This is a structure you can copy as it stands. There is nothing to download and no email to leave — the whole template is below, and you can start using it in whatever you already write in.
It is organised by phase rather than by date, because a career transition does not advance at a monthly rhythm. Some months contain everything and some contain nothing, and a calendar-shaped journal makes the empty ones look like failure rather than like waiting.
The template
Phase 0 — Baseline
Written once, before anything changes. This is the entry you will be most grateful for, and the one most people skip because nothing has happened yet.
Where I am. The role, the money, the hours, the people. What works. Be specific and be honest — there is almost always something. What does not. The version you would tell a friend, not the version for the exit interview. What would have to be true for me to stay. Write the actual condition. What I am afraid this says about me.
Phase 1 — Noticing
Weeks or months. The period where something is wrong but not yet named. Most people write nothing here and later cannot remember when it started.
What I noticed this week. Is this new, or have I been carrying it? What did I tell people about my week, and what did I leave out? One thing I would change if changing it were free.
Phase 2 — Weighing
The longest phase and the one with the most discarded material. Record the options you kill, not only the ones you keep.
Options on the table this week. What I ruled out, and precisely why. The advice I received and did not take — and what I knew that they did not. What is the evidence I keep discounting because it does not fit? What would change my mind, in either direction?
Phase 3 — Moving
From the first concrete step to the first month in the new thing. Short, dense, and the phase memory rewrites most aggressively into a clean decision.
What actually happened this week. Applications, conversations, rejections, numbers. What surprised me. What I am pretending is fine. What I would tell someone three months behind me.
Phase 4 — After
Start this a month in, not on day one. The purpose is to check the new situation against what you predicted, while you still have the prediction written down.
What I expected, and what it is actually like. What I was wrong about. What I miss. What I do not. Reading Phase 0 now, what do I notice?
How to use it without abandoning it in March
Weekly, not daily. Fifteen minutes, same day. Daily entries about a slow process produce a lot of words about nothing.
Move backwards when you need to. You will return to Weighing after you thought you had left it. Leave the earlier entries untouched — the fact that you went back is part of the record.
Mark the turns. When something genuinely shifts, flag it. In a year those flagged entries are the only ones you will hunt for.
Reread at each phase change. This is where the value actually arrives. The writing was preparation for the rereading.
If you want questions rather than a structure, the career change prompts cover the same ground one week at a time. And if you are earlier than all of this — still in the gap between what you say and what you live — start with the transition itself.
Running it in Deeditt
The five phases map onto a single Journey, with each weekly entry as a Deed inside it. That is the shape the product was built for: entries that accumulate into something with an arc, rather than a pile of dated notes.
Writing in Memories is free on every plan, and a transition journal is one you will want to keep private while it is happening. Later — once you are through it and it has a shape — you can decide whether any of it is worth handing to someone standing where you started. Most people share none of it. Some share the whole thing. Both are fine; the point is that it is a decision you make afterwards rather than one the tool makes for you.
