LLenny's Podcast
← All frameworks
Productivity

Decision Importance Triage

Spend judgment on the few decisions that matter and keep everything else moving

Difficulty
Easy
Time to result
~days to results
Steps
5
Confidence
99%

Decision Importance Triage begins one level above the choice itself: first determine how much the decision matters. Chu suggests testing whether it is reversible and whether it materially affects many users. Those signals separate the few consequential decisions from the other 98 or 99 percent. Human attention is limited, so the leader spends deliberate analysis and judgment on the critical set. Everything else is delegated or decided quickly from experience, accepting that intuition will often be good enough. This preserves team velocity and prevents the PM from becoming a blocker. Experience also improves the threshold: after seeing supposedly dire choices produce little consequence, a leader can raise the bar for what deserves intensive attention while remaining careful not to dismiss genuinely important decisions too casually.

Origin

Chu summarized the method from his most enduring product-management post, which argued that the first task in any decision is determining the decision's importance.

Core principles

  • 01The importance of a decision should be decided before the decision itself
  • 02Reversibility and material user impact are practical importance tests
  • 03A small minority of decisions deserve nearly all deliberate attention
  • 04Low-importance decisions should be delegated or made quickly with judgment
  • 05A leader should not become the blocker that reduces team velocity

How to run it

  1. 1

    Assess reversibility

    Ask whether the choice can be undone or cheaply corrected. A one-way or costly-to-reverse choice deserves more attention than an experiment that can be rolled back.

    Watch out Do not mistake emotional discomfort for irreversibility.

  2. 2

    Assess material reach

    Estimate how many users the decision affects and whether the effect is meaningful. Move choices with broad, material consequences toward the critical set.

    Pro tip Use both scale and severity rather than user count alone.

  3. 3

    Separate the critical few

    Rank the queue and identify the small number of choices that warrant concentrated thinking. Explicitly classify the rest as routine.

    Pro tip Force a narrow critical set; calling everything important defeats the method.

    Watch out Over time, battle scars can make a leader too dismissive, so revisit the threshold deliberately.

  4. 4

    Clear routine decisions fast

    Delegate low-importance choices or make them promptly using your judgment. Accept reasonable error in exchange for keeping the team moving.

    Watch out Do not let a routine decision wait simply because perfect information is unavailable.

  5. 5

    Concentrate on the critical set

    Spend the saved time examining the few decisions whose consequences justify it. After outcomes arrive, use them to recalibrate what you classify as important.

    Pro tip Review past decisions that felt catastrophic but produced little lasting damage.

In the wild

Illustrative product decision queue

A PM has dozens of interface and sequencing questions plus one hard-to-reverse policy change affecting most customers. The PM delegates routine interface choices, makes reversible sequencing calls quickly, and reserves deep analysis for the policy decision.

→ The team keeps shipping while scarce leadership attention goes to the choice with the largest durable consequence.

Common mistakes

Giving every decision equal weight

Treating routine choices like existential ones consumes the attention needed for the few decisions that can materially change the product.

Becoming the decision bottleneck

Holding low-stakes choices for more analysis reduces team velocity without a proportionate gain in decision quality.

Is it for you?

Best for

It is best for PMs and leaders handling hundreds of choices with limited time and attention.

Not ideal for

It is not ideal when legal, safety, or regulatory obligations require formal review even for apparently small decisions.

From the episode

Brandon Chu on building product at Shopify, how writing changed the trajectory of his career, the habits that make you a great PM, pros and cons of being a platform PM, how Shopify got through Covid

→