Definition
Decision hygiene is the habit of not letting the anxious mind sign the contract before the body’s authority has spoken.
Origin
Soll, Milkman, and Payne’s debiasing review groups interventions that widen the decision process — education, choice architecture, pre-commitment, and reflection prompts — because many errors come from narrow thinking under pressure, not missing IQ. Somatic and typology frames (felt sense, inner authority) add a parallel lane: who is answering the question matters as much as what options were listed.
Mechanism
Collect options, sleep, move, then decide from a stable signal (body yes/no, emotional wave settled, splenic hit in coaching vocabulary) rather than rumination loops. Soll et al. note debiasing works best when structure precedes impulse — advance rules, cooling-off periods, and separating analysis from commitment. Maps to Quality of Questions: from which self am I answering? Pair with Human Design only as an optional coaching vocabulary for strategy and authority — not as a journal cite line.
Applications
Before a high-stakes yes: one honest line — did analysis decide, or did the signal decide after analysis finished?
Sources
Cite
- Soll, J. B., Milkman, K. L., & Payne, J. W. (2015). A user’s guide to debiasing. In G. Keren & G. Wu…. The Wiley Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making (pp. 924–951). Wiley