Write before the outcome edits the story
After a decision turns out well, its reasons can seem more obvious than they were. After it turns out badly, uncertainty you accepted may look like a warning you should somehow have known to obey. A decision journal preserves a record of what you understood before the result arrived.
Farnam Street describes keeping such a journal to examine the quality of decisions over time. Our version is deliberately small. You do not need a new productivity system, a daily streak, or a page for every minor choice. Choose decisions important enough that learning from them would matter: accepting a role, changing a recurring commitment, beginning a project, or testing a new way of working. The journal is a memory aid and reflection practice, not a device for proving you always chose correctly.
Make a useful entry in ten minutes
Give the entry a date and a specific question. List the options you genuinely considered, the constraints that shaped them, and the reasons for your choice. Record what matters to you separately from what you expect will happen. Wanting more autonomy is a preference; expecting a particular manager to offer it is a prediction.
Write the evidence behind the most important prediction and the strongest reason you might be wrong. If you use probabilities, make them rough and meaningful rather than decorative. You can simply describe an outcome as uncertain and name what information is missing. Include your current state if relevant: rushed, rested, under pressure, excited, or trying to escape a problem. This adds context without treating emotion as an automatic sign that the decision is invalid.
Record the experiment and its limits
Imagine deciding to lead a workshop at work. You expect to enjoy teaching and hope it will help you explore a future training role. Your entry notes that preparing one session is manageable, that your manager supports the experiment, and that a single workshop will not reveal what full-time teaching feels like. You will review it after delivering the session and receiving feedback.
The outcome might be mixed: you enjoy explaining ideas but dislike the amount of preparation. That result contains more information than a simple success or failure. It may suggest another experiment, a different format, or keeping teaching as an occasional part of your role. Recording the original question prevents you from deciding afterward that the experiment was supposed to prove something much larger.
Review process and outcome separately
At the review date, describe what happened before evaluating yourself. Which expectations were accurate? Which assumptions were weak? What changed for reasons you could not reasonably anticipate? What did you learn from information available only after acting? Preserve the original entry rather than rewriting it to make your past self look more perceptive.
Then examine the process. Did you seek relevant evidence? Did you hear a serious objection? Did you ignore a known constraint? Did you make promises on another person’s behalf? A careful decision can have an unlucky outcome. An impulsive decision can work out. Separating these ideas lets you improve what is within your influence without claiming responsibility for everything that followed.
Draw a modest rule from repeated experience
After several entries, look for patterns that are specific enough to help. “I make bad decisions” is too global and punishing. “When I accept an invitation before checking my weekly commitments, I often regret the time pressure” suggests a practical rule: check the calendar before saying yes. A useful principle is provisional and tied to observed circumstances.
Also notice what you did well. Perhaps talking to someone doing the actual work consistently improved your understanding. Perhaps a short trial revealed constraints that research missed. Keep a small collection of these lessons and revisit them when the context changes. The journal should make your judgment more flexible and informed, not turn yesterday’s experience into a law that governs every future choice. If reviewing becomes repetitive self-criticism, shorten the exercise, invite a kinder perspective, and return to one change you can make in the next decision.
Keep exploring
Sources & further reading
Our examples and prompts are original. These sources provide context, describe the methods, or let you read the work for yourself.
- Farnam Street — keeping a decision journal
The publisher’s account of its decision-journal practice. Our template and examples are original adaptations of the general idea.
Let the reading become a first step.
You can explore the related exercise at your own pace, then bring what you notice into a conversation.
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