About this quote

Memory is messy, and our personal histories get cluttered fast. If you do not actively sort through your old mistakes, you end up making them again because they blend into the background of your life. It takes work to organize your failures, write them down, and look at them clearly. Are you actually keeping track of where you tripped up last month? Sorting the facts of your life keeps you from running on autopilot straight into the same wall.

When to use it

• You look at your bank statement and realize you forgot to cancel another free trial, just like you did three months ago. You tell yourself, 'I need to start keeping a list of these sign-up dates, otherwise I'm just throwing cash away on repeat.'
• After your team misses a launch deadline because of the same vendor delay as last quarter, you bring up the need for a central incident log in the meeting. 'We didn't document what went wrong last time, so we just walked right back into the same mess today.'
• You are nursing the same shoulder strain from lifting too heavy because you ignored your previous training logs. 'I keep forgetting which exercises trigger this pain because I do not write anything down, and now I am back on the bench.'