Field notes
The traders who never review are not always lazy. Some of them have built a review that takes an hour and requires a clear Sunday, a fresh coffee, and a mood. That review happens four times a year. A post-session habit has to survive a messy 16:40 on a Tuesday when the children are in the hall.
A fifteen-minute close is not a full sitting. It is the shortest version that still counts as technical analysis work rather than a glance at the P&L. Storage Mapcore uses it with clients who cannot yet protect ninety minutes, and as the target at the end of a four-week block.
The quarter-hour
- Two minutes: write the session times you actually sat. If you left the screen, say so.
- Six minutes: list entries, exits, and stop edits with times. No adjectives.
- Four minutes: one sentence on the decision you would most like to hide.
- Three minutes: one constraint for tomorrow, short enough to sit above the next first line.
When the timer ends, the pen stops. Unfinished work stays unfinished; it does not leak into the evening and poison the idea of reviewing at all. Charts may be opened only if a timestamp is unclear. They are not opened to hunt a better narrative.
When fifteen minutes is dishonest
If you took twenty trades, fifteen minutes will only list them. That list is still better than a novel on Sunday, but it is also a signal: the next sitting should talk about the size of the session, not the beauty of the notes. The habit is to finish. The training is to notice what the finish reveals.