Bad decision or bad luck? How to judge a choice that went wrong

How to read the two columns

The table above is the book's Two-Column Review. It carries a PROMISING badge. Outcome bias is well studied, but nobody has tested this kind of review as a fix for it.

The left column is everything you did. The right column is everything that happened to you. The rows show what each side holds, the question you answer for each and what you get to keep.

Look hardest at the last row. Only the left column produces a lesson. "Ask about the firm's biggest clients" is a process lesson. "Never leave a big company" is the result talking, and it teaches you the wrong thing.

Here is how to fill it in:

1. Draw a line down a blank page. Label the left side Decision quality and the right side Luck.
2. On the left, write what you knew, what you did to learn more and how you chose. Use any note you made at the time, not your memory.
3. On the right, write everything that shaped the result that you could not have known or controlled on the day you chose.
4. Under the left side, write yes, partly or no: given what you knew, was this a sound way to decide?
5. Under the right side, write whether the luck was good, bad or mixed.
6. Write one line about your process for next time. Only process counts.

Eight months later, the firm cut her hours

Picture an electrician who spent most of last spring deciding whether to leave a big contractor for a small local firm.

She did it properly. She asked the owner about the workload and hours. She talked to two people on the crew. She set a deadline, picked a good-enough bar and chose the small firm.

Eight months later, the firm lost a big contract and cut her hours. Now she replays it every night. Her old job is still posted. Everyone who said "are you sure?" seems to have been right.

So ask two plain questions. On the day she chose, what did she know? Could she have found out about a contract that nobody outside the firm knew was at risk?

If the answer is no, she did not make a bad decision. She got a bad result. Those are different things, and the mind is very bad at keeping them apart.

Why your memory sides with the result

Two traps blur the columns.

The first is about memory. In Fischhoff's 1975 experiments, people who were told how an event ended rated that ending as more likely. They did not notice the shift. They overestimated what they would have known without being told. That is the electrician at midnight. She knows about the contract now, so she believes the old her should have known too.

The second is about judgment. In 1988, Baron and Hershey gave people the same decision with only the outcome changed. People rated the decision as better, and the person as more able, when the outcome was good. A 2023 preregistered replication by Aiyer and colleagues with 692 people found the bias again, and larger than before. It held even for people who said results should not count.

Your life has more hands of cards in it than you think. If you score yourself on the luck, you learn the wrong lessons. Worse, every bad break starts to feel like proof that you cannot be trusted to decide.

Write it down before the result comes in

The best defense starts before the result. The book's Decision Log (PROMISING) has you write, on the day you choose, what you knew, why you chose and what you expect, with how sure you are as a percent. Then you set a review date.

One rule matters most: write the percent before the result comes in, never after. In a forecasting tournament, keeping track of forecasts helped, but as part of a package with training and teamwork, which is why the book stops at PROMISING.

What we like about the pair of tools is that it cuts both ways. Run the review on a lucky win too, especially when you hear yourself say you just knew it would work. That is harder, and it matters more.

The chapters that split skill from luck

This is the problem Done Deciding was written for.

Judge the Decision, Not the Result: How to Stop Grading Yourself on Luck holds the Decision Log and the Two-Column Review, the electrician's full page and the myth checks on hindsight, outcome bias and who really coined "resulting."

Close the Door: Why a Final Choice Feels Better Than an Open One helps with the step before this one: treating a careful choice as finished, so you stop hunting for proof against it.

If the result has turned into a nightly replay, our page on how to stop replaying a decision gives the one tool in the book with a SOLID badge.