A locked box can protect something from everyone, including the owner who forgot its combination.

Protection has no way of telling who is being kept out. A mechanism built to exclude everyone else works just as reliably against the person who installed it, because it never knew the difference in the first place. Every safeguard you build has this property, and it fails in your direction as readily as in anyone’s.

So whenever you secure something, ask how you will get back in when you are tired, unwell, or have forgotten what seemed unforgettable. Leave yourself a route. This is true of literal locks and of the rules you set for yourself, which should always include a way to be renegotiated by the version of you who has to live with them.