Plain Lab · journal
Decision Log
Write the decision down before you know if it worked, so later you are arguing with what you actually thought, not what you would like to have thought.
Specification
- Trim
- 148 × 210 mm · 5.827 × 8.268 in
- Pages
- 100
- Leaves
- 50
- Sheets
- 25
- Signatures
- 5 × 20pp
- Spine
- 5.72 mm
- Paper
- white
- Ruling
- lined
- Ruling pitch
- 9.17 mm · 26.00 pt
- Rows per page
- 18
Write it down before the outcome is known. That is the entire method: the reasoning goes on the page on the day of the decision, not after, because memory edits itself to match how things turned out, and a decision log is one of the only places that edit cannot reach.
Decision pages give you room for what you chose, why, and what you expected to happen. Ruled notes pages behind them hold whatever a single decision does not fit into a page: a set of numbers, a conversation, a second opinion you asked for and then ignored.
Reflection pages sit at intervals so you can go back and check a decision against what actually happened, not against the story you have since told yourself about it. That is the whole use of looking back at all.
What is inside
- Decision
- 60pp
- Room for what you chose, why, and what you expected to happen, written before you know the outcome.
- Notes
- 21pp
- For the numbers, the conversation, or the second opinion a decision entry does not fit.
- Reflection
- 8pp
- Set apart from the log, to check a decision against what happened rather than what you remember thinking.
- Reference
- 11pp
- The owner page and reference tables at the back.
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
- Decision InsertWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
- Evening LedgerWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
- Money DiaryWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
Questions
Is it dated?
No. Log a decision whenever you make one.
What do I write on a decision page?
What you chose, why, and what you expect to happen. Nothing else is asked of you at that point.
When do I come back to check it?
Whenever the outcome is known. The reflection pages are there for exactly that visit.
Is this for work decisions or personal ones?
Either. The page does not ask which kind it is.
Does it help me decide faster?
No. It is built for reviewing a decision after the fact, not for making one on the spot.
The calling of a man's self to a strict account, is a medicine, sometime too piercing and corrosive.
