The sweep

The ten-minute test catches most items. This is for the rest, and it's the part that makes the list trustworthy enough that your memory can let go.

Fifteen minutes, the same time, every day. Pick a time that already exists. After the children are down. With the first coffee. Straight after work, before the laptop closes. The same time is the whole trick, and Phillippa Lally and colleagues, in 2010, followed people building one daily habit in a consistent context and found that it became automatic on a curve, over weeks and for some people months, and that missing a single day didn't set the curve back. So the sweep will feel like effort for a while, and then it won't, and one missed sweep doesn't matter.

A timer. Fifteen minutes on the phone. When it goes, you stop, even mid-item, and write a dated line for where you got to. Chapter 14 is about why the timer is what makes it safe to start.

The list. One place. A notebook by the kettle, a note on the phone, the back of an envelope that never moves. Every item that failed the ten-minute test is on it, and every item on it has a date next to it, the day it'll be done or chased.

Dated lines. "Thursday, ring the garage for the document." "Saturday, insurance, once the reset's come." "Wednesday, chase the school if nothing." The date is what Masicampo and Baumeister's participants had when their intrusive thoughts stopped, a specific when and how, and it's what lets the carry stand down. An item without a date is still in the heap. It's just written down.

Work the list from the top. Oldest first, or nearest date first. Don't choose the pleasant one. There isn't a pleasant one. Do the one whose date it is, and when it's done, cross it out, and let yourself notice the crossing out.

Chase on the date. If a dated line says Thursday and Thursday comes and nothing's happened, the chase is the item. Two sentences, chapter 8. Then a new dated line.

Stop at the timer. Even if there's one item left. Especially then. The sweep exists tomorrow, and the one item will be there, and the reason the sweep works is that it never becomes the all-nighter that made you afraid of the heap in the first place.