Decision Journals: The Missing Link Between Frameworks and Results

The corporate world is awash with decision-making frameworks. Whether it's the 3Cs, 4Rs, 5Ps or countless other alphabetical arrangements, there's no shortage of approaches to structure complex decisions. Yet despite this abundance of frameworks, most organisations struggle to consistently make good decisions. The problem isn't a lack of structure; it's a lack of accountability for our reasoning process and a failure to learn systematically from past decisions.

As I explored in my earlier piece on Making Good Decisions, a structured five section memo can provide clarity when facing complex choices. But frameworks alone aren't enough. Without feedback, there’s no improvement. Just repetition.

The Case for Decision Journals

Seth Godin, in a conversation with Tim Ferriss, made an observation that strikes at the heart of this issue. He suggested that daily blogging creates an "accountability trail" — an immutable record of your thinking that you can't hide from weeks or months later. "Most people," Godin notes, "have no track record of being right."

This insight helps explain why even the most thorough decision-making frameworks often fail to improve outcomes over time. We make decisions, but rarely revisit them to examine whether our reasoning held up against reality. Without this feedback loop, we're essentially practicing without improving.

Separating Process from Outcome

Imagine launching a new checkout flow based on industry best practice. Conversion bumps by 4%. Success? Maybe. But what if it also increased support tickets or return rates six weeks later?

Former professional poker player and decision strategist Annie Duke offers a powerful framework for understanding this in her book "Thinking in Bets." Duke argues that we routinely conflate the quality of our decisions with the quality of their outcomes; what she calls "resulting”. A good decision can lead to a bad outcome (bad luck), and a bad decision can lead to a good outcome (good luck).

Duke writes: “Resulting is a routine thinking pattern that bedevils all of us. Drawing an overly tight relationship between results and decision quality affects our decisions every day, potentially with far-reaching, catastrophic consequences”.

This is precisely why decision journals are so valuable. They force us to evaluate the quality of our decision-making process separately from the outcomes those decisions produce. By documenting our thinking before we know the outcome, we create a record that can't be contaminated by hindsight bias.

The value of creating this accountability trail isn't a new concept. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have famously kept detailed records of their investment decisions for decades. They don't just document what they decide, but why they decide it; allowing them to later assess not just outcomes but the quality of their reasoning. This practice aligns perfectly with Duke's emphasis on process over outcome.

Second-Order Thinking in Practice

In "Seeing Around Corners", I discussed how most of us are naturally poor at second-order thinking, i.e. anticipating the downstream consequences of our decisions. First-order thinking (the immediate effects) comes easily, but second and third-order effects (the ripples that spread from initial decisions) are where both danger and opportunity lurk.

Decision journals provide the perfect structure for developing this skill. By forcing yourself to articulate potential ripple effects before you act, you create both a record of your predictions and a framework for better systemic thinking.

When Amazon introduced one-click purchasing in 1999, the first-order effect was clear: reduced checkout friction would increase conversion rates. But the second-order effects (increased impulse buying and higher return rates) and the third-order effects (sophisticated return fraud schemes and changes in consumer psychology) could only be anticipated through deliberate consideration of systemic consequences.

By documenting these expectations ahead of time, you can later assess not just whether your primary prediction was correct, but whether you accurately anticipated the cascading effects of your decision.

How to Keep a Decision Journal

A decision journal need not be complicated. At its core, it's simply a record of your decisions, the reasoning behind them, and the outcomes you expect. The magic happens when you revisit these entries later to compare expectations against reality.

Crafting Your Decision Journal

Here's a practical structure that combines the field memo approach with elements designed to enhance accountability:

Decision Context – What situation are you responding to? What constraints are you operating under? What is your current emotional and physical state? (Are you tired, confident, stressed?)
Options Analysis – What alternatives have you considered? What are the pros and cons of each? What assumptions are you making?
Recommendation – What specific course of action are you choosing? When exactly will this be implemented?
Rationale – Why is this the best option? What evidence supports this choice? What second and third-order effects do you anticipate?
Risks and Mitigations – What could go wrong? How would you detect problems early? What contingency plans can you prepare?
Confidence Assessment – How confident are you in this decision? (Annie Duke recommends expressing this as a percentage)? What would make you more or less confident? What information would change your mind?
Review Date – When will you assess the outcome of this decision? What specific metrics or milestones will you use to judge success?

The key differences between a decision journal and a standard decision memo are the addition of a confidence assessment and a scheduled review. By stating your confidence level explicitly, you create a record of your certainty before knowing the outcome; a powerful tool for calibrating your judgment over time. And by committing to reassess your decision at a specific future date, you create accountability for your thinking.

The Power of Expressing Uncertainty

Annie Duke emphasises the importance of expressing uncertainty in our decision-making. Rather than declaring "I think this will work," she suggests saying "I'm 70% confident this will work." This seemingly small change has profound effects on how we think and learn.

