Since 2016, I started to follow a self improvement regime :person_running:. I began with an exercise routine, followed it up with journaling, then blogging, and meditation (buddhism). To date, I have lost weight, gained muscle, feel more in control, have a clean bill of health, and more clear in my goals.
However, in the last few months, I have been frustrated with myself. I constantly make the same mistakes, and in retrospective should have performed better. At times, I feel having a TODO list actually adds to procrastination and then hurries me up to finish the queued work.
Upon a reread of How Not to Be Wrong, it suddenly occurred to me that I need to follow what I’ve been preaching to my software engineering teams, i.e. to keep a running log of my mistakes, and forcing post mortems.
I came up with a mistake log line:
- Date
- Mistake: Free form text of what I did incorrectly
- Category: Relationship, Friendship, Finance, Work
- Causes: reasons that led to the mistake
- Root: underlying issue
- Fix: a workaround to not make the same mistake again
I journal these log lines in a tabular format, and since all of my journals are version controlled, it will make for an ongoing record of all my failings.
Writing this log line is surprisingly hard.
My guess is that I do not want to dwell on my mistake as it is too painful to recollect. I am hoping that it will still be worth it over time :grinning_face_with_sweat: to become better in my decision making :glowing_star:.