The deaths are the data#

An undocumented death is not data. It is an evening.

So the protocol has to be small enough that it survives attempt six, which is where every protocol I have written got abandoned.

One line per attempt#

After every death, before you go back through the fog:

Attempt 12. This time I died because ______, so next time I will ______.

Fifteen seconds, written on the walk back.

If it cannot be done on the walk back, you will stop doing it.

Two lines, and only one of them is worth writing#

I died because I was impatient. Not testable. There is no next attempt that confirms or denies it.

I died because I attacked after the second swing instead of rolling. Testable. One attempt settles it.

The difference is not effort. It is aim: the first sentence is about your character, the second is about the fight.

You already know you are impatient, and it has never once helped you.

Somewhere in here, the fight stops feeling random#

Mark that attempt in your log#

Before the flip, deaths feel like things that happen to you.

After it, deaths feel like mistakes you made — and you can usually say which one before the death animation has finished.

The log is what makes the model visible while it is being built, instead of only afterwards.

What counts#

One boss, properly. Twenty-plus attempts on a single fight is worth far more than a tour of the first area.

If you kill it in six, find a harder one. A fight you beat before you needed a model teaches you nothing about models.

What to bring to week 8#

The log, with the flip marked.

Next week you build the same apparatus for a subject, where the flip takes a fortnight instead of an hour and is correspondingly easier to miss.

There is nothing to do in that lecture with an empty log.