What would you have to write down to catch yourself later?
Why this matters. Two courses have named thirty artefacts between them. This lesson is about what makes a record usable a year later rather than merely written.
Most trading journals fail the same way: they record what happened, which the broker already knows, and omit what was believed, which nothing else stores.
What only you can record
Your statement holds the outcomes. It does not hold the reasoning, the alternative you rejected, the confidence you had, or the condition you said would end the position. Those exist nowhere unless you write them, and they are the entire input to any later question about your decisions.
Four fields that carry almost everything
- The case, in one sentence.
- What would end it — the observable condition, not a price you feel.
- Confidence, one to five, and the count of independent reasons.
- State, one word — from Course 1's state note.
Add the date and the size. That is the whole schema, and it fits on a line.
That line is the entry row. A decision has a second row, written when the position ends, and the base-rate sheet later in this unit cannot be computed without it: date and time of exit, whether the written condition had been met (yes or no), what you did, and the size. The outcome in money goes in a separate column, filled in at a later sitting; that is the ledger from How do you tell a good decision from a good outcome?. Put a time of day on both rows; Course 1's late-session question needs it. Two rows, one schema, still under ninety seconds.
Why brevity is the design constraint
A long form is filled in during calm periods and abandoned during interesting ones — which selects your record toward exactly the decisions least worth studying. A record you keep badly under pressure is worse than a shorter one you keep.
Practitioner testimony: Brett Steenbarger's material on journalling and deliberate practice is the most directly usable in this area, and it is testimony rather than evidence — a practitioner-coach describing what he has seen work.
The artefact
The record schema itself, decided once and not redesigned. A schema that changes every few months produces a file you cannot read across time, and reading across time is the only reason it exists.
Try it now
Write the six fields for your most recent decision. Time it. If it took more than ninety seconds, cut a field — the version you will keep is the one that is nearly free.