Free from Todd McKeever
A Welcome Gift
The Decision Conversation Brief: The Decision, Out Loud
Thanks for stopping by the porch. This is the tool I reach for most, and it is yours for free.
The deciding is rarely the part that fails. The disappearing is. You think a decision through and move on to the next task. A week later you cannot quite remember which option you chose, what evidence carried it, or what was supposed to happen next. So the decision gets made again, at full price, or quietly unmade by drift. This brief fixes that with one transfer: you do the deciding out loud. The helper does the writing.
The Protocol (four moves, about five minutes of your time)
Say the decision and your lean.
Voice or text, in your own words, two minutes at most. One decision, stated plainly, with the way you are currently leaning.
“I am deciding whether to renew this contract in January. Right now I am leaning toward letting it go.”
The helper answers in a fixed order.
First, the missing conversation: is what this decision lacks mainly facts, judgment, or a human commitment? Second, the counter-case, before any agreement: the strongest evidence against your lean, stated with specifics. Third, for a material decision, one base-rate line: how does this usually turn out for people in your position?
You reply in one sentence.
Decided X. Revisit if Y. If you cannot write the revisit trigger, the decision is not finished, because nothing would ever tell you it had gone wrong.
The helper writes the record.
Not you. Three lines, filed where your real records live:
- Decision: [what was decided, and the date]
- What would change it: [the revisit trigger]
- Next move: [the action, its owner, and its date]
The Test
Take the next decision you would normally turn over alone for three days. Say it out loud instead, to a helper or a memo, and run the four moves. One decision, this week. Then notice what the week feels like with the question closed and the record already written.
The full tool, with the complete teaching and a worked example, lives in the Inside Track library for paid members. And if a decision is sitting on you right now, bring it to the Ask Todd tool. It is free, and it draws on my published books, articles, and frameworks.