12 May 2026
What a Monday review is allowed to contain
If the Monday page needs a second side, it will not be read before the open. The workshop cuts it until it fits.
The Field Notebook Workshop exists because students were keeping beautiful journals they never reread. The pages were full. Monday morning, with the cash session approaching, they opened a laptop instead. The notebook had become a diary of anxiety rather than a record of market sentiment and technical context.
The review page we insist on has four lines and no more. One: the sentiment sentence from Friday, copied, not improved. Two: the swing state in a few words, such as higher low intact or lower high still in place. Three: whether Friday's volume was a climax, a dry-up, or ordinary. Four: the breadth count if you follow an index, or the word single-name if you do not.
Anything else is a weekday note, and weekday notes are allowed to be messy. They are not allowed to migrate onto the Monday page out of guilt. Shin walks the table on Sunday afternoon and crosses out second paragraphs in pencil. People flinch. The page gets used.
A review that includes a planned order is sent back. The room teaches reading. The order, if you place one, belongs in whatever record you keep with your broker, not in the page that is supposed to stay readable when you are wrong.
Try it for four Mondays before you add a fifth line. The students who add a fifth line in week two are usually the ones who arrive at the Saturday workshop with a notebook they admire and do not open.