reading log threads from 2024 and half of it aged badly
reading log threads from 2024 and half of it aged badly. It is the sort of thing everyone half-believes and nobody writes down.
Exported the whole thing to a plain text file after nearly losing it in an app that shut down.
Annotated the fortnight I changed training. Without that note the numbers around it would look like a mystery.
The four columns that survive, after several people here have tried and abandoned much more elaborate systems.
Date. Dose. One number measured under consistent conditions. A short note when anything unusual happened. That is it. Anything more and you will stop, and a log you stop keeping is worth less than a crude one you maintain.
Add a waist measurement monthly if you can be bothered, and a sleep column if you want the one variable that explains the most confusing weeks. Everything else can be reconstructed from those, and nothing can be reconstructed from a log you abandoned in week nine.
That is everything I have. The rest is opinion and I have tried to keep it out.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Annotation is what makes a log survive contact with your future self. A single note beside an unusual week saves an hour of puzzled reconstruction later.
Right, and the payoff arrives around month six when a pattern becomes visible that nobody could hold in their head.
Small fix — that is a reconstructed entry rather than a contemporaneous one, and the post presents it as the latter.
Kept one line a week for 8 months. It was pointless for the first eight weeks and then it was the most useful document I owned.
Wrote the concentration into the log as well as on the vial. Have referred back to it more than once.
Added a sleep column late and immediately understood two of my worst weeks.
Logged the missed weeks as blanks rather than skipping them. The gaps turned out to be the informative part.
Left up. Dates, consistent conditions and annotations, which is the standard here.
Reconstructed six weeks from memory once and later found receipts that contradicted my own log. Never again.
Contemporaneous records do not drift; reconstructed ones do, and the drift is systematic rather than random because memory smooths.
log what you did, not what you meant to do
record the dose, the day and one number, that is enough
record the dose, the day and one number, that is enough
Adding the column everyone adds late — sleep. Start with it.
A log is a record of what you did. It is not a protocol, and posting one as a schedule for other members is a different thing that this board does not do.
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.
Built an elaborate spreadsheet, abandoned it by week nine, restarted with four columns and have kept it ever since.
the column you will wish you had is sleep
the column you will wish you had is sleep
Disagreeing with this bit: daily weighing gives you noise and costs you something.
Missing entries recorded as blanks preserve the shape of the series. Dropping them silently makes the remaining points look more regular than they were.
waist monthly, weight weekly, notes whenever
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.
Same conditions each time for the weigh-in?
annotate the weeks where something else changed
That is a waist figure in the weight column. Easy mistake and it makes the chart look dramatic.
That is a waist figure in the weight column.
flair_enthusiast is right about blanks. Silent gaps make the series lie.
Same conditions each time for the weigh-in?
This is the whole discipline in one line. Contemporaneous, consistent, minimal.
Did anything else change in the window you are asking about?
- 1Why contemporaneous beats reconstructed, with the failure mode. Memory…8 comments in this branch · started by u/honest_syringe
- 2Left up. Dates, consistent conditions and annotations, which is the standard…7 comments in this branch · started by u/dose_diary_dana