Why do we fixate on a few negative or critical comments, when we hear hundreds of positive ones? It seems one bad event, or even a not-so-great event, can discolor our day. Yet all of the positive and pleasant things go unnoticed or can’t be recalled, according to John Tierney and Roy Baumeister, authors of “The Power of Bad.”

What would you do in a plane crash? If your office building were filling with smoke, what would you do? Typically, we avoid these questions, but when we hear how others dealt with such a crisis, we tell ourselves that we would do better, that we would keep our wits about us.

Farsighted is at its core a book about making better decisions, and strategies to overcome our natural tendencies that lead us to make poor decisions. Here, I highlight three concepts that anyone can easily apply to individual or group decision-making.