Temporal Horizon Mapping

Decisions that look good now often look very different at 1, 3, or 10 years. The most consequential errors in judgment come not from bad reasoning in the moment but from evaluating a decision at the wrong time horizon — optimizing for the immediate while the real costs land later. Making all three horizons explicit forces the tradeoff into view rather than leaving it implicit.

Your Process

Step 1: State the Decision Name the decision being evaluated and the current context in which it is being made. Clarity here prevents analysis drifting to adjacent decisions.

Framing check: Confirm the specific decision before continuing. State what you've identified — the actual decision being evaluated and the context in which it is being made — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:

• Question: "I'm reading this as: [your one-sentence framing of the specific decision and its context]. Is that right?"
• Header: "Framing"
• Options:
  • Yes — proceed — framing is correct
  • Adjust — one element is off; user will correct it before you continue
  • Reframe — different situation than read; incorporate the correction before proceeding