A good outcome can come from a bad decision.
A bad outcome can come from a good one.
That sounds obvious, but after we know what happened, it becomes surprisingly difficult to separate the quality of the decision from the quality of the result.
If something works, we are tempted to repeat it.
If it fails, we are tempted to avoid it.
But sometimes we were simply lucky. Other times, we made the best decision we could with the information available and things still went wrong.
If we judge only by outcomes, we can learn the wrong lesson from both.
A small experiment
The next time you make a decision that matters, take one minute and record:
- What I decided
- Why I think this is the best option
- What I am uncertain about
- What I expect to happen
Then come back to the note after the outcome is clear.
Ask:
- Was my reasoning sound?
- What did I understand correctly?
- What did I miss?
- Was the result caused by the decision, or partly by circumstances I could not control?
- Most importantly: what should I keep or change the next time I face a similar decision?
The point is not to create a detailed decision journal.
It is to preserve your thinking before hindsight has a chance to rewrite it.
That gives you something more useful than a record of whether you won or lost. It gives you a way to improve how you decide.
Outcome happens. Learning is a choice.
A decision record helps you learn from the quality of your thinking, not just the quality of the outcome.
What is one decision you are making now that would be worth reviewing later, whether it turns out well or badly?
