Triage protocol · two questions · one deadline

The decision forcer

Every other decision tool on the internet asks you which option. This one doesn't care which option. It asks whether this decision deserves any more of your life — and sets the date it has to die.

one decision · two questions · a deadline that leaves this page

Nothing you write here leaves your device. No account, no server, no analytics — what you type is held in this browser tab so you can reload without losing it, and erased when you close the tab. "Start over" wipes it now. I can't read it. Nobody can.

Why this one exists

I went looking for a tool that does this and there isn't one. Every decision app on the market is either a randomizer — spin a wheel, flip a coin — or a weighted matrix where you score options in a grid. All of them answer "which one?"

Not one of them asks the question that actually costs you: does this decision deserve more time, and when does it have to be over? The one-way/two-way door idea is all over the internet as something to read. Nowhere as something you can use. So this is the instrument version.

It sits upstream of every coin-flipper out there. You don't need help picking. You need permission to stop circling.

It triages, it doesn't compare

Most decisions aren't hard. They're just undecided. This sorts the ones worth agonizing over from the ones you should have called last Tuesday.

It ends with a date, not a feeling

A verdict you nod at changes nothing. This one hands you a calendar line and a message to one named person — because a deadline nobody else knows about is just a wish.

It costs you two taps

Two questions. That's the whole instrument. Anything longer and you'd be using the tool to avoid the decision — which is the exact thing it's for.

Part 1 — Name it out loud

Write the decision as a sentence someone else could read. Vague in, vague out — "the job thing" is not a decision, it's a mood.

What are you deciding?

Part 2 — Which door is it?

If this goes badly, can you walk back through? Not "would it be awkward" — can it actually be undone.

Two-wayYes — I can undo this Wrong turn, walk back out. Costs time or a little pride, not much else.

One-wayNo — this door locks behind me Sold, signed, said out loud, or spent. Undoing it isn't really available.

Where this comes fromJeff Bezos, 2016 Amazon shareholder letter — the one-way / two-way door distinction. Most people treat every decision like a one-way door. Most decisions aren't.

Part 3 — Do you have enough?

Not all of it. Enough. There's no slider here on purpose — a slider is one more decision, and you came here with too many already.

EnoughYes — I'm at roughly 70% More research now would mostly be comfort, not information.

ShortNo — something real is missing There's a specific fact I don't have, and it would genuinely change my answer.

The 70% rule — same 2016 letterMost decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90 percent, in most cases, you're probably being slow.

Part 4 — What it's already cost you

Optional, and the verdict works without it. But this is the part people don't look at: the decision has been charging you rent this whole time.

Days you've sat on it

Times a day it crosses your mind

Nothing entered yet

Fill in the two numbers above and this face will show you what the waiting has already cost.

the honest version of the science Cultured human cells exposed to the stress hormone cortisol burned about 60% more energy — that's Dr. Martin Picard's lab at Columbia. Cells in a dish, though, not a study of deciding versus not deciding. Nobody has measured that, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But indecision is a stress-hormone machine, and stress-related graying is that same lab's work — which is why this page ages a face instead of printing a made-up number. The faces are the Wong-Baker FACES idea: the same faces scale we use in the clinic.

Protocol: TRIAGE
Tool: 08 of 16
Verdict: Pending
By: @nicksdadhax

Also — I buy houses

Washington or Dakota County, Minnesota. Off-market, or straight from the owner — I'm the buyer, not a middleman passing it along. Woodbury, Cottage Grove, Hastings, Stillwater, Eagan, Inver Grove Heights, Lakeville.

If that's you, or you know somebody quietly thinking about selling, I'll lay out your options — all of them, including the ones I don't make a dime on. Nothing to sign, no walkthrough unless you ask.

I have a houseOr I know someone who does

What I ask

That was free and nothing here sits behind an email. If it was useful, here's the whole exchange: send it to one or two people who'd use it too. That's it. I'm trusting you with it, you pass it on.

Want the next one before anyone else? I'm building an interest list — no selling, no sequence, your address goes nowhere. Exactly what that means, in plain words.

The list itself isn't open yet — I'm still setting it up, and I'd rather say that than put up a box that doesn't work. The ask above stands either way, and it's the one that matters. If you want to tell me what to build next, my DMs are open.

Tell me what to build nextDM @nicksdadhax

Free. This tool asks you for nothing — no gate, no email, no analytics. When you actually hit the deadline it gave you, DM me which one you called — I answer every one.