The Private Pilot License is a license to learn. All learning by doing processes requires some observation and this is where a split-personality makes wonders. During initial training the instructor’s role is to teach by demonstration and some observations are part of the debriefing. Nobody can observe and debrief when you fly alone or with non-pilots, you have to do it by yourself. But how ?

Debrief rapidly
Flying is a full-time activity, particularly single-pilot IFR. No time for taking notes about flying or conducting “live” debriefings. Even a long en-route IFR segment is not a good time – any distraction should be avoided. Taking a few notes about how you managed the departure is fine, but not more. Take some time after engine shut-down, or when your passengers are away and use it to debrief yourself.

Don’t overindulge
No flight is perfect. General statistics shown that as humans we do 6 errors per hour as an average. This can range from dialing a wrong frequency, to overshoot an altitude, with consequences or not. If all your debriefings sound like “perfect flight, well done”, you’re probably overindulging or you missed your mistakes. A 30 seconds debriefing is probably too short and not fully honest.

Don’t underindulge
Underindulge is not an English word, but I’m sure you understand what I mean. Identifying your mistakes is good, correcting them is better, crucifying yourself for taxiing 3 centimeters beside the line is too much. No flight is perfect and the debriefing’s goal is to learn something and improve your skills, not to anihilate your self-confidence being too tough. Be fair and consistent with yourself, try to be like your instructor was.

Make systematic debriefings
Conducting debriefings in a systematical helps to get the most out of it. Assess your flight from boarding to engine shutdown, point per point. What was good and wrong with start-up, taxi, take-off, departure, cruise, approach, and landing ? Some pilots give themselves good and bad points for each phases, and calculate a final score. There’s nothing wrong in that, but I personally find it a bit too much. I prefer to write down a couple of points for each phase as a help to remember. I usually do not keep the notes afterward, but making it in writing helps to formalize the thing.

Find the roots
Identifying your mistakes is a good thing but what is more important is to find their causes. You contacted “Tower” while still on the “Ground” frequency ? Why ? Did you forget to flip frequency, or to change the COM set used to transmission ? Fine. But why ? Did you receive your frequency change while taxiing and were focused on following the line ? Did you not cross-check the frequency before pressing the push-to-talk ? Which check-list item was overlooked, and why ?

Look for trends
There is no such thing like a “good error” or “nice mistake”, but I tend to considerate isolated errors are less critical than recurrent problems. No pilot should let a trend develop with an “I’m always doing so” attitude. I have a couple of recurrent problems and I continue to fight against them. I give special attention to these points in my debriefings and try to monitor their evolution over time. I use the “Remarks” column of my logbook to track the most important trends.

Get a split-personality
This is the ultimate secret for good debriefing: have one of your personalities flying and the other one observing and making the debriefing. The only known problem with this technique is that it can be difficult to hide it during your medical examination. I’m not sure that AMEs like pilots with split-personality.