Background
By the time this decision was made, the family had already travelled a significant distance in life.
Since 2020, a number of major projects had been completed:
- Acquisition of a country plot
- Construction of a guest house
- Construction of a workshop
- Construction of a storage building
- Construction of a barrel sauna
- Construction of a fence
- Construction of the main family home
Over this period, an enormous number of engineering, financial, organisational, and family decisions had been made. Most of them were never recorded anywhere. Some decisions can no longer be fully reconstructed.
The experience gained turned out to be far more valuable than originally expected. A need emerged to preserve not only results, but also the process of making decisions itself.
The Problem
Most families make dozens of important decisions every day.
| Time | What is lost |
|---|---|
| After a few months | The reasons behind decisions |
| After a few years | The decisions themselves |
What is usually published publicly is only the final result. There is very little information about:
- which alternatives were considered;
- why one particular option was chosen;
- what mistakes were made;
- what consequences emerged months or years later.
And so the most valuable part of any experience is lost.
Options Considered
Advantages
- No additional effort required
Disadvantages
- Accumulated experience is lost
- Own mistakes cannot be analysed
- Experience cannot be passed on to children
- It is impossible to help others
Advantages
- Simple publishing process
- Familiar format
Disadvantages
- Only the final result is published
- No architecture of decisions
- Information is difficult to find quickly
- Events are not connected to one another
Advantages
- The entire project history is preserved
- The logic behind decisions is recorded
- A unified knowledge base is created
- Experience becomes useful to others
Disadvantages
- An architecture must be created
- Documentation requires discipline
The Decision
The Project Leader has decided to create Project №60 «Life by Design» — an open ecosystem of family decisions, built on the family's real-life experience.
The construction of the family home is defined as the first practical project within the ecosystem. All future areas develop according to shared architectural principles.
Rationale
Building a home brings together almost every type of life decision:
At the same time, the project is not limited to construction. As the ecosystem develops, it should expand to include other areas of family life.
Objectives
- Create a digital memory of the family
- Create a unified knowledge base
- Establish a system for documenting important life decisions
- Create an open source of practical experience
- Pass accumulated experience on to future generations
- Build a community of people who find real family experience useful
Consequences and Responsibilities
Following approval: all decisions follow the document system; DEC-001 is the starting point; all later documents connect to this decision.
| Role | Callsign | Responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| Project Leader | Oleg | Strategy, final decisions |
| Co-author | Yulia | Family perspective, project development |
| Chief Project Architect | GAP | Architecture, documents, integrity |
| Chief Project Engineer | GIP | GitHub, automation, AI, implementation |
Success Criteria
- The project's foundational standards documents have been approved
- The project's digital foundation has been created
- A unified information storage system has been organised
- Regular family diary entries have begun
- Every significant decision is documented as a DEC document