Wired for Purpose — Week 3: Foundation
Observability of Self
Quote
“An unexamined life is not worth living.”
— Socrates
The Story
We log everything.
Application logs.
Access logs.
System metrics.
We build entire platforms just to understand what happened.
But most of us don’t log ourselves.
I didn’t either.
Until I hit a point where I couldn’t remember why we made certain decisions on a project. The context was gone. The reasoning disappeared into meetings and conversations that never got written down.
So I started keeping a simple journal.
Nothing structured.
Just a few lines at the end of the day:
- What I worked on
- What I decided
- What I wasn’t sure about
Over time, that journal became something else.
A record.
Not of perfection—but of progress.
The Reflection
Observability isn’t just for systems.
It’s for people.
Without it, you operate on assumptions:
- “I think I’m improving”
- “I think that worked”
- “I think I handled that well”
But thinking isn’t knowing.
Tracking creates awareness.
Awareness creates clarity.
Clarity creates growth.
The same way you wouldn’t run production without logs…
You shouldn’t run your life without reflection.
The Takeaway
You can’t optimize what you don’t observe.
Today’s AI Prompt
I want to start a daily work journal but only have 5 minutes.
Give me a simple template (3–4 prompts) that helps me track decisions, lessons learned, and progress over time.
From the Book
This is part of Wired for Purpose—a daily reflection for technologists navigating leadership, growth, and clarity in a fast-moving world.
It builds on Finding Direction in the Age of AI, where the focus is on stepping back and finding direction before speed takes over.