I Tracked Every Technical Decision for 6 Months. Here's What I Learned

Six months ago, I started a simple experiment: log every significant technical decision I make, along with my reasoning and expected outcome. Then review each one after enough time has passed to see the results. The idea came from investment journals. Investors like George Soros and Ray Dalio have advocated for decades that the only way to improve decision quality is to create a written record and systematically review it. I figured if it works for people making billion-dollar bets, it might work for a developer making architecture and tooling choices. 183 decisions later, I have data. And the data tells a story I wasn't expecting. The Setup I kept it simple. A markdown file per month with a table: | Date | Decision | Context | Alternatives | Expected Outcome | Review Date | |------|----------|---------|--------------|------------------|-------------| "Significant" meant any decision that would take more than a day to reverse or that affected people beyond myself. This excluded things