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Screenshot, one sentence, done, my minimal journal that I actually keep up

I've tried detailed journals and abandoned them within a week. They take too long and I stop doing them. What finally worked is a really minimal version: one screenshot at entry, one at exit, and one sentence about why I took it.

The sentence is the key part. Forcing myself to write a reason in one line means I can't take a trade without a reason. If I can't summarize why in a sentence, I probably shouldn't be in it. And when I look back, I read the sentences and see patterns like "felt like it was due" or "it looked like it was going to go".

The screenshots let me see what the chart looked like at the time, not what I remember. Memory is biased, and the screenshots are the check.

I keep them in a folder per week, with a simple file name. At the end of the week I scroll through them in about ten minutes and pick out the best and worst. That's it. Small enough that I do it every time, which is more valuable than a perfect system I skip.

Someone asked how I take the screenshots quickly. On TradingView there is a shortcut that copies the chart image straight to the clipboard, and I paste it into a folder with the date and pair in the file name. On MT5 I use the built in save picture option. The whole thing takes under ten seconds per trade. If it took longer than that I know I would stop doing it, which is the whole reason the detailed journals failed for me.

The sentence rule has also helped me in the moment, not just in review. A few times I went to write the reason before clicking and could not come up with anything better than it looks like it wants to go up. I closed the order window and moved on. It is a small check, but it catches the impulse trades before they happen instead of after, which is when the journal is most useful. I would much rather skip a trade than write a weak reason for it.