The Protocol Collective
Welcome Gift · Mastery-Level Dashboard · $77

Decision Mastery

A 13-module decision-making dashboard. Decision pyramid, pre-mortem, deep decision log, decision tree, opportunity cost and expected value calculators, regret minimisation, Bayesian thinking, mental models library. Single HTML file. Runs offline. Owned forever.

$77 USD · paid once · the welcome gift

À la carte value at catalogue rates: $400+. Yours for $77.

Personal-use template. Not legal, financial, or professional decision-making advice. The frameworks here are general — apply them to your situation, not as a substitute for licensed counsel where decisions cross legal/financial/medical lines.

01Decision Pyramid

Not all decisions deserve the same process. Match the rigour to the stakes. Most operators apply too much process to small decisions and too little to big ones.

Tier 1 · One-way doors
Decisions that can't be reversed without massive cost. Marriage, signing a lease, hiring an exec, public commitment. Apply: full pre-mortem, 3+ alternatives, decision log, sleep on it 72 hours.
Tier 2 · Costly reversals
Reversible but expensive. Resignations, equipment purchases, course changes mid-project. Apply: decision log, 2 alternatives, expected value, sleep on it 24 hours.
Tier 3 · Two-way doors
Easily reversible. Restaurant choices, weekend plans, most product features. Apply: gut + 5 minutes. Don't over-think.
Tier 4 · No-think
Defaults you've already decided on. Morning routine, what to eat for breakfast, response to standard requests. Pre-decide once, run on autopilot.
If a Tier 3 decision has been on your mind for 3+ days, it's secretly a Tier 2. The persistence of attention is the signal.

02Pre-Mortem

Imagine the decision has been made and 12 months have passed. It failed catastrophically. Tell the story of how it failed — in detail. Most decisions fail in predictable ways; the pre-mortem surfaces them while you can still adjust.

The decision under consideration
Imagine: 12 months have passed. This decision failed badly. Tell the story of how it failed.
Three most plausible failure modes (rank by probability)
For each failure mode — what's the early warning sign?
For each failure mode — what's the mitigation if I see the early warning?
Given this analysis, am I still going forward? Yes / No / Modify

03Decision Log

Every Tier 1 and Tier 2 decision goes in here. Future-you reads it. The pattern of how you decided 6 months ago tells you more about how to improve than any retrospective.

Date / decision short-name
Tier (1=one-way, 2=costly, 3=two-way)
Decision in one sentence
What triggered the need to decide?
Alternatives considered (≥2)
Inputs / data that mattered most
My decision and rationale
My confidence (1–10) and why
Cost of being wrong
Review date (90 days default)
At the review, ask two distinct questions: (1) Was the decision good given what I knew at the time? (2) Was the outcome good? Confusing them is how operators learn the wrong lessons.

04Decision Tree Builder

For complex sequential decisions. Each node is a decision point. Each branch is an option. Each leaf is an outcome. Drawing the tree alone often reveals options you didn't know existed.

Root decision
Option A — describe
→ If A goes well, what's next? (downstream decision)
→ If A goes badly, what's next?
Option B — describe
→ If B goes well
→ If B goes badly
Option C — describe
→ If C goes well
→ If C goes badly
Which path has the best worst-case (not best best-case)?
Most decisions aren't optimised for the upside. They're optimised for surviving the downside. The "least-bad worst case" path is usually the right answer.

05Opportunity Cost Calculator

Every "yes" is a "no" to the next-best alternative. Quantify what you're giving up. The hidden cost is what you stopped doing — usually invisible, always real.

Total hours invested
0
Opportunity cost (in $)
$0
Expected return
$0
Net (return − opp cost)
$0
Money has obvious opportunity cost. Time has hidden opportunity cost. The hours you spend on a meeting series you don't need are hours not spent on the project that would have been a real return.

06Expected Value Calculator

EV = sum of (probability × outcome). The math version of "is this worth it?" Useful when outcomes are probabilistic. Less useful when probabilities are guesses — but even rough EV beats no EV.

Outcome scenarios

ScenarioProbability (0-1)Outcome ($)EV contribution
Probability check (should sum to 1.0)
0
Expected value
$0
Positive EV = take the bet (over many trials, you win on average). But if the worst case kills you (ruin), don't take it even at positive EV. Survive first.

07Regret Minimisation Framework

Bezos's framework. Project to age 80. Imagine looking back. What would you regret more — doing this and it not working, or never trying it? The framework is biased toward action; that bias is usually correct for ambitious decisions.

