which is considered bad luck. A bad decision might yield good results, which would be considered good luck. Over time, in most areas, skill will trump luck. But this isn’t always true, and a persistent string of luck can easily be confused with skill. Just because I flip a coin and get heads five times in a row (a 3% chance, if my math is right) doesn’t make me good at flipping heads.

I enjoy this part of my job, because I’m a student of decisions in life in general. Ask my kids…we’re always reviewing “Was that a good decision or a bad decision?” with the hope of steering behavior to better decisions over time. And I certainly turn the microscope on myself and try to be introspective, though it’s always hard to be objective in self-evaluation. It’s consistent with my philosophy toward continuous improvement, though, so I try.

And that brings us back to looking at our daily decisions and their alignment with achieving our goals. In the moment, we naturally think our decisions are aligned. But are we really giving ourselves the best opportunity to make the best decisions?

As humans, we tend to make the same behavioral mistakes over and over again. It is really, really hard to overcome them, even with awareness and the best of intentions. That’s why it’s so good to be reminded of the patterns and to learn new tricks to deal with them. Being aware and armed is not the hardest part, but it’s a good place to start.

One of the biggest pitfalls we fall prey to is called anchoring. This is when we’ve made up our minds, and it takes some pretty compelling evidence to get us to change our view. Anchoring dovetails with another pitfall called confirmation bias, where we seek information that supports our point of view. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we gravitate toward those that agree with us and provide us with evidence that strengthens our view rather than undermines it. This creates an echo chamber that severely limits objectivity.

In some areas of life, this is perfectly suitable. My kids go to Catholic school because it is consistent with our beliefs and educates them in the manner we deem most appropriate. Each weekend—well, almost each weekend—we go to Catholic mass, an action that reinforces that view. As a result, that decision loop feeds itself and has little chance of changing. We’re okay with that. We’ve already examined the topic pretty thoroughly from multiple angles (my wife Colleen went to Catholic school growing up, and I went to public).

In other areas, echo chambers can be more troublesome. It’s an obvious example, but there is no denying the polarity of the political system. This is a vicious cycle reinforced by confirmation bias. Politicians data mine and cherry pick statistics to support their arguments. When’s the last time you heard a politician cite a piece of disconfirming evidence as a reason for changing his or her views? (And how’d that go over?) So are they making great decisions? And what about us, who elect these dutiful officials? How many Republicans watch MSNBC, and how Democrats watch FOX News? And why would we, when they are echo chambers for their own selectively reinforced views?

I see it too with the entrepreneurial community. Observe the social media discussion and there’s lots of rah-rahs and amens as consensus grows louder.

I’m not necessarily trying to fix a broken system. But I would argue that we can improve our own decisions by being a little more open-minded and objectively looking for disconfirming evidence to challenge our beliefs. There’s a solid basis for this. When we were school-aged, we learned to establish a hypothesis and then attempt to disprove it. This process tends to result in sound conclusions.

As you make your decisions—for your business, your family, yourself, etc.—consider whether you’re truly being objective. Instead of seeking explicit support, think of where you can turn to get contrasting opinions that challenge your view. Find someone who disagrees with you, and listen. This is hard. It takes awareness and effort, it’s uncomfortable (what if I have to admit I’m wrong?) and it slows things down. But it’s worth it, because you’ll make better decisions and only then have confidence in the effectiveness of your decisions.

Even if you don’t take the step to actively seek disconfirming evidence, at least consider whether you’ve fairly looked at all sides of the situation and have been sufficiently open-minded. Understanding the bias to your decision can at least help mitigate the damage of a poor decision.

There are all kinds of behavioral pitfalls associated with decision-making, in investing and in life. Confirmation bias is a big one. So do yourself a favor, and get out of the echo chamber.

PS: Seth Godin’s post the day after I wrote this—called The opposite of ‘defenseless’—succinctly and creatively makes a similar point.