# Decision Athlete > Clinical performance practice for eight-figure founders. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages - [About](https://www.decisionathlete.com/about.md) - Judgement is not a trait. It is a capacity- something with a physiology underneath it, something that runs on inputs, something that varies with the condition of the person exercising it. The variables that govern that condition can be measured, and in sport they are measured, continuously, as a ma… - [Contact](https://www.decisionathlete.com/contact.md) - If you want to have a conversation, write personally to dermot@decisionathlete.com. Say who you are and why this interested you. There is no form. - [Essays](https://www.decisionathlete.com/essays.md) - [(Untitled)](https://www.decisionathlete.com/home-hero.md) - Moving between airports, apartments, and temporary routines, Between Cities is a novel about the restless rhythm of modern life—belonging, ambition, and the search for permanence when the ground never stays still. - [The Engagement](https://www.decisionathlete.com/the-engagement.md) - This is an outline of what the year looks like, not a programme you download and complete. It's a private investigation of one person’s physiology and cognition, run long enough that you can see what actually moves. It is always completely individual, nonetheless a broad overview is helpful. It is… - [Writing](https://www.decisionathlete.com/writing.md) - Essays, notes, and shorter pieces—work published between the books, in motion. ## Posts - [20. History's Bad Days](https://www.decisionathlete.com/20-historys-bad-days.md) - In June 1961, the two most powerful men on earth met in Vienna to take each other's measure. John F. Kennedy arrived at the summit with Nikita Khrushchev carrying severe chronic back pain, an assortment of underlying conditions the public knew nothing about, and a medication regimen that historians… - [19. The Asset Your Investors Already Price](https://www.decisionathlete.com/19-the-asset-your-investors-already-price.md) - If the thesis running through this site still strikes you as eccentric, the founder's physical state as a material business variable, stop listening to what anyone says and watch what the money does. Capital, unlike commentary, has to put a number on its beliefs. And capital has been pricing your c… - [18. You Already Have a Protocol](https://www.decisionathlete.com/18-you-already-have-a-protocol.md) - If the phrase "state management" still sounds exotic to you, something for astronauts and tennis players, consider what you've done since waking up today. The coffee was a pharmacological intervention: a stimulant, dosed by habit, taken to move your nervous system from where it was to where the mor… - [17. The Red Eye](https://www.decisionathlete.com/17-the-red-eye.md) - Pick the most consequential meeting of your last quarter. The odds are good that you flew to it, and reasonable that you landed the same morning. The founder's load profile has a feature almost no other deciding profession shares: the constant collision of long-haul travel with high-stakes judgemen… - [16. The Long Career](https://www.decisionathlete.com/16-the-long-career.md) - The athlete analogy that runs through this entire series has a flaw, and having leaned on the comparison for fourteen essays, I owe you the place where it breaks. Athletes retire at thirty-five. The whole architecture of sport (the short seasons, the brutal peaks, the willingness to spend the body)… - [15. A Study of One](https://www.decisionathlete.com/15-a-study-of-one.md) - The sharpest objection to everything on this site hasn't been addressed yet, and it deserves to be, because the readers I want are exactly the ones who'll raise it. It goes: this is very persuasive, which is precisely the problem. Can you actually measure decision readiness, or is this a plausible… - [14. What Remains](https://www.decisionathlete.com/14-what-remains.md) - At some point in these essays, a certain kind of founder (the mature kind, the one who has genuinely built an organisation) has been quietly exempting themself. The reasoning goes: this was true of me five years ago, but honestly, I don't make that many decisions anymore. I've hired well. Things ar… - [13. The 3am Call](https://www.decisionathlete.com/13-the-3am-call.md) - There is a fair objection to the periodisation argument, and if you've run a company through anything interesting, you've already raised it. The calls that nearly ended you were not in the calendar. The co-founder who resigned on a Sunday. The acquirer who phoned with a deadline attached. The breac… - [12. The Weather You Make](https://www.decisionathlete.com/12-the-weather-you-make.md) - Anyone who has worked near a founder