What went wrong?

Now, when I type M-x www into Emacs (apologies to that ~100% of the world that aren't Emacs nerds) it automatically sets me up with a date-stamped entry in a file called "what-went-wrong.txt".

Wait, let me back up.

I make mistakes. A lot of mistakes. They're mostly small ones, since generally I only do small things. But they get me down. Becoming older and less patient with myself hasn't helped.

They say it's okay to make mistakes, and I buy that. But they also say it's good to learn from one's mistakes. I think that's easily done for big ones. Touching a hot stove element, perhaps, or losing a bunch of work due to a tiny mistake on the command line. But for screwups that seem to occur directly as a result of my particular personality type, it's much harder, since these problems occur due to habits so ingrained in my being that they're part of my DNA. How do I learn from those mistakes, enough that I actually start committing them less frequently?

I thought about it a bit, and then thought: write them down. When something, big or small, goes wrong, I write it down right away in a simple, date-stamped file. After each entry of what the problem is, I write what I think might be the lesson to take away from problem to prevent it from happening again. I write the same lesson down over and over again if I have to. It's low-ceremony, and takes seconds. Then I review this file once in a while.

This isn't dwelling on the negative. It's just a very simple way of measuring where I should be focusing. If I screw up the same thing over and over again, maybe reviewing this file will shame me into actually changing my behaviour enough to minimize how often these problems occur.

When I start seeing some value come of tracking these mistakes and remaking them less often, it will be time to create a M-x wwr command. That will be a good day.