What Sam Altman uses instead of Notion (the 3-field decision log)

Hi Everyone,

Joan Westenberg deleted her "second brain" last year, including an Obsidian vault, Zettelkasten slips, and Apple Notes going back to 2015. She said the system had started replacing her thinking instead of accelerating it.

If you've ever abandoned a knowledge system, you know how it usually goes. The first weeks feel productive, then the maintenance outweighs the value, and the whole thing gets quietly dropped.

Bain & Company surveyed nearly 800 companies and found a 95% correlation between strong decision-making and top-tier financial results. But without a record of why a call was made, teams re-argue settled questions and burn meeting time on debates that should already be closed.

Today, we're sharing a three-field decision log that lives inside the meeting notes you already write. All it takes is two minutes per entry and nothing new to install.

Why elaborate systems get dropped

The leaders who actually keep records of their thinking tend to use boring tools.

Sam Altman writes in a spiral notebook and digitises later. At Meta, Sheryl Sandberg carried a similar notebook into every meeting and ripped pages out as items were handled. Bill Gates pairs physical notebooks with OneNote. Jeff Bezos doesn't keep a personal system because Amazon's six-page memos already do that job inside the company.

The systems that get abandoned share the opposite traits. They ask you to organise at the moment of capture, and they live in an app that's separate from where the work actually happens.

Every entry becomes a small interruption, and the maintenance slowly turns into more work.

The three fields

Add the three fields to the bottom of whatever meeting note you already write today, in whatever tool that already holds your work. The point is to add a section, not to add another app.

1. The decision and the date

   One sentence that names what you decided, like "approved a price increase on the Pro tier, effective March 1."

   It keeps the entry searchable later and forces you to be specific now.

2. Why

   Two or three lines covering the alternatives you considered, the constraint that mattered most, and the assumption you were betting on.

3. What you expect to happen, and by when

   A concrete prediction with a date attached. Specific enough that six months later you can check whether you were right.

And that's the full entry.

The "why" field is the one to get right

If you only write one thing properly, write the why. The temptation is to put down "team alignment" or "felt like the right call" but neither tells you anything useful in six months.

Force yourself to name the actual alternative you rejected and the actual reason you rejected it.

Something like "we picked Vendor A over Vendor B because B's contract locked us in for three years and we wanted flexibility for the next round of growth" gives your future self something real to work with.

The six-month review

Set one calendar reminder for October 16, 2026, and read back through your last entries in one sitting. You'll see where your confidence didn't map against reality, and which calls you'd make differently knowing what you know now.

Go deeper

👉 Joan Westenberg: I Deleted My Second Brain – the original essay on why ten years of personal knowledge management started replacing thinking instead of accelerating it

👉 Bain & Company: The Five Steps to Better Decisions – the research linking decision effectiveness to financial performance across nearly 800 companies

👉 Cloverpop: Free Decision Log Template – a five-field spreadsheet for leaders who want a slightly heavier starting point

👉 Eric Binnion: My Obsidian Workflow – a real example of a two-section daily note system sustained since January 2022

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow we'll look at the five leaks hiding on your P&L right now, and how to spot each one.

P.S. Forward this to the colleague who has tried Jira, Notion, Obsidian, Roam, and is currently eyeing Tana.