Make a hard decision with a real framework, not just pros and cons
Find out what's actually driving the indecision before you list reasons that don't touch it.
- Use it for
- Anyone stuck on a decision where a pros-and-cons list hasn't helped.
A pros-and-cons list rarely resolves a genuinely hard decision, because if it were just a matter of listing enough reasons, you'd have decided already. What actually stalls a hard decision is usually something a list doesn't surface: two incompatible values pulling in different directions, a fear that hasn't been named, or missing information you've been avoiding gathering because you suspect the answer. Listing more pros and cons doesn't touch any of that — it just generates more items for a list that was never the bottleneck.
This prompt is built to find the actual bottleneck first, because the right next step is completely different depending on what it is: resolve a values conflict, name a fear, or go get the missing information.
When not to use this
For a decision that's genuinely just "which has more upside," a straightforward pros-and-cons comparison is faster and this is overkill. This is for the decisions where you've already tried that and you're still stuck — the stuck-ness is the signal that something else is going on.
Did this work?
You can name specifically what was actually making the decision hard — not just "it's complicated" — and whether that thing is resolvable or something you have to decide despite, not because of.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.