What are heuristics and why does this matter? Heuristics are fast, efficient mental shortcuts that we use all the time to help us make decisions and solve problems. We developed heuristics in our cognitive processing because it just isn’t possible to make well thought out, rational, and evidence informed choices for everything we do. Unfortunately, heuristics can also get us in trouble. This is especially true when we need to make complex or important decisions. Heuristics introduce significant