The gathering of information and knowledge about the particular problem you face can take years. A journal can be your notebook about all the things you've learnt that don't work. A journal can hold a summary of what you've learnt, and your new plan for the future. In your journal the process of planning, trying things, recording the results and trying to understand what it means can be pursued. Potter suggested that life is like a detective story with a surfeit of clues.
Potter sees the betrayal of our own principles as inevitable.
A Buddhist teacher recently said he had spent his life searching for freedom, truth and self knowledge. In the end he discovered that there is nothing to be free from, and that both truth and self are unknowable. We need to define both truth and self at every stage of our lives in order to live a life that is full. That both truth and self are changing and variable is something you can better appreciate with hindsight, but at any moment of your life you can only act on the basis of the truth and self that you understand now. Freedom is a product of personal commitment to objectives.