You already know which option you prefer, and you cannot say why in one sentence if someone asks. The Slack thread asking for your call is still open in the tab next to this one. The half-empty mug next to your mouse is still warm enough to sip. You don’t need to build a 17-tab spreadsheet to justify the call you already feel is right.
Block the 47 minutes you just freed up after canceling that status sync
Example measurement: 47 minutes, the exact length of the cross-team sync that got rescheduled 10 minutes ago, is all the time you need to turn your vague, unarticulated gut sense into a call you can share with stakeholders, your manager, or your client without stumbling over justifications. You already know the gut calls you struggle to defend on Friday are the ones you tried to pull out of thin air mid-meeting, with no prep to tie your intuition to what you actually know. The two numbers you will use for every call are confidence and reversibility, no fancy math required. Confidence is a 1-10 score of how sure you are this call will deliver the outcome you’re targeting, no hedging, no adjusting for what you think other people want to hear, just the first number that pops into your head when you think about the call working out. Reversibility is a 1-10 score of how easy it is to undo the call if you turn out to be wrong, where 1 means you can never reverse it (like signing a 3-year contract) and 10 means you can undo it before the end of the day with zero extra work for anyone else on your team. This is not fake precision that looks like a model full of made-up conversion rates and projected ROI numbers you pulled out of thin air to sound impressive; these two numbers are honest reflections of what you already know, so no one can poke holes in them because they’re rooted in your on-the-ground expertise.
Pull the five pending gut calls you’ve been putting off to your open notebook
Grab the notebook you keep tucked under your laptop, the one with the scuffed cover you use for quick notes instead of the shared company docs. You’re going to list the five gut calls you’ve been avoiding answering for the past 3 days, the ones you keep pushing to the end of your to-do list because you don’t have a “good enough” reason to say yes or no out loud. Don’t overthink the entries, don’t scroll back through 2 months of Slack threads to add context, just write the core of each call in 10 words or less per line. This step takes no more than 8 minutes; set the timer on your phone if you catch yourself overcomplicating what counts as a gut call. If you’re stuck, ask yourself which requests sitting in your inbox make you sigh when you see the sender name, those are the calls you need to list. You might end up with calls like approving a new vendor, shifting a launch date, assigning an account to a new team member, pausing a test that’s not delivering results, or approving a professional development ticket for a junior team member.
Score each call with the two numbers you already have in your head
You’re scoring the next five gut calls in a notebook, no shared spreadsheets, no presentations, just you and the numbers you already have access to. For each line item, you will write confidence and reversibility beside five gut calls, no extra research allowed. Use the table below to track your scores, filling in each field as you go without second-guessing your first answer:
| Gut call | Confidence score (1-10) | Reversibility score (1-10) | Quick 3-word justification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approve freelance graphic design vendor | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| Push product launch back 2 weeks | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| Assign Q3 client account to new hire | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| Pause TikTok ad test for rest of month | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| Approve $1200 conference ticket for intern | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
Start with the confidence score first: look at the call, think about the last 3 similar calls you’ve made or seen, and write down the first number that comes to mind. If you’re 90% sure the graphic designer will deliver good work on time, write 9, don’t drop it to 7 just because you’re worried someone will ask why you didn’t interview 5 more vendors. Next, the reversibility score: if you can fire the graphic designer with a 2-sentence email and no cancellation fee, that’s a 9, if you have to pay a 50% kill fee and lose 2 weeks of time if you back out, that’s a 3. Finally, the 3-word justification: no long paragraphs, just three words that capture the core of why you feel the way you do, like “Proven past work”, “Avoids team burnout”, “Grows junior skills”, “Low wasted spend”. If you can’t sum it up in three words, you’re overthinking it, go with the first three words that pop into your head.
Circle the single call with the lowest combined score
Add the confidence and reversibility scores together for each call, and circle the one with the lowest total. Illustrative example: If pushing the product launch back has a confidence score of 6 and a reversibility score of 3, the combined total is 9, which is far lower than the graphic design vendor approval that has an 8 confidence and 9 reversibility for a total of 17. That lowest combined score call is the only one that needs any extra attention before you share your decision with the team. All the other calls are ready to send right now: you can reply to the relevant thread with your decision, the two scores, and the 3-word justification, and no one will have a reasonable leg to stand on to push back, because you’re being transparent about what you know and how easy it is to adjust if you’re wrong. For the circled call, spend no more than 10 minutes pulling one single piece of data that either confirms or shifts your confidence score. That could be a quick check of the production timeline to confirm the 2-week delay won’t impact holiday sales, or a 2-minute message to the design lead to confirm they can cover the gap if the new vendor doesn’t work out. If after 10 minutes your score shifts by more than 2 points, adjust it, otherwise leave it as is. There’s no need to do a deep dive, no need to poll 3 other team members for their input, you already have 90% of the information you need, the 10 minute check is just to confirm you didn’t miss an obvious red flag.
Leave a half-page blank at the top of your next notebook page for next week’s gut calls
When you finish scoring all five calls and sending the decisions for the non-circled items, flip to the next blank page in your notebook and leave the top half empty, writing “Confidence” and “Reversibility” as column headers at the top. Next week, whenever a new gut call pops up that you can’t explain in one sentence off the top of your head, jot it down on that page and score it right then, instead of letting it pile up until Friday afternoon when you can’t remember why you felt the way you did. You don’t need to schedule a specific block of time to do this, you can add a line and score it in 30 seconds between meetings or while you wait for a call to start. You can find a copy of the score table on Find Core Insight if you prefer typing your notes over writing them by hand. You never have to sit through a meeting again fumbling for a justification for a call you know is right, because you already have two numbers and a 3-word reason that are impossible to argue with, rooted in the expertise you’ve built from doing this work day in and day out.