Harvard Business Essentials, Decision Making

and cons as a single piece; that made it difficult to weight the posi-

tive and negative aspects of the alternatives. His remedy, as Franklin

explained to Priestley, was to place them all together and to mentally

assign weights or priorities to each.

My way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns,

writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con.Then during three

or four days’ consideration I put down under the different heads short

hints of the different motives that at different times occur to me for or

against the measure.When I have thus got them all together in one

view, I endeavour to estimate their respective weights, and ...