Plain Lab · journal
Decision Insert
Forty pages to record a decision as it is made, twelve pages to look back on how it turned out, and seventy more for everything in between.
Specification
- Trim
- 127 × 177.8 mm · 5 × 7 in
- Pages
- 128
- Leaves
- 64
- Sheets
- 32
- Signatures
- 4 × 32pp
- Spine
- 7.32 mm
- Paper
- white
- Ruling
- lined
- Ruling pitch
- 7.14 mm · 20.25 pt · 9/32 in
- Rows per page
- 20
Most decisions are not written down anywhere. They get made in a meeting, in the shower, on a drive, and the reasoning behind them survives only as long as the person who had it remembers having it. Six months later the decision is still in effect and the reasoning is gone, so the next person to question it gets a shrug instead of an answer.
Forty pages give a decision three things: what was decided, the reasoning behind it, and what would have to change before the answer changes. Writing that down while it is fresh costs two or three minutes. I have tried reconstructing my own reasoning eighteen months later, under question, and got half of it wrong after taking considerably longer to work it out than writing it down would have.
Twelve reflection pages sit apart from the decision log, for looking back on a batch of decisions once enough time has passed to know how they landed. Seventy pages of college-ruled notes fill out the rest, for the discussion that led to a decision rather than the decision itself. None of it tells you whether you decided well. It only makes sure you can find out.
What is inside
- Decisions
- 40pp
- What was decided, the reasoning behind it, and what would have to change to reverse it.
- Review
- 12pp
- Looking back on a batch of decisions once enough time has passed to know how they landed.
- Loose notes
- 70pp
- College-ruled space for the discussion that led to a decision, not the decision itself.
The film
Page by page
A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.
Real pages
Made at the Hibrkraft bindery, Bogor · about the maker
Books that sit alongside it
- Calibration LogWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
- Decision LogWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
- Evening LedgerWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
- Money DiaryWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
Questions
What does a decision entry ask for?
What was decided, the reasoning behind it, and what would have to change before the answer changes.
What are the review pages for?
Looking back on a batch of decisions once there has been time to see how they turned out. Twelve pages, set apart from the log itself.
Is it dated?
No. Start a decision entry whenever there is a decision to record.
Does it come with a cover?
No. It is the sewn block, sized for a leather cover made separately.
Can it double as a general notebook?
The seventy loose-ruled pages at the back can hold anything. The forty decision pages and the twelve review pages are built for one purpose and hold to it.
The calling of a man's self to a strict account, is a medicine, sometime too piercing and corrosive.
