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Retrospective on a past decision

Months later, when you can finally see how a decision actually played out.

Longretrospectivelearning
Run a retrospective on a decision I made a while ago.

1. Reconstruct what I believed at the time and how confident I was. Where I now describe it differently, point out the hindsight creeping in.
2. Which of those beliefs turned out to be right, wrong, or still unresolved?
3. Where was I wrong for a good reason (the evidence pointed that way) versus wrong for a bad reason (I did not look, or I wanted an answer)? Only the second kind is worth changing behaviour over.
4. What process failure, if any, would have caught this? Prefer a change to how I decide over a resolution to be smarter.
5. What is the single transferable lesson? If there is not one, say so. Manufacturing lessons from noise is how people overcorrect.

The decision, what I believed, and what happened:

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.

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