A failed attempt deserves lessons precise enough to help the next one.

The lessons people take from a failure are usually too big to use. Not good at this, bad at business, should not have tried: those are verdicts rather than findings, and they cannot be acted on because they do not point at anything. A precise lesson sounds smaller and does more work, since it names a step, a decision or a missing piece of preparation.

Write down where exactly it came apart, as though describing someone else’s attempt. Ask what you would change first if you tried again next month. Keep the conclusion narrow enough to be wrong, since that is the kind you can test.