Smart people still make bad decisions

If bad product decisions came from stupidity, they’d be easy to avoid.

But they don’t. They come from thoughtful, capable people, making decisions in good faith — and falling into traps that almost everyone falls into.

These traps aren’t personality flaws. They’re shortcuts your brain takes to handle uncertainty quickly. Most of the time, those shortcuts work fine. Sometimes they quietly push you toward the wrong call.

The first step to avoiding them is just learning to recognise them. Once you can spot them, they lose a lot of their power.

Let’s walk through the ones that hurt founders most.

1. Confirmation bias

You believe your idea is good. Naturally, you start to notice everything that supports that belief.

A user says something positive. You remem...

The common thinking traps that lead to bad product decisions