[Discussion] dose history is doing more work than we give it credit for

Something I keep coming back to: dose history is doing more work than we give it credit for.

Annotated the fortnight I changed training. Without that note the numbers around it would look like a mystery.

The attribution problem, which is the reason most logs on this board cannot answer the question their owner is asking.

If dose, training, intake and sleep all changed in the same fortnight, no analysis of the resulting numbers can tell you which one moved the outcome. That is not a limitation of your spreadsheet; it is a limitation of the design.

The fix is unglamorous: change one thing at a time, leave it long enough to see, and annotate the weeks where something else intruded anyway — because life will intrude. A log with honest annotations answers questions. A log with four simultaneous changes and a confident conclusion is the most common thing posted here, and it does not.

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.

Corrections welcome, especially the pedantic ones. Pedantry is how this board earns its reputation.