"The first two weeks went fine"

The good fortnight is real, and it's the most misleading part of the year. For two weeks after the first of January you do the thing. You run three times. You write every morning. You cook. And because it's going well you conclude that the plan is working, that this year you really have changed, and that the previous years' drops must have been down to something that's now fixed.

Look at what those two weeks were made of. Many people are still off work for some of them. The evenings are empty because December used all the social energy. The fridge is full of things bought with the wish in mind. The picture is fresh, and chapter 5 explained what a fresh picture does. The fresh start push from chapter 3 is still at your back. It's a fortnight built out of holiday conditions, and it tests the wish against nothing.

Then the conditions change, all at once and quietly. Work is back to full speed. The evenings fill. The weather does what the weather does in late January. The picture has been looked at so many times that it's worn smooth. And on some Tuesday in the third or fourth week you meet the first day that actually has a cost in it, and the wish, which has never been tested, fails the test.

This is my reading, not a finding, but I'd put it strongly. The good fortnight isn't evidence that the wish is working. It's evidence that the wish works when nothing is in its way, which was never in doubt. The only fortnight that tells you anything is the one after it.

There's a practical consequence, and it's the opposite of what most people do. Most people use the good fortnight to increase the wish. Three runs went well, so make it four. The morning writing is flowing, so do an hour. That's building the plan larger just as the conditions that supported it are about to be withdrawn. The better use of the good fortnight is the reverse. Use it to find out what the least version looks like, the run so short you'd do it after the meeting that ran over, and to practise that, so that when the Tuesday arrives you're doing something you've already done a dozen times on easy days.

If your list from chapter 1 shows drops in the third or fourth week, this is probably why. Nothing went wrong with you. The holiday ended.