Sunday evening is the cheapest twenty minutes in the week, and almost nobody spends it. The week does not go wrong on Wednesday. It goes wrong on Sunday night, when you go to bed with the whole thing still undecided and let Monday morning make the choices for you.
Five things. Twenty minutes. Same order every week.
1Empty your head onto one pagenot yet
Not a to-do list. A dump. Everything rattling around — the email you have not sent, the bill, the call you owe someone, the thing you are dreading. Get it out of your head and onto paper, because a worry you have written down stops using up background processing.
You will be surprised how short the list is. It always feels like forty things. It is usually nine.
2Name the one movenot yet
Out of everything on that page, what is the single move that would make the most difference if it were done by Friday? One. Not three.
Write it at the top of the next page. That is the week. Everything else is maintenance, and maintenance does not need deciding — it just needs doing.
3Ten minutes on the moneynot yet
Open the account. Look at it. That is the whole exercise.
Most financial damage is not done by bad decisions, it is done by not looking for six weeks and then finding out. Ten minutes on a Sunday means nothing ever surprises you, and being un-surprised is most of being in control.
4Book two thingsnot yet
One for your body, one for a person. Put them in the calendar with a time, not an intention.
The body one is not a training programme, it is a single scheduled thing that makes you breathe hard. The person one is a coffee, a call, a walk — with somebody who knew you before this season started. Isolation feels like efficiency when you are under pressure. It is not. It is the thing that makes the pressure heavier.
5Draw one cardnot yet
Pick one habit for the week. One. Shuffle, take the card, that is the week, no re-draws.
The re-draw is where it falls apart. The moment you allow yourself to swap it for something easier on Tuesday, you have not got a habit, you have got a preference. Take the one you get and run it for seven days.
Fifty-two cards, one for each week of the year. Tap to draw. It stays until next Sunday.
One exception, and it is the only one: if a card is unsafe for you, or conflicts with advice you have been given by a doctor, set it aside and draw again.
That is it. Twenty minutes, and you walk into Monday with the week already decided instead of negotiating with yourself at 7am on four hours sleep.
Your week
Nothing here yet. Work down the five steps and this fills itself in.
Next: the 7-Day Comeback
Seven days, twenty-three pages, one move a day. Free, sent straight away, then one habit card every Sunday.
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