A plan and a journal

A plan is the set of decisions you make before you are in a trade. It does not have to be a twelve-page thesis. In fact, if you need a twelve-page thesis to click, the click is probably about comfort.

At minimum, write:

• The idea in one sentence.
• The invalidation — the price, time, or condition that means you are out.
• The size, taken from the risk budget and the stop distance.
• What would cancel the idea before you enter (the level is already gone, the session is too fast, you are tilted, the data is incomplete).

That is enough to start. You can add a target or a scale-out later if your rules need one. You cannot add honesty later if you never wrote the first four.

The journal is for the truth

A journal that only keeps winners is a scrapbook. A useful journal records:

• What you planned.
• What you actually did.
• What you felt, especially if you broke the plan.
• The outcome in R, and a short note on whether the process was followed.

Grade the process separately from the outcome. A planned −1R is a kept promise. A +2R you got by moving the stop and hoping is not a model to repeat, even if the dollar number looks good. Consistency, as I use the word, is repeating a process you already accepted — not a promise of steady profits.

I keep a public lab notes log for this site’s build. It is an implementation record, not a trading diary, and it exists for the same reason: so the work can be inspected, including the limits.

A habit to practice

For the next ten practice decisions, use the same four-line template: idea, invalidation, size, and “followed / broke, because ___.” If a day has no trades, journal that too. “No setup” is a decision, and patience is part of the process. The last beginner lesson is a short, honest look at crypto and on-chain data, without turning a wallet transfer into a story.