My new action plan is an analysis tool that I used over the summer called Decision Pad. Pacific Bell's Contracting and Procurement Department uses Decision Pad to justify hiring companies for contract work. Project managers define their project's criteria and assign criteria's weight values to determine a final decision. As criterion develops and many companies are considered, the task of making a decision becomes difficult to do just in your head. That is where the Decision Pad tool is used.
Most decisions lead to action, and action to some kind of consequence or result.
But psychologists have shown that the number of pieces of data the mind can comfortably hold in attention at one time is about four. But no matter what your limit is, at times we have all felt buried in data. A notebook may do well for merely holding them, but as you feed data into Decision Pad they automatically become logically interrelated. Although the previous is software hype, the basic idea can be scaled down for classroom use. To demonstrate, let me go through an example of purchasing a car.