PhraseryPhrasery homeGet Phrasery
Thinking & decisions21 categories

Write a decision record

Right after a call is made, while the reasoning is still in your head.

Longdocumentationwritingdecisions
Write a decision record for the choice below, for someone who will read it in a year and wonder what we were thinking.

Sections:
- **Decision**, one sentence, in the active voice with who decided
- **Context**: the situation and constraints as of today, including the ones that may not be obvious later
- **Options considered**, and for each, the specific reason it was not chosen
- **Why this one**, with the reasoning, not just the conclusion
- **What we are assuming**, listed so a future reader can check whether it still holds
- **What would make us revisit this**, with a review date
- **What we knowingly accepted**: the downsides we chose to live with

Write the last section honestly. A decision record that lists no downsides is not believed by anyone.

The decision:

Making it yours

  • Paste your own material where the prompt asks for it. Everything above that line is instruction, not content.
  • Delete any rule that does not apply to you. A shorter prompt that fits beats a thorough one that does not.
  • If the answer comes back vague, add a line saying what you do not want. Constraints work better than encouragement.

Confidence and hindsight. Calibrating how firmly to hold a view, recording the call, and judging it later on its merits.

Related prompts

Separate the decision from the outcomeAfter something worked out, or did not, and you want to know whether to repeat it.What would change my mind?Committing to a position, before the evidence starts arriving.Calibrate my confidenceWhen you notice you have said "definitely" about something you have not checked.Retrospective on a past decisionMonths later, when you can finally see how a decision actually played out.How confident should I be?A belief you are about to act on.Write this decision downRecording a call so the reasoning survives the next six months.

Keep this one

Phrasery saves prompts with a right-click and puts them back the same way. Add this to your own library in one click.

Add to your browser — free