How To Make Better Decisions (with way less uncertainty) - Joe Hudson - #1171
Episode of Modern Wisdom · November 2, 2026 · 1 h 43 min
Chris Williamson talks with coach Joe Hudson about why decision-making is emotional, how fear distorts choices, and how principles, iteration and emotional acceptance improve decisions.
Summary
Chris Williamson hosted coach Joe Hudson for a conversation on decision-making. Hudson distinguished unconscious "choices" from deliberate "decisions" and argued that all decisions are fundamentally emotional, citing the book Descartes' Error and patients who lost the capacity to decide after damage to emotional brain centres. He contended that people struggle with decisions because they fear an emotional consequence, and that fear produces black-and-white thinking and a "false end" that hides the fact that life continues after any single choice.
Hudson proposed two main components of good decision-making: becoming comfortable feeling difficult emotions such as rejection, anger, grief and abandonment, so that more options become available, and making most decisions by a small set of personal principles, such as treating everything as an iteration. He illustrated these with stories about paying his barber to collect gallery rejections, mourning his marriage in advance during rough periods, and coaching his daughter through anger over her college essays. Williamson introduced the concepts of audience capture and criticism capture, citing Ethan Strauss and using Jordan Peterson as an example, and argued that people who pay a high price for idiosyncratic positions, such as Sam Harris, signal genuine conviction.
The pair also discussed habits as leftover coping mechanisms, which Hudson called "emotional bureaucracy"; big life decisions as moments where identity is at stake; seeking reassurance as a form of self-abandonment; regret and the costs of prolonged indecision; and the difference between agency and assertiveness. Hudson closed by describing a silent Ayurvedic Panchakarma retreat and promoting his five-week Great Decisions course.
Chapters
- 0:00
Why decision-making matters
Hudson argued decisions shape businesses and lives, distinguishing unconscious choices from deliberate decisions.
- 2:27
Decisions are emotional
Hudson described who struggles to decide and argued decision-making is entirely an emotional process, with fear constraining available options.
- 11:04
Fear, false ends and mourning in advance
Hudson explained how fear creates binary thinking and false endings, and how feeling the feared consequence, as in mourning his marriage, frees decisions.
- 16:44
Principles and iteration
Hudson described deciding by a set of principles, including building the unknown part first and treating everything as an iteration, plus the GPS-brain idea.
- 29:29
Courage and being true to oneself
The pair discussed how acting on principles reduces the courage required and why self-betrayal hurts more than failure.
- 32:36
Audience capture and criticism capture
Williamson explained audience and criticism capture, and Hudson extended the idea to the pornification of content and people-pleasing in life.
- 39:32
Emotions and identity behind hard decisions
Hudson described his daughter's college essay breakthrough, and Williamson discussed Alex Hormozi, Donald Trump and Sam Harris as people paying high prices for their positions.
- 53:28
Habits as emotional bureaucracy
Hudson discussed making unconscious choices conscious, and Williamson described a sleep-related phone habit that outlived its cause.
- 1:02:44
Big life decisions and fear of change
Hudson argued that big decisions put identity at stake and are opportunities to question what one essentially is.
- 1:12:35
Bad decisions, reassurance and decisiveness
Hudson defined bad decisions as self-compromise, called reassurance-seeking self-abandonment, and linked decisiveness to a stable identity.
- 1:24:49
Regret and the cost of indecision
The pair discussed how the feared consequence is often already being endured during indecision and the self-abuse involved.
- 1:29:47
Agency, intuition and the retreat
Hudson distinguished agency from assertiveness, discussed intuition, described his Panchakarma retreat and promoted his course.
Key points
What was said, by whom, with the exact words. Timestamps jump to the moment.
- Joe Hudson
Hudson argues that logical decision-making is a myth and that decisions are made emotionally.
“So the idea that you're gonna make a logical decision is absolute crap. It's a great idea and it's a great way to justify emotional repression”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson argues that being afraid to feel certain emotions removes options from one's decision-making.
“If you are scared to feel a certain thing, then a certain solution set in your decision-making is not available to you”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson recounts that his barber, challenged to collect 50 gallery rejections, instead got acceptances and now makes a living from his art.
“He couldn't get 60 rejections. He got two acceptances. And so now he's making a living selling his art”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson argues that fear creates a 'false end' that hides the fact that more decisions follow any single one.
“The other thing that fear does in the brain is that it creates a false end”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson says his breakthrough was realising he was always in fear when making decisions, which changes how the brain operates.
“every time I was making a decision, I was in fear. So if you are in fear, your brain does certain things”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson recounts that he and his wife cope with rough periods by mourning the marriage in advance to remove the fear of losing each other.
“So both of us have come up with this method where we basically just mourn the marriage. Because what I'm scared of is that I'm gonna lose her”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson says he makes most of his decisions according to a fixed set of principles, likening this to Berkshire Hathaway's investment criteria.
“So for instance, I have a set of principles that I make 80% of my decisions by”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson describes his personal principle that everything is an iteration, meaning failure is replaced by continuous experimentation.
“I have a personal principles that everything is an iteration. What that means is the same thing that I was teaching to the barber”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson says his company requires every employee to run several experiments on how to do their job each quarter.
