Making better decisions
Most advice about making better decisions is advice about choosing: frameworks for weighing the options, questions to ask before you commit, biases to watch for on the way in. It's worth having, and all of it stops at the moment of the decision, so none of it tells you afterwards whether any of it worked.
You can get better at choosing and never find out whether you did. By the time the outcome arrives, your memory has quietly rewritten what you expected, and it rewrites it in your favor, so the one piece of feedback you'd learn from never reaches you.
These pages are about closing that loop. Write down what you predict before the outcome exists, put a number on your confidence, and score the page against reality when it reports back. After twenty entries you have a measurement, which no amount of reflection produces.
If you came for the methods themselves, six decision-making frameworks covers what each one is good at and where it stops. If a particular call is weighing on you right now, did I make the right decision? is the place to start, and hindsight bias explains why that question gets harder to answer as time passes rather than easier.
For the practice: how to keep a decision journal gives the reasoning behind each field, the template has the fields ready to copy, the evidence piece covers what the research does and doesn't support, and the ten-question calibration test gives you a baseline while your first entries accumulate. If you'd rather build this inside a tool you already use, there's a walkthrough for Notion and one for Google Sheets. If you're choosing a tool, decision journal apps lays out what each kind can score and where it stops.
How to keep a decision journal
How to keep a decision journal: what to write down before the outcome exists, why the confidence has to be a number, and how to score yourself afterwards.
6 min read
A decision journal template
A decision journal template: the fields I use for consequential decisions, plus a worked example from start to second look. Works on paper or in a notes app.
4 min read
Do decision journals actually work?
What the research actually supports about decision journals, what it doesn't, and why the one statistic circulating in their favor should be dropped.
7 min read
How calibrated are you?
A ten-question calibration test: whether your 90% really means 90%, what your score says, and the one kind of practice that measurably improves it.
5 min read
A decision journal in Notion
How to build a decision journal in Notion: the database, the views that tell you what's due, how to score your calibration, and where the setup stops working.
7 min read
Decision-making frameworks
Six decision-making frameworks: what each one is actually good for, where each one fails, and the question none of them can answer afterwards.
7 min read
Did I make the right decision?
You can't grade a decision by its outcome; that's outcome bias. What you can check instead, why the answer needs a record, and what to write down next time.
5 min read
Hindsight bias
Hindsight bias: why an outcome feels obvious once you know it, the three things it does to your memory, why trying harder doesn't fix it, and what does.
6 min read
A decision journal in Google Sheets
How to build a decision journal in Google Sheets: the columns, the formulas that score your calibration, and what a spreadsheet does better than Notion.
6 min read
Decision journal apps
Decision journal apps compared by what they can score: notes apps and paper, Notion, a spreadsheet, prediction trackers like Fatebook, and where each stops.
5 min read
Full disclosure: I make Reckon, an iOS app that runs this loop and does the scoring for you, which is the part that makes people keep it up instead of letting the habit lapse. One-time, no subscription. Everything here works on paper too, and the pages say so where it matters.