Working It Through

What it wants in front of it

• A written question with a finish condition
• At least three options, one of which is to do nothing
• What you expected to happen, written before you find out
• Whether this decision can be undone, and what undoing it would cost

The move it makes

Puts the whole problem outside your head onto one page, generates options before judging any of them, names the evidence that would change your mind, records the reasoning while the outcome is still unknown, and sets the point at which more thinking stops paying.

Where it breaks

• Producing a beautiful page and no next step
• Writing the options after the choice has quietly been made
• Reviewing an old decision by how it turned out rather than by what you knew at the time
• Spending the same amount of thought on a choice you could undo in a minute as on one you could not

When not to use it

On a decision that is cheap and reversible. Running the full page on which notebook to use costs more than living with the wrong notebook — and the module that closes this track is mostly about that.

The check it closes on

Can I undo this, and did I write down what I expected before I found out?