What is progress journal?

Progress journal is a concept in personal epistemology: Progress you cannot see is progress you will not sustain. Externalize it or lose it.

Example: You have been studying systems thinking for three months. You feel like you have learned nothing because your internal sense of progress is vague and unreliable. Then you open the document where you have been logging one concept per day with a date stamp. Ninety entries stare back at you. The evidence is unambiguous — you have covered enormous ground. Without that external record, the feeling of stagnation would have won. With it, you have proof that overrides the feeling.

This concept is part of Phase 10 (Externalization Mastery) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for externalization mastery.