I wrote a decision record for my life

I had to make a personal decision this week. I don’t feel comfortable sharing details, but I want to reflect a bit on the process. I used AI (Claude Opus 5) as a consultant. It’s good at rephrasing thoughts, which I find helpful for gaining new insights. But it also tends to be highly agreeable. That means it becomes less interesting to talk to over time. It never makes you defend your position, so you don’t harden your opinion. That actually makes deciding harder, with a high risk of going in circles.

At one point during this conversation I became frustrated and felt the urge to just make a decision. In that moment I thought of ADRs (Architecture Decision Records). They’re records of decisions about a software system. They’re written by current engineers for future engineers, so they can trace why the software is the way it is. That’s useful in my case too, since I want to give my future self the same opportunity. So I created a Life Decision Record (LDR).¹

I used the following structure, which is a variant of the MADR (Markdown Architectural Decision Records) template.²

---
date: YYYY-MM-DD
status: DECIDED | SUPERSEDED
---

## Context

What is going on and what needs to be decided?

## Options

What are the options, and what speaks for and against each one?

## Decision

Which option did I choose, and why?

## Consequences

What am I accepting by choosing it?

Filling out this template without the AI gave me some form of clarity. Listing all the advantages and disadvantages of each option felt cumbersome, but maybe that’s the engagement the conversation with the AI was missing. In the end I felt like I made a conscious decision, one I could defend to my future self.

Another cool benefit is that this is now a shareable artifact. On our way to the gym, I read the LDR out loud to my girlfriend, since she wanted to know what I was up to that day. She liked that I came to a decision, but also accused me of overanalyzing. Maybe she’s right.