Personal & Life
Stay or Go Decision Board: Separate Feelings from Facts and Decide by a Set Date
Intermediate | 1 whiteboard page · Task board: 5 columns (5 parent tasks, 13 subtasks)
Intermediate: Method names appear, but the whiteboard explains the key points. Use the examples as a guide and fill it in, thinking it through for your own situation.
This stay-or-go decision template is for anyone who has spent two weeks or more torn between quitting and staying in their current job and wants to reach a decision by a set date. The whiteboard holds seven areas — the reasons written as concrete incidents, a mind map that splits them six ways, a decision matrix of what you can change against what you can live with, and a pros-and-cons comparison of moving (Pros-Cons). The task board runs five columns — All complaints, Checking facts, Testing, Evidence in, Decided — and starts with 5 parent tasks and 13 subtasks, all not started. Because the decision day goes into the calendar first, you stop carrying the same doubt for another six months and settle it on facts you checked yourself.
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Stay or Go Decision Board
How to use: write it as incidents → sort what you can change → test the stay option → decide on the day you set
1. Where the Limit Is (write the reasons as incidents)
- The incident that bites most e.g. Handed a deck at 6 p.m. Friday, due Monday morning. Third time since April.
- What you want instead e.g. Two hours to study on weeknights, and Sunday evenings that do not feel heavy.
- Confirmed facts - Overtime over the last three months: 38 / 42 / 45 hours (time records) - One review a year, raises of roughly 1 percent
- Still to check - Market pay for the same role, read off three live job posts
2. Breaking the Reasons Down (which of six areas is heaviest)
- Why I want
to leave
- People Clash with my boss
- The work No say in decisions
- Pay and terms 40h overtime, flat pay
- Future No path in five years
- Mind and body Sunday nights are heavy
- Life fit 2h round-trip commute
3. Sorting It Out (can you change it, and can you live with it)
Vertical axis: How little you can stand it (higher, closer to the limit) / Horizontal axis: How much you can change it (further right, more movable)
- Reasons to leave Set by policy, outside your reach, and not something you can keep living with.
- Negotiate first Likely to move if you ask. Raise it in section 5, and shift it left if nothing changes.
- Accept it Comes with the territory almost anywhere. Do not count it as a reason to leave.
- Fix in passing Small asks that usually get through. Clear them while you are already talking.
4. Moving: The Pros and Cons (Pros-Cons - green and red are comparison colours)
Good points (Pros)
- Offer range sits 10 to 25 percent above current pay
- Gets me into planning work I have not done
Downsides (Cons)
- Loses the promotion and raise lined up for spring
- Relearn the work and the people. Leave and severance reset
5. If You Stay, Test These (read the results in four weeks)
- Ask in the Oct 10 one-on-one whether overtime can come down
- File a transfer request to planning at the October review
- Check with HR whether remote can go to two days a week
6. Cut-off Conditions, Set Before You Compare in Section 4
- Both requests still under review as of November 7
- Overtime still over 40 hours a month in November
- The floor on three job posts sits at least 10 percent above current pay
7. Who to Ask, and What to Ask Them
- Boss: whether a transfer is possible, and the outlook on overtime
- Same role elsewhere: market pay, and what changed after moving
- Family: whether we can live on lower income for three months
Task board contents
All complaints 18 items
List every complaint
A complaint you only turn over in your head feels bigger than it is. Get them all out first and see how many there really are.
Write 10 incidents
Write ten in a form that shows when, who, and what was done. Not a bad atmosphere, but the actual scene.
Sort fact vs feeling
Colour-code what you can verify in records or policy against how you took it. Do not judge with the two mixed.
Mark the 3 worst
Pick the three you feel you could stay if they went away. Every talk and comparison runs on those three.
Sort what can change
Separate what only leaving can fix from what shifts if you ask. Skip this and you resign on momentum.
Plot on the matrix
For each complaint, place it on the grid in section 3 by whether you or your boss can move it. Set by policy goes on the left.
Raise it one-on-one
In a one-on-one (your regular private catch-up with your boss), raise exactly one item from the top right. Open with numbers such as overtime hours, not feelings.
Name your time limit
Write in months how much longer you could carry this. It feeds the deadline and stops the drift.
Test the stay option
Weighing only the leave option against an untested stay option is a one-sided comparison. Put both on the same footing first.
Try two changes
Actually ask for two things that might move, such as less overtime or more remote days, and see what comes back.
Ask about transfers
Check with HR how and when transfer requests are filed. If it is once a year, your deadline sits differently.
Set a 4-week limit
Write on the card the date by which you expect an answer. Do not settle into waiting with no end.
Set the decision day
Without a date the doubt runs for six months. Put the decision day in the calendar even if the evidence is thin.
Pick a weekday date
Choose one weekday within six weeks and commit to deciding that day. Agree up front that you may push it once, no more.
Choose two advisers
Pick one person outside work and one at home. Ask everyone and the views split until you cannot decide.
Decide and move on
On the day you set, read the pros and cons in section 4 and call it. Either way, write down what you do next.
Weigh pros and cons
Compare the pros and cons in section 4 and settle on stay or move, that same day.
Log why in one line
Leave one line on what you decided it on. If the doubt returns in six months, you skip the same review.
