Trace

Attach a short record to anything that matters, saying where it came from, which version it is, why you decided that, and what changed since.

Your migraines got better this spring and you have no idea why. Somewhere in the last eight months you cut evening coffee, started magnesium, moved bedtime an hour earlier, and swapped pillows after a podcast episode you half remember. Your neurologist asks what changed. You say, honestly, a bunch of things. She asks when. You guess. The improvement is real, and you cannot repeat it, defend it, or safely undo one piece of it.

Trace means keeping a record that travels with a result: where each input came from, which version you are on, why you made the call, and what has changed since. The cue is any outcome you would hate to have to explain later and could not. Here, open one page and list every change with its date, the source that prompted it, and one line on why. Label today's setup v3. From now on, change one thing at a time and log it before you start. What changes is that the next flare becomes readable. You can drop the magnesium alone and watch what happens, and your neurologist gets eight months of evidence instead of a shrug. When stakes are low and reversing costs nothing, the logging is pure overhead, so skip it.