What your log says, and the three to write next

Jay WestOut of My Head · about 12 min

By the end of this step you have:

Your numbers — questions that reached you, how many were your top kinds, rules written, answered without you
The three questions that, written once, would take the most off your desk
Your own AI reading the log the way the free review does — decisions or steps, and the three to write first — and, with five working days, the option of a read by hand

The idea

Capturing is half of it. A log nobody reads back is still a pile, and the thinking happens when you look at it whole.

Five working days is enough to see the shape. The kinds that kept coming back are the ones worth a rule. The questions that stopped coming are the proof it works. And the count that matters most is the one you started with — how much of the work still has to pass through one person to move.

An example

Say a design agency owner reads back five days — forty-one questions reached her; twenty-three were four kinds; she wrote three rules; by Friday six questions were answered without her. The six are the first week of a business that does not need her for everything.

She also sees what she did not expect — a third of the questions came from one client's account manager. That is not a rule problem. It is a hand-off that was never made.

Do this now

Ten minutes. Read your log from the top, as if someone else wrote it. Look at the numbers above. Then press "Read my log with my AI" and paste it into the AI you use — it reads the log the way the free review does: which questions are decisions, which are steps, and the three to write down first, drafted from your own answers. Write your three at the top of your How I decide note.

What your log says.

Your Question Log: day 1 of 5 · 0 questions reached you · 0 rules written

This step works on 5 or more days of log, and yours has none yet. Log today, come back in 5 days, and do it then. Or fill the log now: paste a week of your messages with “Paste rows instead”. The steps after this one work without it, so you can carry on and come back.

Send my Question Log

Send it

When your log has five working days, press "Send my Question Log" — the form fills itself from it. I read it myself and send back which questions are decisions, which are steps, and the three to write down first. Free, by hand, within five business days; I take about four a month. If the rows belong to your employer, "Copy kinds and counts only" sends the shape without the content. What a person adds that your AI read does not: a second reader, outside your business and outside the AI, who can tell you which questions to stop answering at all, not only what to write down.

Keep going

Keep the log running. Every question that still reaches you is the next rule. The note, the cards and the team project get better every week you feed them, and the count of what reaches you is the number to watch.

Where it goes wrong

Stopping at five days because the course ended. The log is not the course. It is how your business learns to answer without you.

This step is written for this course from the research in the full curriculum. The research behind it, on howtothink.ai (L-0019, L-0951)

While you wait: Out of Your Head, the paid course, takes this method to your first ten written decisions. What it covers

Your first step · step 1 is next

Next: step 1, which the rest build on →

You have the method. Here is what comes next.

Send me your Question Log. Five working days of log, read by me: which questions are decisions, which are steps, and the three to write down first. Free, by hand, about four a month.Send my Question Log
Keep going on your own. Eight modules on your own: your first ten written decisions from your log, fifteen minutes a morning that keeps them true, an AI your team asks that names the note each answer came from, and your own Friday Test of twenty sealed questions. It is being built now; the founding list holds the $297 founding price (it will be $497). See Out of Your Head
Or have it built with you. In the Decision Week I write the decisions down with you in five days, so you do not have to do it alone. See the Decision Week