Bad Decisions: Our Greatest Teachers? 🤔

Ever made a bad decision in your life?

What? You too?

The good news for all of us is that bad decisions don’t have to only have a negative outcome - that only happens if we don’t learn from them.

And that’s what I want to share with you today; how I’m learning from my decisions, what I’ve done to help automate and streamline the process, and what I think can be done better.

So, if you’d like to learn from your decisions and get better results in the future, keep reading.

The Background

I’ll admit, I certainly didn’t come up with the idea of recording my decisions.

It came from great sources such as Daniel Kahneman (Nobel Prize winner) and many others that I respect.

I’ve heard it time and again but didn’t really see how I would be able to do it in an ongoing way.

Carry a dedicated notebook with me?

Find an app dedicated to decision making? (tried, didn’t exist)

I wasn’t sure how to get started but I knew the benefits could be massive.

The Benefits

I knew that being able to look back and see my past decisions would be helpful in seeing mistakes so that I could avoid them in the future, but how else would I benefit?

• Truth: I wouldn’t be relying on my memory of the situation, it would be recorded as it was at the time.

• Patterns: Over time I could see what recurring choices, biases, and blind spots I tended to make / have.

• Clarity: By writing down my decisions at the time of making them (or shortly after) it would allow me to make better decisions at that time.

Those are some pretty amazing benefits when you stop and consider it for a moment.

Especially the last one.

Just by taking the time to write down your decisions and a few notes about them, you’re going to improve your current decisions instead of just making a gut decision.

This is huge for non-reversible decisions where you can’t go back once you’ve made the choice, or it’s a very costly reversal.

Recommended

My Decision Tracking Process

It was, and still is to some degree, messy.

But that’s OK.

You’ve got to find what works for you and I know enough about myself that I just need to get started and find out what is going to work best.

I try to habit stack where possible to increase the likelihood of it sticking.

This just means that wherever possible, I avoid creating a standalone task - in this case I’ve added my decision review process to my quarterly review.

But let’s back up a step.

I tried using my Project Management system, ClickUp, since it has easy to use forms that go into a database of sorts.

I then would set a date to review the decision that was 3-6 months in the future (part of the form) and it would pop up with a few questions to answer at that time.

2 things to mention about this:

1. Reviewing your decisions and adding notes is critical to the process. It’s hard to learn from your decision tracking if you never review it.

2. This broke my rule of not adding a stand alone task without habit stacking ☹️ 

I didn’t like it and ended up scrapping it. Done correctly, it could work just fine in ClickUp - it was me, I promise!

What I Changed

Realizing the issue, I’ve simplified a bit.

I now have a template in Roam Research that I use to write down my decisions - click a few buttons and it’s there, and I have a short and long version.

If I’m in a hurry, that’s OK, I can use the simple version and still track important decisions with a few entries.

I add a date to review it and it already has a tag for decision making to make finding it easy.

Then, I added an entry to my quarterly review:

• Go to Roam, enter a (pre-made so I’m not having to do anything manually) query that brings up all decisions over the past 90-180 days

• Enter my notes on the ones that don’t have post-decision notes

Improvements To Make

Moving forward I’m going to start using some rough categorization to my decision tracking so that I can add a quick review to my annual review process.

For example, if I want to see hiring decisions, I’ll need a “hiring” tag to quickly narrow it down.

Also, a better system for reminding myself to enter decisions I’ve made.

No, it’s not meant to collect every single little decision throughout my day, but it’s still easy to forget if it’s not right in front of you.

Perhaps as an added entry / reminder in my weekly review…

Questions For You

I have 2 questions for you based on my experience with decision tracking and decision making:

Extra Extra

• Mentioned this one last week - still applicable, can be very useful with a Decision Journal…

• Speaking of decisions: Reversible and non-reversible decisions

One quick question 👋

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