Coaching practices for When I Say I'm Eighty Percent Sure I Genuinely Don't Know If That Means Anything I've Never Written My Calls Down and Checked Later Whether the Things I Was That Confident About Actually Came True That Often
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For When I Say I'm Eighty Percent Sure I Genuinely Don't Know If That Means Anything I've Never Written My Calls Down and Checked Later Whether the Things I Was That Confident About Actually Came True That Often, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- When I say I’m eighty percent sure I genuinely don’t know if that means anything
- I’m sure about things constantly and I have no idea if that confidence is earned
- I make calls all the time but I never write them down or check them later, so my confidence is just a feeling that floats free
- When I’d swear I know roughly where a number lands, the real answer is constantly outside the range I’d have bet on
- I keep being so sure I’m right and then being wrong, and I have no way to see whether my confidence actually means anything
Practices that may help
- Practice calibration by tracking your confidence predictions
Your "80% confident" beliefs should come true about 80% of the time — check that they do.
Bayesian Thinking: How to Update Beliefs Rationally - Practice probabilistic calibration by tracking your predictions
Assign explicit probability estimates to your predictions and track whether they come true at the right rate.
Base-Rate Neglect: Why We Ignore the Odds - Maintain a scored prediction log
Record predictions with explicit probabilities and score them when they resolve.
Calibration Training - Practice confidence interval estimation
Estimate ranges for factual quantities and check how often the true value falls within your range.
Calibration Training - Track your calibration across many predictions
Score your confidence levels against outcomes over dozens of predictions to find your systematic biases.
Decision Journaling: Learning to Decide Better Over Time - Log probability estimates before the outcome
Write down your confidence level and reasoning before you know how things turn out.
Hindsight Bias: Why Everything Seems Obvious in Retrospect - Distinguish uncertainty (quantifiable) from ignorance (unquantifiable)
Know when you can assign a probability and when the situation is so novel that a number would be fabricated.
Calibration Training - State your confidence level alongside your position
"I’m about 70% confident on this" signals a reasoned estimate, not a fact claim.
Productive Disagreement, Made Practical - Think and communicate in explicit probabilities
Replace vague language ("probably," "likely") with numerical probabilities.
Superforecasting - Think in probabilities, not certainties
Replace "I think this will happen" with "I think there is a 70% chance this will happen."
Thinking in Bets
Related concerns
- Calibrated Confidence
Calibration training teaches you to match your stated confidence levels to your actual accuracy: if you say "70% confident," roughly 70% of those claims should turn out to be correct. Tetlock’s forecasting research and probability training studies show calibration is trainable with practice and feedback — the evidence here is specific and replicable.
- Probability Accuracy
Assign explicit probability estimates to your predictions and track whether they come true at the right rate.
Practice probabilistic calibration by tracking your predictions
- Stable Confidence
Start your confidence estimate from the historical hit rate for this type of prediction, not from how confident you feel.
Anchor your confidence level on base rates, not gut feel
- Base Rate Confidence
Start your confidence estimate from the historical hit rate for this type of prediction, not from how confident you feel.
- Confidence Interval Calibration
Calibration training teaches you to match your stated confidence levels to your actual accuracy: if you say "70% confident," roughly 70% of those claims should turn out to be correct. Tetlock’s forecasting research and probability training studies show calibration is trainable with practice and feedback — the evidence here is specific and replicable.
- Confidence Interval Training
Estimate ranges for factual quantities and check how often the true value falls within your range.
Practice confidence interval estimation
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