📄One-page decision memo

From Leona Abara, who would not read a second page. I have reconstructed it from memory three times since 2019 and wrote it down on 7 January so that there would not be a fourth.

1. Question. One sentence that ends in a question mark and can be answered yes, no or with a date.
2. Options. Two to four, each with its cost. Do nothing is always one of them.
3. Recommendation. One option, in the first person, with the date it takes effect.
4. What would change my mind. The evidence that would make me recommend something else. It has to be something that could actually turn up.

Use when: a decision belongs to someone else and I owe them a recommendation. Or it belongs to me and I can feel myself circling.

Rules she never wrote down

• One page. If it runs over, the question is two questions.
• The recommendation has to survive being read without the options.
• No adjectives in the options. Costs, dates, names.

The hardest one I have written is 📌 Write the memo recommending the slip, on the night of 12 February. Turned on my own decisions, the same shape is Decision journal template.

The page itself

QUESTION        Do we ... by ... ?
OPTIONS         A  ...            costs ...
                B  ...            costs ...
                C  do nothing     costs ...
RECOMMENDATION  I recommend B, from <date>.
WHAT WOULD      If <observable thing> happens before <date>,
CHANGE MY MIND  I would recommend A.

The red pen is in 🕰️ Leona's red pen. The habit of writing down what would change my mind before the outcome is known I owe partly to the decision-making interviews on 🎙️ The Knowledge Project, which is where I first heard of people keeping a decision journal at all.