#lessons-learned

Most goal achievement is about identifying the dead ends—all the ways you’re unable to reach your goal—and learning from your mistakes.

It’s the learning from what doesn’t work for you, in a specific setting or context, and finding out what does, that makes achieving goals possible.

Hence the benefit of writing down what you learn along the way. Because if you write it down in the moment, when you learn it, you’ll remember it next time, and be one step closer to the goal you set out to accomplish.

Here’s a pro tip to get you in the habit: anytime you learn something related to a goal you’ve set—be it losing five pounds or getting a raise—write it down.

Write down what you learned in a journal, or, preferably, a word doc, or your writing app of choice. Mark it with the hashtag #lessons-learned for easily retrieval (you can search for it by hashtag later) and save it to a master list of learned lessons.

There, you now have a go-to catalog for all the things you’ve learned (and will learn) on your way to realizing what you set out to. I can’t think of a better resource.