7 Decision-Making Techniques That Work

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   1. The two-way door framework

   Amazon popularized this distinction: a two-way door decision is reversible, so it is safe to decide quickly and correct course later. A one-way door decision is hard or impossible to undo, so it deserves more analysis time. Most people spend the same deliberation time on both, which wastes time on reversible calls and rushes the irreversible ones.

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   2. Pre-mortem analysis

   Before committing, imagine that the decision has already failed one year from now, and write down why. Psychologist Gary Klein describes how this flips the psychology of the review: people are more willing to voice a doubt about why did this fail than why might this fail, because the first framing makes skepticism feel like insight rather than negativity.

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   3. First-principles thinking

   Instead of reasoning by analogy, this worked for a similar situation before, break the problem down to the facts you are certain are true, then rebuild a solution from those facts alone. It is slower than pattern-matching, but it avoids inheriting assumptions that do not actually apply to your situation.

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   4. Decision trees

   For decisions with a few clear branches and different possible outcomes at each one, sketching a simple tree, even three boxes and two arrows on paper, forces the options and their consequences into view at once, instead of comparing them one at a time from memory.

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   5. The 70% rule

   Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has described making most decisions with about 70% of the information you wish you had, because waiting for 90% usually means you decided too slowly. The rule is a deliberate trade: for reversible decisions, speed beats certainty.

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   6. Devil's advocate

   Deliberately assign someone, or yourself, the job of arguing against the decision you are leaning toward. This surfaces objections that groupthink or personal attachment to an idea would otherwise suppress.

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   7. Regret minimization

   Bezos has also described using this one to decide to leave a stable job and found Amazon: project yourself forward to age eighty and ask which choice you would regret not making. It works best for decisions where long-term identity matters more than short-term risk.

Original Nuglet framework

The Decision Fit Test

None of these techniques replace judgment, they structure it. Two quick questions point you to the right one.

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   Is this reversible? If yes, use the two-way door framework and the 70% rule, and move fast.

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   Have I seen something like this before? If yes, use first-principles thinking to check the analogy actually holds; if the outcomes branch clearly, sketch a decision tree.

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   Is there a real risk of groupthink or personal attachment clouding this? If yes, run a pre-mortem or assign a devil's advocate.

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   Is this about who I am, not just what I get? If yes, use regret minimization.