“Everybody who works for us has to run, depending on where they are, three to five experiments on how to do their job differently every quarter”
- Chris Williamson
Williamson argues that audience-captured creators eventually lose touch with their own taste.
“This creator is now out of touch with their taste because they haven't created something from themselves for a very long time”
- Chris Williamson
Williamson, citing Ethan Strauss, argues that Jordan Peterson is a canonical example of criticism capture.
“it's the canonical example that's used by Ethan in his article about criticism capture, is Jordan Peterson is very criticism captured”
- Chris Williamson
Williamson argues that if all of a person's opinions are predictable from one, they are probably not a serious thinker.
“if I know one of your opinions and can accurately predict everything else that you believe, you're probably not a serious thinker”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson compares lingering habits to corporate bureaucracy, which must be actively dismantled.
“bureaucracy does not destroy itself. You have to actively go in and destroy bureaucracy”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson argues that resentment is a sign of having abandoned oneself by repeatedly doing what one does not want to do.
“Because resentment means you've abandoned yourself. Like if you ask me to do something and I don't want to do it and then I do it, enough times I'm going to resent you”
Linked moment · 1:18:34Skip to 1:18:34 using a listen link in the info box.
Joe HudsonHudson argues that seeking reassurance for decisions hands one's power to others and is a form of self-abandonment.
“It's saying, I don't know what's right for me, which is a lie, but you do, which means I am literally giving my power over to you”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson argues that a stable sense of identity strongly increases decisiveness.
“People who have a very stable sense of self are far more decisive than people who don't”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson says CEOs learn that making many decisions quickly beats trying to get each one right, because action enables learning.
“most CEOs start realizing that making decisions is better than getting decisions right”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson observes that the consequence people fear is often what they are already experiencing while stuck in indecision.
“What's interesting is that the thing that people fear is often the thing that they are feeling and stuck in in the moment of trying to make the decision”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson argues that prolonged indecision involves unrecognised self-abuse.
“people when they're in that deep indecisiveness they really forget that they're being super self-abusive”
- Joe Hudson
Hudson says becoming decisive increases one's sense of agency, which he distinguishes from assertiveness.
“If you do the work to be decisive, you definitely feel like you have more agency”
- Chris WilliamsonPrediction · due May 2028
Williamson predicts George Mack's book on high agency will be published within about eighteen months.
“He's going to be writing the definitive book on high agency. It'll come out at some point in the next year and a half”
People
In the conversation
- Chris WilliamsonBritish podcaster and host of Modern Wisdom
- Joe HudsonExecutive coach and founder of Art of Accomplishment, former venture capitalist who coaches founders and researchers at companies including OpenAI
Discussed
- Alex HormoziEntrepreneur and influencer helping design Founders School
- Jeff BezosFounder of Amazon
- Daniel KahnemanNobel Prize-winning psychologist cited on quitting decisions
- Jordan PetersonCanadian psychologist and author
- Ethan StraussSports writer who wrote about criticism capture
- George MackBritish writer, marketer and entrepreneur
- Sam HarrisAuthor and neuroscientist whose audio piece 'The Last Time' Ferriss cited
- Donald TrumpPresident of the United States whose conduct of the Iran war is the episode's main subject
- Margaret ChoAmerican comedian
- Warren BuffettAmerican investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
- Alain de BottonSwiss-British philosopher and writer
- MichelangeloItalian Renaissance sculptor of the statue of David
- Ali AbdaalYouTuber and productivity author coached by Hudson
- Connor BeatonMen's coach and founder of ManTalks
- James ClearAuthor of Atomic Habits and habit formation expert
Topics
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From the publisher
Joe Hudson is a coach, entrepreneur and a podcast host. Expect to learn how important it is to develop the skill of decision-making, why intelligent people often struggle the most with making decisions, how to spot the biggest indicators you are about to make a terrible decision, the things that separate someone who makes decisions quickly from someone who agonises over everything, how to distinguish genuine intuition from fear masquerading as intuition, and much more… Learn more about Joe and his upcoming course on decision-making: https://s.artofaccomplishment.com/MWdecisions Sponsors: Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription to the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a free trial from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at https://chatgpt.com Timestamps: (00:00) How Your Decisions Shape Your Life (02:27) Can You Train Yourself to Be More Decisive? (03:34) Why Some People Struggle to Make Decisions (04:30) Emotion vs Information: What Drives Our Decisions? (11:03) The Secret to Making Great Decisions (16:52) How Fear Holds Us Back (25:43) Why You Should Trust Your Brain’s GPS (29:27) Is Courage the Key to Better Decisions? (32:36) The Hidden Trap of Audience Capture (39:31) Why Your Principles Matter More Than You Think (44:04) The Emotions That Control Your Decisions (53:27) How to Make Conscious Choices (01:03:43) How to Face the Biggest Decision of Your Life (01:09:44) Why Change Feels So Scary (01:12:47) What Actually Makes a Decision Bad? (01:18:16) Is Seeking Reassurance a Form of Self-Abandonment? (01:20:46) Is Decisiveness Just Confidence in U…
Summary, chapters and key points were generated from the episode transcript on November 14, 2026. Quotes are checked word for word against the transcript.