Receipts are better than regrets: Grab my Decision Log template!
Stop reverse-engineering your life — copy my lilac Google Sheet and start logging the why behind every choice.
My last essay, “Write It Before You Rewrite It,” lit up my phone for hours — new careers, apartment hunts and even bigger moves like the run-off-to-a-new-city or stay-put debate. My friends sounded stuck and, worse, unsure why past choices felt right at the time.
Plenty of potential regret, not enough receipts.
I wasn’t sure anyone needed my Decision Log template, but enough people asked that I polished it up for you! Now it is nice and pretty and joyful! Here it is:
Katya’s Decision Log Template
🔗 Decision Log — Lilac Edition
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ztXkDktWAN_RvNU_yJpu1ta6O3Oy68M9/edit?usp=sharing
The sheet requires Request access so I see names, not Anonymous Capybaras!
We’re human, not robots, so let’s shed anonymity, forge real connections and engage in dialogue!
Click the button; I’ll approve fast.
Why take the two min to log it?
Receipts tame regrets. Judge past you by past info, not 3 a.m. clairvoyance.
Stop the “What was I thinking?” spiral. A two-line “problem / why” note makes future you an eyewitness, not a detective.
Turn feelings into data. Logging a dread-filled 2 versus a pumped-up 5 shows which moods lead to better calls.
Spot patterns fast. A weekly scan of problems and outcomes reveals the real bottlenecks — sometimes it’s sleep, not strategy.
Test your predictions. Write the prediction, see the result, recalibrate. Accurate self-stats beat guesswork.
Combat decision fatigue! Logging your decisions frees up mental space, leaving more brainpower for future choices. Additionally, you'll gain clarity on which decisions deserve your full attention and which ones are less consequential.
For example, if you, like me, get stuck on “What do I wear?” every other day — only to see it doesn’t matter that much — you can hack future decisions and focus on bigger things.
Quick-start rules
Two-minute max. Add a row when a choice feels bigger than latte vs. drip.
Be honest about feelings. If it’s a 1 (dread), write it.
Review monthly. Fill outcomes, score them, spot patterns.
(If you’d rather use something other than Google Sheets, let me know; so far, all requests have been for Sheets. I kinda wanna make a physical journal…)
Your Turn
Log three decisions this month.
Then please tell me:
Did regret shrink?
Did trends jump out?
Did the log help you as much as it helps me in my personal life and at work?
More of my writing
Note on writing with AI, chatting with AI
Uri’s comment on my last Substack really made me think:
Isn’t it frustrating when you forget something personal, wish you had an AI to remember it for you, and then instantly regret it, because relying on AI makes everything feel a bit too artificial and impersonal?
I’m fine letting GPT speed-read research for me, but if I funnel my memories straight into a model, I risk losing the first-person version of my own life.
Even a perfect prompt can come back edited, trimmed or rephrased — and suddenly my story isn’t mine!!! Then, it’s not even my own faulty memory rewriting events. It’s a very smart robot.
I did work on a decision GPT so sometimes I do chat with it..
But I also keep my own receipts. My Decision Log holds my original words, context and mood. AI can summarize later, but it shouldn’t be the only author on record.
Imagine a world where AI holds more of our writing than our journals or Notes apps.
Will we all be manipulated into making the same decisions by algorithms? Will we lose our own agency, awareness, and ability to make genuinely independent choices? As these algorithms become increasingly sophisticated and integrated into our daily lives, there's a growing concern that our decision-making processes could become subtly influenced or even controlled by external systems designed to predict and shape our behaviors. And for what? And why? Will we even know the why?
Seriously, we still need to write.
— Katya 🌸