After 14 years of marriage, including traveling to over a dozen countries together, my wife and I finally decided to have a kid together.
We just held a gender reveal party with 25 of our friends and family members.
We’re having a girl!
After seeing everything Callie has gone through so far to get to this point, I have so much gratitude for her, the people who have helped and supported us along the way, and for making it this far on our journey.
A big life shift like this brings on new, big decisions.
Decision journal
I’ve kept a decision journal since December 17th, 2018.
I started documenting and reflecting on major life decisions after making a lot of really dumb ones.
My bad decisions easily cost me tens of millions of dollars, if not more. I wanted to do better.
I read ten books on decision-making and created a process to make better decisions that I’ve refined over the past 8 years. The process I’ve developed has been invaluable to creating a better life with greater success, less stress, more consistency, and more happiness.
The two main causes of bad decisions
#1 – Cognitive biases: For thousands of years, our primary concerns were food, survival, and procreation. Our innate wiring served us well for those aims. However, in our safer, more complex world today, that wiring often does us great damage. The first cause of bad decisions is giving in to our natural wiring — such as making quick decisions based on gut feel rather than real data — rather than letting our more rational, reasonable abilities take charge.
#2 – Lack of a checklist: To make the best possible decisions, we need a checklist to ensure we’ve thought through the most important factors. We also need a checklist to apply antidotes to common errors caused by our cognitive biases.
Step 1. Context
First, write down the context of the decision. What is it? Why do you need to make a decision? What have you thought of so far?
Most importantly, write down what you really want. What is your desired outcome? Be clear, specific, and detailed.
Step 2. Get more options
Many studies have shown that the simple act of forcing ourselves to generate 3+ options leads to better overall decisions.
Too often, we get stuck in A vs. B thinking. There are always other options.
For any decision you face, come up with at least 5 possible options.
One way to come up with options you might not have already considered is to ask yourself, “What advice would I provide a friend in the same situation?” or “If someone were to come take over my job tomorrow, what would they do?”
Step 3. Get base rates
Get the facts. How much will it cost? How long will it take? What success rates have others produced taking similar paths?
Don’t just guess, do the research.
This practice overcomes our tendency to be overly optimistic in outcomes we favor and in our own abilities, despite many failures by others just as smart, capable, and motivated as us.
Step 4. Prepare to be wrong
The problem with making decisions is that you’re trying to forecast the future, which is nearly impossible to do with consistent accuracy.
But you must decide something.
Estimate a range of possible outcomes, rather than one definite outcome. Come up with a good, OK, bad range of what could happen.
Make sure you can live with and survive through any of those possible outcomes.
And, decide in advance how you’ll adjust the course if what you think will happen doesn’t.
Step 5. Review to get better
Mark in your calendar the date by which you’ll know the outcome of your decision.
When that date comes, review your decision journal.
What happened versus what you thought would happen?
Do this each time you make a decision, and you’ll eventually pass up 99% of your peers because you’ll make better decisions than almost everyone around you.
My decision template
Here’s a copy of the template I use now for my major life decisions.
GET THE TEMPLATEI use a version of that in a single Google Doc file called “Decision Journal”. I add each major decision with a date to the doc and set calendar reminders to review the relevant decisions when I’ll know the outcomes.
I only wish I’d started doing this a decade earlier.
Now if only all that decision journaling had taught me how to change a diaper…
—Matt