How I analyze my games

One of the most oft-repeated pieces of advice on /r/chess is to analyze your games. I try to do this for just about every classical game I play. I took inspiration from John Bartholomew's Standard Chess videos in which his analysis sometimes takes longer than the game! I don't go that far very often but I do spend anywhere from 10-30 minutes on my post-mortems.

After analyzing in a variety of ways, this is what I've settled on. It's not perfect but it's better than speeding through the game and letting the engine show me where I fucked up then loading up another game without learning any lessons. Everybody likes laughing at those crazy spikes in the analysis graph though.

My Method
My method takes advantage of the Notes tool in lichess since it persists over to the analysis board so you can check your ideas there with an engine after putting your own thoughts down first! I'm still not good enough to notice a lot of stuff on my first pass through the game but I try to find at least one thing I missed or could have done better. 

This is a quick guide on how I do it, so you can try to use it as a way to customize for yourself!  

1. Game ends. I usually feel like getting up for a drink to just get away and stretch for a minute. Or to quietly sigh "what the fuck..." after I fudge an endgame.
2. Get back to computer and immediately go to the beginning of the game (UP arrow on lichess if using desktop).
3. I click over to the "Notes" tab where the chat window is. These are private notes that persist to the analysis window. Very handy!
4. I sometimes write a quick one-sentence summary of the game or a main takeaway to start. Example: "Weird game; never seen the opening; thought I had a bishop trap tactic; need to work on rook endgames!"
5. I arrow through the moves to re-familiarize myself with everything, see if I can quickly spot something. I might make another quick note or two.
6. Then I go back through again only I make more specific notes for a lot of the moves, saying if something was better, if I thought I saw something, if I see now that I misplayed something, if I thought an opponent's move was good or bad, where a turning point was, etc. These ideas are fresh in your mind since your game just ended 5 minutes ago so what better time to do it than now! You'll remember your thought processes during the game and you can even analyze THAT during this time! Example: "Why did I not see that his bishop was trapped? I remember honing in on that for three moves. I gave up when I thought he had an escape square but he didn't! Need to work on staying focused on a plan!"
7. After I'm satisfied I have some good notes from my personal non-engine analysis, I click over to the analysis window. Your notes should remain!
8. I might turn the engine eval on ('L' button on lichess desktop) but not the suggested moves ('A' button) yet! I go through again, and follow along with my notes, possibly playing out ideas on the analysis board so I can see any lines I suggested actually played out on the board to check my visualization. I can keep an eye on the evaluation too and see if something isn't as good or better than I thought.
9. Also anytime I see the eval take a big (greater than +/- 1.0 change) swing, I take my time and see if I missed a tactic that I didn't notice in my notes. If I can't, I might turn the suggested move on and see the idea, then turn it back off.
10. I go through the whole game this way, and if I feel like adding new notes, I type them in CAPS LOCK so I know it's something I saw post-personal-analysis, i.e. with engine assistance.
11. Afterwards, if you want, you can try the "learn from my mistakes" feature or check out the engine analysis graph for fun.

This is a simple way for me to analyze since I don't have to open any other software or get out any journals. I think this is far better than immediately going to the analysis page and clicking on the engine, generating a graph, and only looking at the big spikes like I used to do.