Before big decisions, separate the recent trigger from the base rate

Why This Is a Rule

Recency bias makes you over-weight the last data point at the expense of the full distribution. One bad quarter makes you feel the company is failing. One great sprint makes you feel the team has turned a corner. The recent event saturates your emotional state, and that emotional state becomes the basis for consequential decisions — hiring, quitting, investing, committing.

This rule forces a structural correction: before any consequential decision, you must fill in two fields. Field 1: "What recent event is driving my current feeling about this?" Field 2: "What does the base rate or historical trend look like across the full relevant time window?" The act of populating both fields exposes the gap between your emotional state (dominated by recency) and the actual trend (which may tell a completely different story).

When This Fires

• Deciding whether to change strategy after a bad result
• Evaluating someone's performance based on recent interactions
• Making investment, career, or commitment decisions after an emotional event
• Any decision where you feel unusually confident or unusually worried

Common Failure Mode

Filling in both fields but letting the recent event overrule the base rate anyway. "I know the historical trend is positive, but this quarter was really bad" — and then acting as if the quarter is more informative than the trend. The base rate isn't just context. It's the prior that your recent experience should update incrementally, not replace entirely.

The Protocol

Write two sentences before any consequential decision: (1) "I feel [X] about this because [recent event]." (2) "The historical base rate across [time window] is [Y]." If the two tell different stories, the base rate is almost always more reliable. Adjust for the recent event only if you can articulate why this specific event is more diagnostic than the full history.