Use AI to think through a decision
AI won’t make the decision for you, but it’s a useful thinking partner. Five techniques, with prompts, to weigh your options and spot what you’re missing.
Video transcript
Got a big decision going round in your head? AI won’t make it for you, but it can help you see it clearly. Here’s how.
There are five techniques worth knowing. A pros and cons table. Weighting what matters and scoring each option. Devil’s advocate. A pre-mortem. And simply asking, what am I missing?
Start by giving it the full picture: your options, your situation and what matters most to you, whether that’s pay, time, family or where you live. AI can’t guess your values.
Here’s the catch. AI tends to tell you what you want to hear. So once you have a favourite, ask for the strongest honest case against it.
Then run a pre-mortem. Imagine the decision has already gone wrong, and ask why. It’s a quick way to spot risks while you can still do something about them.
Watch how you ask. A leading question gets a cheerful yes. A request for criticism, or for what you’ve missed, gets you something useful.
And for big decisions about money, health or the law, use AI to prepare your questions, then talk to a qualified professional.
AI lays out the options. The decision is yours. The full guide below has a prompt for each technique.
In 30 seconds
- Use AI to structure a decision: pros and cons, weighted scores, a Jargon busterPre-mortem: A planning exercise where you imagine a decision has already gone wrong, then work out the most likely reasons why. and blind spots.
- AI tends to agree with you, so ask for the strongest case against.
- Tell it what matters to you, and take big money, health or legal decisions to a qualified person.
Take the job with the better pay and the longer commute? Move closer to family, or stay near your friends? Big decisions tend to go round and round in your head. AI can’t make them for you, but it can help you lay them out and look at them squarely.
Used well, AI is a patient thinking partner. Used carelessly, it becomes a cheerleader for whatever you already think. The difference is in how you ask. Here’s a workflow you can reuse, with a prompt for each technique.
A decision in five steps
- Give it the full pictureYour options, your situation and, most of all, what matters to you.
- Lay out the optionsA pros and cons table, then weighted scores for each option.
- Argue against your favouriteAsk for the strongest case against it, then run a pre-mortem.
- Ask what you’re missingQuestions you haven’t asked, options you haven’t considered, facts to check.
- Decide yourselfSleep on it, talk to people you trust, then make the call.
Lay out the options
Start with the options, the facts you know and what matters to you. AI doesn’t know your values unless you spell them out. It may assume a long commute is a downside, for instance, when you might enjoy the reading time.
I’m deciding between [option A] and [option B]. Here’s my situation: [a few lines of context]. What matters most to me is [your priorities]. Make a table of pros and cons for each option, covering practical, financial and personal points. Mark anything that’s an assumption rather than a fact.
A plain list treats every point as equal, and they rarely are. A Jargon busterDecision matrix: A table that scores each option against the things that matter to you, with each factor weighted by how important it is. fixes that: weight each factor by how much it matters, score each option against it, and compare the totals. AI can build one in seconds and show which scores would change the result.
Help me build a decision matrix for choosing between [options]. The factors that matter to me are [e.g. pay, commute, career growth, time with family]. Ask me to weight each factor from 1 to 5, then help me score each option from 1 to 5 on each. Show the weighted totals in a table, and tell me which scores the result depends on most.
Argue against your favourite
Here’s the catch: AI tends to agree with you, a habit called Jargon busterSycophancy: When an AI tells you what you want to hear, agreeing with you instead of giving an honest view.. Say “I’m leaning towards the new job” and it will find reasons you’re right. So ask for the opposite, and ask plainly.
| Leading question | Better question |
|---|---|
| “Is taking this job a good idea?” | “Make the strongest honest case against taking this job.” |
| “I’m right to turn it down, aren’t I?” | “Argue for each option as if you believed in it.” |
| “What should I do?” | “What would you need to know to help me decide?” |
I’m leaning towards [your preferred option]. Play devil’s advocate. Make the strongest honest case against it, as if your job were to stop me making a costly mistake. Don’t balance it with positives. Then tell me what I’d need to find out to know whether each objection is real.
Then run a pre-mortem. Imagine it’s a year from now and the decision has gone badly wrong, then ask why. Assuming failure makes risks easier to name, while there’s still time to act on them.
Imagine it’s [a year] from now. I chose [option] and it went badly wrong. Write a short, realistic account of what happened, listing the five most likely causes. Then, for each cause, suggest one thing I could do now to make it less likely.
Run these checks in a fresh chat. In the same conversation, everything you’ve said sits in its Jargon busterContext window: How much text an AI can take into account at once, including your conversation so far., including which option you like, and that can colour its answer. If your assistant remembers past chats, ask it for an independent view.
Ask what you’re missing
Finally, ask about the gaps: questions you haven’t asked, options you haven’t considered, people you haven’t talked to. Waiting, or doing nothing, is often an option worth a look too.
Here’s my decision and my thinking so far: [paste your notes or the table from earlier]. What am I missing? List questions I haven’t asked, options I haven’t considered (including waiting or doing nothing), facts I should check, and people I should talk to before deciding.
If its answer leans on facts, such as salaries or rents, ask where they come from and check them. Most assistants can search the web and show their sources.
Know where it stops
AI can organise your thinking, but it won’t live with the result. You will. Treat what it gives you as input, then sleep on it and talk to people who know you.
Check yourself
3 quick questions nothing is savedSpotted a mistake? Tell us and an editor will check it.
