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Decision wheel

Write the options on the wheel and spin. The useful part is often not the result: when it lands you either feel relief or reach straight for another spin, and that reaction is the answer the list could not give you.

This wheel is already set up for the job. Open it in the editor to change the list, the machine or the odds.

Every spin draws from your browser’s cryptographic random source. How a draw is made sets out the method and its limits.

Open this wheel in the editor

When is a wheel the right tool, and when is it not?

It is right when the options are all genuinely acceptable and the cost of deciding has overtaken the cost of being wrong — which film, which route, which of two equally good offers. If you would be content with any segment on the rim, the wheel is only saving you the deliberation.

It is the wrong tool for anything you cannot undo, and for anything involving money, health, law or somebody else’s consent. A wheel has no information about your situation. Use it where being decided matters more than being right, and nowhere else.

Two options, or ten?

Between four and eight is where a wheel earns its place. With two segments it is a coin flip with extra steps; with twenty you are reading a list again, which is what you were trying to stop doing.

If the list is long, cut it before you spin. Take off everything you would be annoyed to get, and the wheel is choosing between options you have already accepted rather than gambling with ones you have not.

What if I have already half-decided?

Weight it, and be honest about by how much. Giving one option a three out of a total of eight says you lean towards it without committing — and the segment widths make that lean visible instead of quietly building it into the result.

Then watch what you do with the answer. Spinning again is not cheating; it is data. The wheel is at its most useful in the second between the result appearing and you deciding whether to accept it.

What else is this wheel good for?

It is the plain picker wheel with your options on it. When the question really is a straight yes or no, the yes or no wheel is two segments, an optional maybe, and one press.

The same wheel with a menu on it decides what to eat. With prizes on it and the weights set, it becomes a prize wheel.

Questions about deciding with a wheel