A good decision can lead to a bad outcome, and a bad decision to a lucky one. Judging a choice only by how it turned out — ‘resulting’ — teaches the wrong lessons. Judge the process.
Judge a decision by its quality at the time, not by how it happened to turn out.
Former professional poker player Annie Duke calls it ‘resulting’: the habit of judging the quality of a decision by the quality of its outcome. Run a red light and arrive safely, and resulting says you made a good call. Drive carefully and get hit by a drunk driver, and resulting says you erred. Both conclusions are nonsense — because outcomes are a mix of decision quality and luck, and you only control one of them.
Life, like poker, deals you decisions under uncertainty with incomplete information. The skilled move is to separate the two: ask whether the decision was sound given what you knew and the odds you faced, regardless of how the dice landed this time. Good processes still produce occasional bad results, and reckless bets sometimes pay off. If you learn only from outcomes, you’ll punish good thinking after bad luck and reward bad thinking after good luck. Bet on better decisions, and let the results average out over time.
It stops luck from teaching you the wrong lessons, so you keep improving the only thing you control: the decision itself.
Read as “judge by results.” “Resulting” is the trap: a good outcome can follow a bad decision (luck), and vice versa. When chance is involved you must judge the quality of the decision given what was knowable at the time — not let the result rewrite whether the call was wise.
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