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The 37signals Guide to Making Decisions is a set of 38 questions teams can use to think through a choice, from whether a decision is needed to who should make it and how its consequences will be assessed. The questions are optional prompts—not a required checklist, a scoring system, or a guarantee of a good outcome.
What the 37signals decision guide is
37signals describes its guide as a collection of general principles it tries to keep in mind when making decisions. It opens: “A company is essentially two things: a group of people and a collection of decisions. How those people make these decisions is the art of running a business. This guide shows how we do it.” The statement is from the official 37signals guide, rather than attributed there to a named speaker. Read the guide on 37signals.
The guide explicitly says its principles are not requirements and do not make up a comprehensive checklist. It offers ways to reflect on a decision and the process around it. There is no prescribed order or scoring method: use the questions that help clarify the choice at hand.
All 38 questions in the guide
The following prompts are presented in the source’s order. Their range is useful: some test whether to decide at all, while others examine ownership, timing, effects, and trade-offs.
- Why are we deciding anything at all? Does a decision actually need to be made here?
- Is the right person making this decision? Not the right role, but the right person with the right information, context, and insight? Who’s merely chiming in?
- If we remove the immediate impact, how do we think we’ll feel about this decision a year from now?
- Why hasn’t this decision been made already? Why didn’t we decide before?
- What’s taking so long to make this decision? Why are we hesitating? What does that reveal?
- Why would someone else make a different decision? What’s the other side — or two or three — look like?
- Can we make this decision smaller? Can we take one big decision and turn it into three smaller ones?
- How easily can we reverse the decision?
- What was our first instinct on this decision? Are we now just walking around in circles trying to justify that gut reaction with data?
- What would happen if we just didn’t make the decision?
- What happened the last time we made a decision like this?
- What are we looking forward to after the decision is made? What are we afraid of?
- How can we make this decision easier? What parts can we eliminate from consideration?
- Is there even a wrong decision?
- Do we anticipate making a different decision if we wait until tomorrow morning to make it?
- Is any decision better than no decision, or is no decision better than any decision?
- What other decisions will be impacted by this decision?
- Will this decision eliminate the need to make other decisions, or will it create the necessity to make even more decisions?
- What missing information would lead to making a different decision?
- Will this decision make more work for people that don’t have extra time for that work? Or will it eliminate work?
- Could this decision be a good one for someone else to practice making?
- When do we have to decide?
- Will this be a one-and-done decision, or will this be a repeating decision?
- Is anyone outside the company depending on this, or is this a decision of our own making?
- How does this decision impact customers vs. impact us?
- Is this primarily a data-based decision, or an intuition, gut-based decision?
- Would another opinion help or hinder?
- If we were forced to make a decision right this second, what would it be?
- Where do we think we’d be today if we made this decision 90 days ago?
- Is there anything in this decision we’d regret if we didn’t take X, Y, or Z into consideration?
- Do you even care which way this goes? If not, why are you involved?
- When and how will we know whether the decision was the right one, or if it even mattered?
- When the consequences of our decision appear, are they likely to be visible with the naked eye or do they require a microscope to detect? If the latter, does it even matter?
- What principles are we bending if we make this decision?
- Are we asking multiple people to make a decision that one person should be making?
- Is the return on effort worth it?
- What gets easier if we make this decision? What gets harder? Will easier remain easier in the long term, or is it short-term easy but long-term hard? And vice versa.
- In the end, is this about money?
How to use the questions in a real decision
Treat the guide as a conversation aid, not a process that must be completed from top to bottom. A team can select a few prompts that expose the main uncertainty or risk, then return to the others if the decision remains unclear.
Start by testing whether a decision is needed
Ask, “Why are we deciding anything at all? Does a decision actually need to be made here?” Then consider what happens if the group does nothing for now. This helps distinguish a genuine choice with consequences from pressure to act simply because a question has been raised.
Clarify ownership and alternatives
Identify who has the information, context, and insight to decide—not merely who holds the relevant job title or has joined the discussion. Invite alternatives by asking why someone might choose differently. The guide also asks whether additional opinions would help or hinder, and whether a decision that belongs to one person has been spread across too many people.
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Make the choice manageable
Consider whether a large, difficult-to-reverse commitment can be divided into smaller choices. Ask how easily the decision can be reversed and what information could genuinely change the answer. These questions can help separate a choice that calls for more investigation from one that can be tested or revisited in smaller steps.
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Weigh delay, impact, and effort
Check when a decision is actually due, what waiting might change, and whether the choice affects customers, colleagues, outside parties, or other decisions. Examine whether the expected return justifies the work it creates or removes, especially for people who are already short on time. The guide also asks what will become easier or harder and whether that effect is temporary or lasting.
Decide how to evaluate the outcome
Before acting, consider when and how the team will know whether the decision worked—or whether it mattered. Some consequences are obvious; others are difficult to detect and may not justify extensive measurement. The guide offers this as a question for judgment, not a prescribed metric or evaluation method.
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What the guide does—and does not—establish
The 38 prompts are a practical framework for reflection on decision ownership, alternatives, timing, reversibility, information, consequences, effort, and money. The count refers to the questions on the page; it is not a research statistic. The guide publishes no named quantitative finding about decision quality or the effectiveness of its prompts.
The guide is a work in progress and invites questions and suggestions to Jason Fried. No publication or revision date is stated on the page, so its wording may change. Check the current version directly.
Format and optional further reading
The guide is presented as a web page. The 37signals books catalog does not list a physical edition of this guide. For readers who want a more formal decision-science treatment, MIT Press lists Baruch Fischhoff’s Decisions: Studying and Supporting People Facing Hard Choices in paperback and ebook formats, with a publication date of October 14, 2025. It is a separate book, not a 37signals publication or an endorsement by the guide. See the MIT Press book page for publisher details.
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