On keeping a log

For years my process for finishing anything looked the same: build it, use it for a while, then forget every decision that went into it the moment something newer showed up.

That's fine for throwaway work, but it means the useful failures never get passed forward, not even to myself. I've reopened old projects and had no idea why I'd made a particular choice, only that I clearly had a reason at the time.

A log doesn't need to be polished to be worth keeping. It needs to exist before the details fade, which is the part I've historically been worst at.

So this is the first entry in what I'm hoping becomes a habit rather than a one-off. Ask me again in six months whether it stuck.