PURPOSE Knowing when a problem began helps support compare changes, updates, outages, and logs. WHAT TO THINK ABOUT Was it today, after a restart, after an update, after a password change, after travel, or after changing settings? BE SPECIFIC Include approximate date, time, and time zone if known. COMPARE Mention whether the issue was working before and what changed since then. BEST PRACTICE 'It started sometime last week' is better than nothing, but exact timing is much more useful.