You’re Forgetting Your Own Career #136

What I am changing this year.

New year, new goals.

You already know how I feel about resolutions. I don’t believe much changes just because the calendar flips.

What does matter is reflection.

And while looking back at last year, I realized something uncomfortable.

I’m not doing a good job documenting my life. Not personally. Not professionally.

This hit me during conversations with friends in Costa Rica and before in New York. We were talking about events we lived through together. Tough productions. Big moments.

I remembered the pressure. I remembered that we solved the problem.

But I couldn’t remember some of the details.

Who was there. How we fixed it. What I learned from it.

I’ve had days where I thought, “This is one of the most important moments of my career.” And years later, all that’s left is a vague memory and a feeling.

That’s what I want to change.

Not with a complex system. Not with another tool.

Just by documenting better.

Here’s what I’m doing this year:

• Recording short voice notes after meaningful days or events. What happened, who was there, what worked, what didn’t. It takes 5 minutes to save a memory.

• Transcribing those notes so they’re searchable and easy to revisit later.

• Keeping my notebooks, but making their content usable instead of archived.

• Recording short videos, not for social media, but for me, my family, and my friends. Context, places, people.

• Capturing the human side, not just the technical one. Who I worked with. Who I learned from. Who I shared a good meal with in the middle of the chaos.

That’s it.

No perfect format. No daily obligation.

Just small, honest records of what I’m living.

Because documenting helps us solve problems in the future. It helps us recognize patterns. And it helps us remember the people and moments that mattered.

Ours is not an industry known for documentation. Most of what we learn is passed down by doing, under pressure, next to someone who’s been there before.

Which is exactly why our own records matter.

This is a small adjustment I’m making this year.

What about you?

Do you write things down? Record voice notes? Take photos or videos? Or do you trust you’ll remember it all later?

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Bulletin Board

• Reading right now: Buzz Me In by Martin Porter and David Goggin. I’ve known Martin for many years through our industry, so it was great to see the conclusion of this long-term project. The book tells the story of one of the most famous music recording studios and captures that scene with incredible detail, nostalgia, and rigor. I’m really enjoying it and already gifted a copy to a friend as a Christmas present.

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