Decision journal template: record the before-picture, review it later

Knowledge management
1

I made a small markdown template for decisions I want to review later.

The idea is to capture the before-picture of a decision before hindsight cleans
up the story: options considered, probability/confidence, what would change my
mind, expected outcome, review date, actual outcome, and lesson.

No signup and no app link here. I am trying to learn whether this is light enough
to keep in a PKM workflow.

Questions I would love feedback on:

  • Is this too many fields?
  • What would you remove?
  • What would you add?
  • Would backlinks, tags, or review reminders make this easier to maintain?
  • Would you actually review these later?
  • How would you score outcomes without making the template feel too heavy?

Template:

# Decision:

## Before

Date:
Review date:
Domain: personal / work / product / money / habit / other

Decision or claim:

Options considered:
- Option A:
- Option B:
- Option C:

My probability or confidence:

Expected outcome:

What would change my mind?

Main risk:

Why this matters:

## Review

Review date completed:

Actual outcome:

Outcome score:
- Hit
- Miss
- Partial
- Unclear

What did I miss?

What did I read correctly?

Lesson for next time:

Would I make the same decision again?

Tags:
2 Likes
2

Is this too many fields?

I personally think yes. Or maybe rather they are not the kinds of fields i’d need. I used to gather all these information aswell. Now i try to look for context i need to make decisions.

What would you remove/ What would you add?

I’d ask for:

  • Question: What is this decision about?
  • Context: Why does this decision matter? What is the system around the question?
  • Discovery: What information do i need in order to make a decision?
  • Options: Which options form from the question, Context and Discovery?
  • Review:
    • Did i miss something when gathering information?
    • What follow-ups came up?
    • Are there any learnings?

So i’d skip most of the evaluation things.

It stops being a review-template for a decision and is more a “task that needs solving”.

I’d add a “status”. So if this decision needs thinking, is still being thought about, or of it’s about to be reviewed. I personally have the following status i use for literary everything. 00_backlog, 01_inbox, 02_planning, 03_ready, 04_doing, 05_test, 06_review, 07_done.

Usually a decision comes with an action. That can be tracked there at the same time.

Would backlinks, tags, or review reminders make this easier to maintain?

Yes and no. Every decision has context. And other decisions follow from a decision. Say you have one note about moving to a different city. Another Decision follows, which hobbies to take up. Which is contingent on the city you move to. And the other way around. By connecting these different questions in the context, discovery and review the why of the decision gets easier to understand.

If not used with bases or dataview you’ll lose oversight about the links and stuff. But if you have a surrounding system in place it makes it actually impactful.

Would you actually review these later?

With your template probably not. For me it gets a chore to evaluate these thinks. With my template, yes, because a task is only done, when the definition of done is reached. Which means testing/ review is part of it. But i’d keep it lightweigt. And “what did i lean from it? How confident was i with this decision?” is not a question i’d ask. I’d think insecurity about a decision comes from lack of context and information. If you think you have researched all the information necessary you can say “it’s the best decision i could have made with the available information”. So an evaluation is unnecessary.

But that’s just my thinking. If it’s not your way of thinking, and you personally believe your template is right for you, that’s fine and kind of the point of developing personal things.

How would you score outcomes without making the template fool too heavy?

If really necessary, i’d go for the 7-point-scale suggested by Kepano here.

Other:

Move as much as possible to the frontmatter to make it usable in Bases.

3

Thank you - this is exactly the kind of critique I was hoping for. I hear two changes: make the note more about question/context/discovery than scoring, and make status/frontmatter first-class so it works with Bases or Dataview. The “decision usually comes with an action” point is especially useful.

If you had to keep only one review field, would it be status, definition of done, or a short “what did I miss?” note?

4

Yeah well summarized, Frontmatter for bases and discover information are what i have an emphasis on. But that’s just what i learned my way of thinking is.

Status, Definition of done and the what did i miss?-Note solve entirely different problems.

Status: About tracking whatever you decide on. For me personally it’s important to keep the overview in my Kanban-board. Might not be important to do.

Definition of Done: What has to be fulfilled to come back to evaluate the decision. It’s more of a realignment and content-check.

What did i miss? : Is either about improving the process or possibly “redoing” the Decision.

I guess for me personaly, if i really had to skip one it’d be “What did i miss”.

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

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