When we express decisions as probabilities rather than certainties, we:

Acknowledge that most decisions involve uncertainty
Become more open to new information
Reduce our tendency to fall victim to confirmation bias
Create a foundation for better calibration over time

Duke writes:

"In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing."

This framing helps us understand the importance of documenting our thinking. Each decision we make is a bet on one possible future over others. A decision journal helps us evaluate whether we're making these bets wisely.

The Review Process

This is where learning happens. At the scheduled date, revisit your decision journal entry and ask:

What actually happened versus what you expected?
Which of your assumptions proved correct? Which were wrong?
Were you able to anticipate the second and third-order effects?
What information would have improved your decision?
Are there patterns in your decision-making that led to either success or failure?
Was your confidence level (e.g., "70% confident") well-calibrated?

The goal isn't to judge yourself harshly for incorrect predictions — all decisions are made with imperfect information. Rather, it's to identify patterns in your thinking that can be strengthened or corrected.

Learning from Both Good and Bad Outcomes

Annie Duke advocates a particular mindset when reviewing decisions: focus on the quality of the decision process, not just the outcome. She writes:

“I’m not advocating that we ignore outcomes. We should absolutely incorporate outcomes in our learning. But outcomes don't tell the complete story, and treating them as if they do will make us fall into the trap of creating too tight a relationship between outcomes and decisions."

This means learning both from:

Good decisions with bad outcomes (where your reasoning was sound but events beyond your control led to failure)
Bad decisions with good outcomes (where flawed reasoning was rescued by luck)

These are crucial learning opportunities that most people miss. When things work out, we rarely question our thinking. When things go wrong, we often blame external factors rather than our decision process. A decision journal cuts through these tendencies by creating an objective record of our thinking before we knew the outcome.

From Solo Practice to Team Culture

While decision journals offer tremendous value for individual development, their power multiplies when implemented across teams or organisations. Teams that regularly review past decisions, with neither blame nor recrimination, develop stronger collective judgment over time.

Building a Decision-Curious Culture

Annie Duke emphasises the importance of creating what she calls a "truthseeking" culture; one where the focus is on finding the best answer rather than being right. She writes "It's hard to change our own minds, but we believe we can make a huge difference in our own lives and the lives of others by creating a culture of truthseeking around us."

This requires creating psychological safety; an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing uncertainty, acknowledging mistakes, and challenging each other's thinking. Decision journals can be a powerful tool for building this kind of culture, as they normalise the idea that all decisions involve uncertainty and that outcomes don't always reflect decision quality.

Organisations have formalised this process through practices like:

Pre-mortems: Imagining a decision has failed and working backwards to identify potential causes
Post-mortems: Analysing actual failures or successes to extract lessons
Decision reviews: Regular meetings where past decisions are evaluated against outcomes
Prediction tournaments: Friendly competitions where team members make forecasts and track their accuracy

Amazon's "Be Right, A Lot" principle works because the company has built systems that support learning from decisions. Their famous six-page memos serve as de facto decision journals, forcing clear articulation of reasoning and creating a record that can be referenced later.

The Courage to Be Wrong

Perhaps the greatest barrier to implementing decision journals isn't logistical but psychological. Documenting our thinking creates evidence that can later prove us wrong—and being wrong feels uncomfortable. We avoid this discomfort through various means: making vague predictions, failing to specify review timelines, or simply not documenting decisions at all.

Embracing Uncertainty as Strength

Annie Duke brings a powerful perspective to this challenge, drawn from her years as a poker player. She argues that expressing uncertainty isn't a sign of weakness; it's a sign of intellectual honesty and strength:

"Admitting that we don't know has an immediate positive effect: it increases the odds that we can get to the truth... Declaring our uncertainty in advance, and acknowledging that we might have incomplete information, protects us against hindsight bias."

In poker, players learn to focus on making the best decisions possible with incomplete information, recognising that outcomes involve luck. Duke suggests we should apply this mindset to all decisions:

"Every decision is a bet on a particular future based on our beliefs. Those beliefs could be wrong. Even when we're 99% sure, we're still betting, not knowing for certain."

This perspective transforms how we think about decision journals. Rather than seeing them as a potential source of embarrassment, we can view them as a training ground for becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and more skilled at navigating it.

As Seth Godin suggests, this accountability trail is precisely what drives improvement. The willingness to be visibly wrong—to create a record that might later showcase your errors—requires courage. But it's a courage that pays dividends through accelerated learning and increasingly sound judgment.

The next time you face a significant decision, consider not just how you'll decide, but how you'll learn from that decision. Document your thinking, schedule a review, and commit to honest assessment. Over time, this practice might prove more valuable than any decision framework or strategic principle.

After all, being "right, a lot" isn't about having perfect foresight—it's about creating systems that allow you to learn from every decision you make.