Thinking & decisions21 categories
Retrospective on a past decision
Months later, when you can finally see how a decision actually played out.
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.
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.Write a decision recordRight after a call is made, while the reasoning is still in your head.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.
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