Why Keep a Decision Journal
The problem
You almost certainly think you are a reasonable judge of how things will turn out. Everyone does, and nobody can check it. When the promotion did not come, when the friend let you down, when the move worked out better than expected — you remember having seen it coming. The problem is you also remember seeing it coming on the occasions you did not. Once you know the ending, your memory of what you expected quietly moves to match it, and it does this without asking you and without leaving a trace.
The short answer
A decision journal is a written record of what you expected before you knew how things turned out — made at the time, not reconstructed afterward. Too Hard Pile builds this in for free: when you work through a decision, it saves what you expected, then asks you again weeks later whether you were right. That gap between the two answers is the only honest comparison you have, because it's the only one that isn't contaminated by already knowing the ending. It doesn't tell you what to decide next time — it tells you whether your past predictions held up, and about what kind of decision.
How to keep one
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Write it down before you know
Before the decision plays out, write what you actually expect to happen — not the decision itself, the outcome. 'We'll hire and it'll take three months to become productive' is a prediction; 'we hired someone' is not.
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Be specific, not vague
A prediction you can't later check against reality isn't useful — 'this will probably work out' can't be wrong. Write a number, a date, or a plain description of what success and what failure would each look like.
Do this step now — Premortem → -
Set a date to check back
Pick a point where the outcome will actually be visible — weeks or months out, not tomorrow. Too Hard Pile schedules this for you and asks the question again when the date arrives, so it doesn't depend on you remembering.
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Compare, don't rewrite
When the review date arrives, read your original prediction before you think about how things went, then judge it against what actually happened. The temptation is to skip straight to 'well, obviously' — the whole point is resisting that.
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Look for a pattern across entries
One entry tells you about one decision. A dozen entries tell you whether you're consistently too optimistic, too cautious, or accurate about a particular kind of choice — hiring, pricing, timing — which a single memory never could.
What it looks like
Someone predicts, in writing, that a new hire will be fully ramped up within six weeks. Three months later, without checking the note first, they'd tell you it took about that long — that's what hindsight does. But the entry says six weeks, and the actual date logged when the role became productive was eleven. Read together, the two numbers say something the memory alone never would: this person is optimistic about ramp time by roughly a factor of two, consistently. That's not something anyone could reach without a written prediction sitting there, made before the outcome was known.
Questions people ask
What is a decision journal?
It's a written record of what you expected to happen, made before you knew the outcome, paired later with what actually happened. The value is entirely in the timing — a prediction written after the fact isn't a prediction.
Why can't I just remember what I expected?
Once you know how something turned out, that knowledge blends into your memory of what you thought beforehand, and the two become hard to tell apart. You end up remembering a prediction that matches the result, whether or not that's the one you actually made.
Does keeping a decision journal make me a better decision maker?
It shows you what you predicted and what happened, side by side — nothing more is claimed here. What you do with that comparison is up to you.
Is the Too Hard Pile decision journal free?
Yes, with a cap. The free plan includes five journal entries, the full Decision Toolbox and starter drills in two models, with no card and no time limit. The paid plan lifts the journal cap.
Related
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