With decision making, how do you know when you are making the right decision? Has anything been helpful in helping with decisions? — when asked to Marissa Mayer, Yahoo

In 1999 when I was looking for a job, it was a crazy time in Silicon Valley. Google was my 14th offer and I had a hard time deciding. I had offers from startups, to teach, in management consultant, etc.

I made a list of all of the best decisions I made (going to Stanford, switching to symbolic systems, working at SRI, and working at UBS’s research lab) and tried to understand what each of these decisions had in common. For me the best decision were ones that:

1. Made me work with the smartest people I could find — Smart people challenge you, make you think differently, make you justify your decisions, and ups your game.

2. Did things that I wasn’t quite ready for yet, which pushed me further than where I was today

When you do things you aren’t entirely ready to do — you find out a lot about yourself. I’ve always surprised myself and learned about things I was good at which I didn’t realize I would be good at. These two things helped guide me to my decision to join both Google and Yahoo.

P.S. When I read this, I was quite surprised and found it as a different yet interesting perspective on making decisions.