tried tracking for 13 weeks. here is what happened.
The title is the argument: tried tracking for 13 weeks. here is what happened. Here is the rest of it. Numbers, in the order they matter: 13 weeks. Choose a format you will still be able to open in two years. Plain text or a spreadsheet you export beats an application that may not exist. Annotation is what makes a…
Attribution requires that one thing change at a time. A log with dose, training and intake all moving in the same fortnight cannot assign anything to any of them.
Why contemporaneous beats reconstructed, with the failure mode.
Memory smooths. Reconstructing a fortnight from recollection produces a series that is more regular, more consistent with your current beliefs, and quietly wrong in a direction that flatters the story you are already telling.
I found this out by reconstructing six weeks and later finding order receipts that contradicted my own entries. The log was not a little wrong; it was wrong in exactly the direction that made my narrative work. Write it down on the day, even the boring days, especially the boring days.
Why contemporaneous beats reconstructed, with the failure mode.
This is the whole discipline in one line. Contemporaneous, consistent, minimal.
How long have you been logging?
the boring logs are the useful ones
record the dose, the day and one number, that is enough
Contemporaneous records do not drift; reconstructed ones do, and the drift is systematic rather than random because memory smooths.