A decision journal separates process from luck and turns experience into calibrated judgment.
After an outcome is known, the path often feels obvious. Memory edits uncertainty out of the story. A decision journal preserves what you believed before luck, hindsight and social pressure changed the narrative.
1. State the decision and deadline
Write the choice in one sentence and the last date at which it remains reversible.
2. List the options actually considered
Include “do nothing” when it is available. A decision framed between two active options often hides the status quo.
3. Record your probabilities
Estimate the chance of the most important outcomes. Precision is less important than making uncertainty explicit.
60%: project pays back within 12 months. 25%: slow but useful. 15%: abandoned.
4. Name the strongest reason against your choice
This prevents the journal from becoming a sales document written to your future self.
5. Define what would change your mind
Choose a threshold, date or new fact that would trigger review. This protects against endless commitment to a decision whose premises have expired.
6. Record your state
Note sleep, time pressure, mood and who was present. Patterns often appear outside the content of the decision.
7. Review without rewarding luck
A good decision can produce a bad result, and a reckless decision can succeed. Judge whether the process used the best available information, treated uncertainty honestly and matched the stakes.
What did I believe correctly, what did I miss, and what should change in the next decision process?
The journal is not a record of being right. It is a tool for becoming less surprised by your own patterns.
END OF FIELD GUIDE 006
Run it once before improving it.
The purpose of a protocol is changed behavior, not a perfect-looking plan. Record what happened, keep the useful part and discard the theater.