There's a scene that repeats. Someone with twenty years of experience tells me three memorable cases, in detail and with charm. I ask what they have in common. Silence.
Anecdotes entertain. Methodologies get applied. And only one of the two outlives the person who created it.
What an anecdote is missing
It's missing sequence: what comes first, what comes after, and why that order matters. It's missing explicit judgment: when it applies and when it doesn't. And it's missing a name: if something has no name, it can't be taught or defended.
Experience without structure gets lost. With structure, it gets inherited.
The step almost nobody takes
Turning experience into method requires accepting something uncomfortable: that your way of working has rules, even if you've never written them down. Putting them in writing makes them debatable, and that's frightening. It's also what makes them useful.
A written method stops depending on your memory and your presence. It can be taught, licensed, improved, and eventually handed to someone else.
If you have three cases you always tell, start there. Find what they share. What they share is the first principle of your methodology.
What if what you know were your next asset?
Everything I write here comes from the work of extracting, structuring, and publishing knowledge. Choose where to go next.