Ask many of us what we did last week and we will tell you, mostly, what we intended to do. The two have a way of merging in memory. The run we planned becomes a run we half-remember taking. The plan we keep meaning to start sits in the mind as good as begun. The evening we set aside for our children, then gave to the inbox, files itself under time spent with the family. We are not lying. We are doing what everyone does, which is to remember the intention and quietly credit ourselves with the execution.
There is a simple way to interrupt this, and it costs nothing but a month of honesty. Keep two lists. On one, write what you say you are going to do, each day, in advance. On the other, at the end of the day, write what you actually did. Keep them side by side. Do not edit the first list to match the second when the second disappoints you. At the end of the month, read the two columns together.
The gap between them is the truer portrait. It is drawn from evidence rather than intention. Intention flatters; evidence does not.
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