knows the phenomenon, though nobody puts it in the handbook: the whole office knows what state you're in before you've said a word. You've seen it from the other side, earlier in your career: the almost instant, building-wide awareness that today the boss is tig… - [11. The Altitude Problem](https://www.decisionathlete.com/11-the-altitude-problem.md) - There is an assumption built into every founder's mental model of their own career, so deep it's never even examined: that the judgement problem gets easier as the company succeeds. More resources, better people, more experience, more pattern-matching in the tank. The early years were the hard ones… - [10. Calm Is Not The Goal](https://www.decisionathlete.com/10-calm-is-not-the-goal.md) - At some point in the last fifteen years, the entire advisory apparatus around senior people converged on a single answer, and the answer was calm. Meditate. Breathe. Lower the heart rate. Down-regulate. The implicit model of the ideal decision-maker became a kind of executive monk: serene, unhurrie… - [9. The Oldest Instrument](https://www.decisionathlete.com/9-the-oldest-instrument.md) - In the early 1990s, a neurologist in Iowa began seeing a patient who should have been fine. A tumour had been removed from the front of his brain, and by every standard measure the surgery was a success: intelligence intact, memory intact, language, logic, knowledge, all of it tested normal. The ma… - [8. The Order of Operations](https://www.decisionathlete.com/8-the-order-of-operations.md) - Open the drawer. Most founders at your level have one: the supplements, the stack assembled from a podcast and a clever friend and a clinic in California, the compounds with the interesting names, possibly the peptides, the things taken because someone credible said they sharpen focus or speed reco… - [7. Your Season Never Ends](https://www.decisionathlete.com/7-your-season-never-ends.md) - Ask any serious athlete when their final is and they will tell you the date, the venue, and probably the hour, from months out. More than that: every week between now and then already has a shape, and the shape was drawn backwards from that date. Loads rise and fall on schedule. Recovery is placed,… - [6. This Is Not Wellness](https://www.decisionathlete.com/6-this-is-not-wellness.md) - Somewhere in the last few essays, a word formed in your head, and the word was doing you a disservice. The word is wellness, and the moment it attaches to an idea, the idea gets filed, next to the ice bath, the retreat, the supplement subscription, the breathing app you opened four times. Filed, sp… - [5. You Already Own the Watch](https://www.decisionathlete.com/5-you-already-own-the-ring.md) - There is a decent chance you are reading this while wearing a device that measured your heart rate variability last night. You bought it two or three years ago. For the first month you checked it every morning. You learned your scores, developed opinions about them, mentioned them at dinner. Then t… - [4. Nobody's Job](https://www.decisionathlete.com/4-nobodys-job.md) - Suppose the previous essays landed. You accept that your judgement has a physical input side, that its variance is the most expensive thing in your company, and that you'd like it measured and managed the way everything else you own is measured and managed. Tomorrow morning you decide to get it han… - [3. The Invoice That Never Arrives](https://www.decisionathlete.com/3-the-invoice-that-never-arrives.md) - Count your decisions. Not the daily hundreds - the approvals, the replies, the scheduling triage. Count the real ones. The decisions from the last twelve months that actually bent the company's trajectory: the hire you did or didn't make at the top of the org, the round you took on those terms, the… - [2. The Input Side](https://www.decisionathlete.com/2-the-input-side.md) - The quality of your judgment is not constant. Same name, same CV, same intelligence, same experience. Some days, you make the calls that built the company: the sharp reads, the well-timed refusals, the hire everyone else missed. On other days, you make the calls you do not talk about. Your board ha… - [1. The Unaudited Asset](https://www.decisionathlete.com/1-the-unaudited-asset.md) - At some point in the last month, you made a decision worth more than your house. You probably made it in a hotel lobby, or in the car between meetings, or at 10:40 at night after a day that started with a 6am flight. You made it quickly, because that is what you are good at, and because there were… ## Optional - [RSS Feed](https://www.decisionathlete.com/essays/rss/) - [Sitemap](https://www.decisionathlete.com/sitemap.xml) - [Full content of pages and posts](https://www.decisionathlete.com/llms-full.txt)