tried tracking for 4 weeks. here is what happened.
tried tracking for 4 weeks. here is what happened. Making the case below, and I expect to lose some of it in the comments. To save the first four comments: 4 weeks. Exported the whole thing to a plain text file after nearly losing it in an app that shut down. Wrote the concentration into the log as well as on the…
How long have you been logging?
Logged the missed weeks as blanks rather than skipping them. The gaps turned out to be the informative part.
I would not draw a trend line through that. Two points and a gap is not a series.
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.
A log is only interpretable if the conditions are consistent. Same day, same time, same state, same scale — otherwise you are recording measurement variability rather than change.
Added a sleep column late and immediately understood two of my worst weeks.