Field notes · 2 min read · Reflect and learn

Build a personal playbook from experience, one useful rule at a time

Sometimes you solve the same problem twice because you cannot find what the first experience taught you. A difficult meeting goes better when you share an example beforehand. A large task becomes manageable when you write a smaller first step. You learn the lesson, then lose it among ordinary notes. This guide is the step-by-step version. For the books and research behind written guidance, and its limits, see Turn a lesson into a rule you will use.

From experience to entry

1. Start with the experience. Not a slogan. "The design review became clearer after we compared two real scenarios" has useful context.

2. Choose the guidance. From that, write one line of advice: "When a design discussion becomes abstract, bring two concrete scenarios before proposing another diagram."

3. Say when to use it. "Before a cross-team design review" is a better cue than "Communication". It lets your future self recognize the moment.

4. Keep the evidence beside it. What was happening, what you tried, what changed, and why you think it helped. A rule without context sounds universal even when it came from one event.

5. Revise it when experience disagrees. Narrow an overbroad claim, add a condition, or retire guidance that no longer helps. Knowing how your advice changed is as useful as knowing its current wording.

Resist promoting every observation. You may have had a good day for reasons you do not understand. Keep tentative thoughts as reflections until you decide they deserve reuse. A playbook is a selection, not a pile of obligations. A Harvard Business School working paper found that reflecting on what you learned helped trainees' performance, which is the practical reason to pause and interpret before you write a rule. It does not show that every rule you write will be right, so test it.

Where Trellis helps, and where it does not

A Trellis Playbook entry holds the guidance, an optional "when to use", and a link to the capture it came from. You confirm each entry yourself; Trellis never creates one for you. You can revise, retire or restore it, and earlier wording stays in its history. It does not yet remind you when a situation comes up, so you find an entry by searching your Playbook.

Try this week

1. Pick one situation that keeps recurring and write the experience in three sentences (5 minutes).
2. Turn it into one rule and one "when to use" line.
3. Use it the next time that situation comes up, then revise the entry with what happened.