Record decisions with five fields
Document decisions using five fields: what you decided, alternatives considered, information available and missing, optimization criteria, and conditions for revisiting—rather than recording only conclusions.
When This Fires
- Making any decision that you or others will want to understand months later
- Writing ADRs, project decision logs, or personal decision journals
- When the deliberation was complex enough that the conclusion alone doesn't capture the reasoning
- Complements Record five elements at the moment of every significant… (decision context at commitment) and Have AI argue against your decision before finalizing… (AI devil's advocate)
Common Failure Mode
Recording only the decision and the reasoning for it, omitting alternatives and missing information. This produces a document that reads as a justification rather than a deliberation record. The rejected alternatives and identified gaps are where future learning lives — they show what you considered and what you couldn't know, not just what you chose.
The Protocol
For each significant decision: (1) Decision: one sentence stating what you chose. (2) Alternatives: what other options did you consider? Why were they rejected? (3) Information: what data was available? What was specifically missing or uncertain? (4) Criteria: what were you optimizing for? What trade-offs did you accept? (5) Revisit conditions: under what specific circumstances should this decision be reconsidered? These five fields take 5-10 minutes and produce a record that remains useful for years.