CAPTURE

Record important information the moment it appears or changes, before it evaporates.

Sitting in the exam room, your doctor asks how often the dizziness happens. You genuinely cannot remember. It was bad twice in July, or was it June? Something about mornings? The appointment you waited five weeks for runs on a fuzzy paraphrase of your own body, and the treatment plan inherits the fuzziness.

Capture means recording important state at the moment it appears or changes, before it evaporates. The cue is any information you will need later that currently exists only in the moment: a symptom, a decision, a promise, a lesson. The operation is small. First, notice the event while it is happening. Second, write the minimum useful record right then, such as date, what occurred, and the question it raises. Third, put the record where your future retrieval will actually look, like one symptom log, not a random note. When it works, your next appointment runs on evidence: "eight episodes since June, seven within an hour of waking." The spec is equally clear on when to stop: logging every bite and heartbeat can feed health anxiety when a brief symptom-triggered record, or no record at all, would do. Capture what changes decisions, not everything that happens.