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Decision-making is a skill like anything else. We’re taught the principles of writing, math, and language, but never those of good decision-making.

The challenge with decision-making is that very few people who know how to make good decisions want to teach it. It’s a rare skill that gives those who understand it a huge advantage.

It reminds me of this tweet that deeply resonated with me this week about how all startups are in the business of “playing rigged games.”

Basically, we all need to understand and leverage our unfair advantage(s).

I’m hoping this decision-making framework can become one of your unfair advantages.

I used to work for a billionaire entrepreneur. He made his first billions off a software company in the 90s that was on par with Microsoft. His second chapter was buying and optimizing other software companies — he now has a portfolio of hundreds.

So how does he know what companies to buy? How to improve them? What bets to make? He uses the “Important Decision Framework”.

I’ve created a template that you can find here:

But what’s more important are the principles behind the framework. The reason why the ID Framework works is that it forces clear thinking and consideration of edge cases. This type of thinking is much more common in software engineering when developers are scoping features and aligning on what and how to build something.

The framework demands that you consider what all the options are, the upsides and downsides of each option, the reasoning for any particular decision, and, most importantly, requires you to make a choice based on your own reasoning and rationale.

People don’t do this. The way most people make decisions is to do what’s already been done. There’s really no serious consideration of a better, different, more efficient, more impactful way to do things.

People also don’t do this because it’s hard. It requires actual struggle, consideration, and thoughtfulness. It also requires conviction. You may have thought through many possibilities and still not have concluded what is “best”, but you need to make a decision anyway.

Forced conviction is better than none.

I hope you try this framework. I can guarantee that it’ll, at the very least, underscore how little thought you’ve put into previous decisions.