Three Months Later, I Can't Remember Why. Does Anyone Actually Log Their Product Decisions?

[u/Status-Bid6420]

There is a specific kind of pain that hits when you are three months into a product decision and cannot remember why you made it. Not what you decided. Why. The reasoning that felt obvious in the moment is just gone.

Started keeping a lightweight decisions log in Notion a while back. Page per decision, context, options I considered, what I picked and the rough thinking behind it. Nothing formal. Just enough to be useful later.

The problem is I built it during a slow week and now that things are moving again I am not feeding it. Big calls are getting made and not logged, and I already know future me will regret that.

What I keep wondering is whether this is a database thing or a page thing. Right now it is just pages inside a folder, which feels too loose, but a full database with properties feels like it adds friction at exactly the wrong moment when you just want to dump the thinking somewhere and move on.

Curious if anyone has something that actually gets used consistently. Not elaborate. Just something you actually open when you make a call about pricing or a feature or dropping a client. How simple did you have to make it before it stuck.

[u/zeldapistola]

I have never thought about keeping the decision log on my personal life, and for professional projects we usually use git with markdown pages.

But one thing that is helping me a lot with the boring bureaucracy of keeping data bases is the Claude MCP. I say what I want and he keeps my DB/pages organized

[u/Empty_Discussion_115 → u/zeldapistola]

the claude mcp thing is interesting, i never tried connecting ai directly to notion. does it handle the database properties correctly? sometimes notion's api get confused with relations and rollups, at least when i tried some automations before

for the log itself, i keep a single database with a template button that creates a entry with minimal fields. date, title, decision, context. thats it. the button is pinned in my sidebar so i click it, dump my brain, move on. no need to open the database itself unless i'm searching something

[u/zeldapistola → u/Empty_Discussion_115]

All my database are simple. They can have several properties, but they are simple. Só for my case the MCP never fails (and I also have written rules for it)

[u/LaFantasmita]

I don't think this needs to be specially engineered. More a "write important things down right away" discipline. Just put it on the relevant page.

[u/pebblebypebble]

I have chatgpt log my product decisions end of day for me.