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Comment by HenriNext | Hacker News Reader

Interesting idea. I already track/log my decision making process for everything important, so i'm right in your target audience, but I think your approach has the following problems:

- Decisions and opinions brew over time, but in bursts; you spend some 'active' time thinking, or get intuitive realization in 'background', or something 'external' happens. When one of those occurs it's important to write down the new ideas or changed opinions immediately when it is in memory with all details and emotions. Your timed email reminders seems completely wrong way (for me).

- The decisions worth tracking are the important ones, and to trust any cloud based application with critical financial or personal decisions is major barrier. You would need to offer some pretty amazing benefits over tracking in encrypted plain docs, but i'm not sure what those amazing benefits could be: plain docs work fine.

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i totally agree with a lot of this. i don't think people should make decisions by taking the average of their decision over time or anything like that -- this is more about having good inputs to your decisions. maybe i need better copy :)

re: "decisions and opinions brew over time...": i think it can be very hard to "zoom out" of how you feel in a moment and have perspective, and consequently people make impulsive and emotional decisions. being able to see that 90% of the time you're unhappy with your current job can put a good week in perspective. seeing that 90% of the time you're happy with your relationship can put a fight in perspective. it is easy to get distracted by right now, and hopefully this can help. heck maybe you notice that the biggest factor in your overall happiness is the season -- that could help you avoid some crazy decisions, or maybe inspire a move!

re: "the decisions worth tracking are...": yea i think that is right. i think the point is somewhat softened by the above, but i agree broadly. honestly for me i have "coded" some of my questions so someone reading over my shoulder won't know what i'm actually responding to. the important thing is that you take your temperature over time at random intervals so that you don't just respond when you're feeling extremely one way or the other. for me emails help me achieve this, even if the text of the question is just a prompt for myself

thanks for the comments!

"I already track/log my decision making process for everything important"

I am curious:

1. How do you this? What is your process?

2. Why do you do this?

3. How do you decide what is important?

4. Any further reading in this area?

5. What are the benefits you have seen from this?

Personally here is what i do:

I keep a note.book with me most times. I have been using the bullet journal system since the beginning of 2017. Excluding things i need to get done, i also jot down thoughts, ideas, questions, things i do not understand. To see how my thoughts evolve would involve paging through the notebook.

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