Move the claims, numbers, promises, and your own reasoning out of your head and onto paper or a file, where they cannot be re-described, forgotten, or overloaded.

How to do it

1. 1During any consequential conversation, write the concrete claims as they are made: prices, dates, names, what was promised, what you were told would happen if you refused.
2. 2Immediately afterward, write the decision you are being asked to make in one sentence and list the reasons for and against as separate lines.
3. 3Note what you do not know and how you would find out. A blank in this list is a reason to pause.
4. 4For recurring decisions, keep a decision journal: date, decision, expected outcome, confidence. Review it quarterly; this is how you learn which persuaders and which of your own instincts to trust.
5. 5If someone later says "that is not what I said", compare to the record rather than to your memory.

When to use it

• •Sales, negotiation, and recruitment conversations with many moving parts.
• •Disputes where the other person's account of past conversations keeps shifting.
• •Complex offers (bundles, subscriptions, financing) built to overload you.
• •Your own repeated decisions, so you can detect systematic errors.

Counters

Evidence and how strong it is

Working memory is small and manipulable: cognitive-load theory (Sweller 1988) shows that reasoning degrades when the elements to be held in mind exceed a handful, which is exactly what complex offers exploit. Externalizing removes that constraint; the WHO surgical safety checklist (Haynes et al. 2009) cut complications and deaths across eight hospitals by forcing written and spoken confirmation of steps that experts "knew" but skipped under load. Contemporaneous records are also the clinical-consensus defense against gaslighting (Stern 2007) and the evidentiary foundation for consumer and workplace disputes. Decision journals are a practitioner tradition, recommended in Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, without controlled trials of their own. Evidence strength: strong for the load mechanism and for checklists in high-stakes settings; consensus rather than trial evidence for the interpersonal uses.

1. Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on Learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257-285
   The working-memory limits that make overload tactics work and that externalizing removes.
2. Haynes, A. B., Weiser, T. G., Berry, W. R., et al. (2009). A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population. New England Journal of Medicine, 360(5), 491-499 · link
   Evidence that a written, spoken checklist improves outcomes even among experts, the strongest demonstration of externalization.
3. Stern, R. (2007). The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life. Morgan Road Books
   Clinical recommendation of contemporaneous records as a defense against reality-distorting manipulation.