The decision
If I do it and it fails — at age 80, I'd regret this how much? (1–10)
If I never try — at age 80, I'd regret this how much? (1–10)
Which regret is bigger?
If "never try" is bigger — what's actually stopping me right now?
What's the smallest reversible step toward doing it?
This framework only works for decisions where the downside is bounded (you survive). It breaks for one-way doors with catastrophic downside. Use Tier 1 process for those, regret minimisation for Tiers 2-3.

08Bayesian Update

Your beliefs should change when evidence changes — proportional to the strength of the evidence. Most people update too slowly (anchored to first impression) or too fast (overweight recent data). The discipline is conscious updating.

My current belief / prediction
My confidence right now (0-100%)
New evidence I just received
Is this evidence stronger or weaker than what I had before? Quality 1-10?
My updated confidence (0-100%) — be honest
If I didn't update, why?
"I would have changed my mind earlier if I'd been honest about the evidence" — the most expensive sentence in operator hindsight. Update faster.

09Weighted Pros/Cons Matrix

Standard pros/cons treats every factor equal. Weighted version forces you to assign importance — exposes which factor is actually driving the decision.

Pros

ProImportance (1-10)Weighted
5
5
5
5

Cons

ConImportance (1-10)Weighted
5
5
5
5
Total Pros (weighted)
0
Total Cons (weighted)
0
Net
0

10Reversibility Assessment

Bezos: "Type 1 decisions are one-way doors. Type 2 are two-way doors." Most decisions are Type 2 — reversible. We treat too many decisions as Type 1, slowing us down on things that don't matter.

The decision
If this turns out to be wrong, can I reverse it? (yes / yes-but-costly / no)
Reversal cost (in $ and time)
Is the reversal cost <10% of the upside?
If reversible — what's the smallest version I can try first?
If one-way door — what process did I use? (Tier 1 process required)
For two-way doors: bias toward speed and trying. For one-way doors: bias toward thoroughness and waiting. The cost of confusing them is asymmetric — slow on two-way wastes time, fast on one-way wastes lives.

11Mental Models Library

10 high-leverage models. Reach for them when you're stuck. They cut decision space dramatically.

Inversion

Avoid the bad before pursuing the good

Charlie Munger's tool. Don't ask "how do I succeed?" Ask "how do I fail?" Then avoid that. Often easier to identify and act on.

First Principles

Reason from foundations, not analogies

Strip the problem to its physics. Don't say "this is a marketplace, marketplaces work like X." Say "what does this specific situation actually require?"

Second-Order Thinking

And then what?

"If I do X, what happens?" That's first-order. "And then what?" That's second-order. Most bad decisions look great at first order.

Asymmetric Bets

Limited downside, unlimited upside

Take bets where the worst case is bounded but the best case is huge. The arithmetic favours you over many trials.

Hanlon's Razor

Don't attribute to malice what's adequately explained by stupidity / inattention

Most "they're attacking me" situations are actually "they didn't think about me." Cheaper to assume incompetence first.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Past investment is irrelevant to future decisions

The right question is "given where I am now, what's the best move forward?" Not "I've already spent $X, I have to keep going."

Probabilistic Thinking

Most outcomes are distributions, not points

"It will succeed" is wrong. "It has a 60% chance of breakeven, 30% upside, 10% loss" is right. Acting on point estimates is acting on fictions.

Switch Cost

The cost of changing direction is real

Bouncing between strategies looks decisive. It's actually cumulative loss. Stay with a working strategy until evidence forces change — not just because the new one is shinier.

Skin in the Game

The opinion of someone with stakes > the opinion of someone without

Weight advice by who pays the cost when wrong. Free advice from someone with no exposure is the cheapest because it's also the lowest-quality.

10/10/10 Rule

How will I feel about this in 10 minutes? 10 months? 10 years?

Most decisions don't matter at the 10-year horizon. Some do. The rule sorts which is which.

12Decision Review Cadence

Quarterly review of the decision log. The single highest-leverage operator practice. You see your patterns — what you decide well, what you decide poorly, where you predict accurately, where you don't.

Quarter being reviewed
Decisions logged this quarter (count)
Decisions where outcome matched prediction
Decisions where I was overconfident (worse outcome than expected)
Decisions where I was underconfident (better outcome than expected)
Pattern in my errors (which type of decision do I get wrong?)
One thing I'm changing in my decision process next quarter

13Decision Principles

Seven personal decision rules. Read them quarterly.

Principle 01
Principle 02
Principle 03
Principle 04
Principle 05
Principle 06
Principle 07

Print, save, share, fork

Yours forever. Print individual modules from your browser.

← Back to the catalogue