Coaching practices for How to Judge Decisions Correctly

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Judge Decisions Correctly, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I beat myself up over a call that went badly even though it was reasonable with what I knew, and I pat myself on the back for a reckless one that happened to work
  • I beat myself up over a call that went badly even though it was the right move with what I knew, and I let myself off the hook for reckless ones that happened to work out
  • A choice I made blew up and I’m tearing into myself
  • I made a call that turned out badly and now I feel like an idiot for it
  • I decide what still needs work purely on vibes

Practices that may help

  1. Score decision quality separately from outcome quality
    Judge the process you used — not whether it worked — when you review a past decision.
    Decision Journaling: Learning to Decide Better Over Time
  2. Separate the quality of the decision from the outcome
    A good decision can produce a bad outcome, and a bad decision can produce a good outcome — do not confuse them.
    Thinking in Bets
  3. Evaluate decisions by process, not outcome
    Judge a decision by the quality of the reasoning at the time, not by what happened.
    Hindsight Bias: Why Everything Seems Obvious in Retrospect
  4. Judge decisions by the process, not the result
    A good decision that produces a bad outcome is still a good decision.
    Expected Value Thinking: Deciding Under Uncertainty
  5. Restudy decision protocol
    Use a defined decision rule — not a feeling — to determine which items get additional study.
    Judgments of Learning: Why You Misjudge What You’ve Learned
  6. Track your calibration across many predictions
    Score your confidence levels against outcomes over dozens of predictions to find your systematic biases.
    Decision Journaling: Learning to Decide Better Over Time
  7. Decision Journaling: Learning to Decide Better Over Time
    A decision journal is a written record of significant decisions — what you decided, why, what you expected to happen, and what actually happened. It counteracts hindsight bias and outcome bias by preserving your actual reasoning before the outcome arrives, and it creates the only feedback loop that produces real calibration: comparing your predictions to results across many decisions over time.
  8. Build wisdom through case-based reflection
    After a consequential decision, reconstruct what you perceived, what you valued, and what you’d change.
    Phronesis: Aristotle’s Practical Wisdom
  9. Log the decision before the outcome
    Write what you decided, why, and what you expect — before you know how it turns out.
    Decision Journaling: Learning to Decide Better Over Time
  10. Use "take the best": choose on your single most informative cue
    When choosing between options, identify the most diagnostic cue and use it — stop searching for more.
    Simple Heuristics: Gerd Gigerenzer’s Case for Fast and Frugal Thinking

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