Nine o'clock, the buzz, tomorrow

It's ten past nine, a Tuesday, three months on. You're on the sofa with the second half of something on. The phone is in the kitchen, charging, on a schedule that started at six, and you don't know whether anything's in it, and you notice that you don't know, and then the programme takes you back.

At half past eight the next morning, the inbox has Priya's question about slide 8 in it, sent at twenty past eight. She's learned. You answer it with the folder open and the right version number, in one message, and she says thanks, and that's the thread. There's an email from your manager sent at ten last night, because that's when she writes them, and it says "no need to reply", and you don't need to, and you read it at your desk with a coffee, which is how it was meant to be read. There's a Sunday "no rush" from a fortnight ago that you answered on the Monday, and nobody remembers it as anything.

The other door hasn't rung. Not once, in three months. You've stopped waiting for it to.

What's changed isn't the job. The messages come at the same rate, though more of them come in the morning now. What's changed is that the evening is yours from six, and the people you work with know it, and the version of you that was posted at the door every night has been stood down. You're not less reliable. The deck goes out on Thursday. You're less reachable, which was the thing you'd confused it with.

If you've read this far and done nothing yet, do one thing tonight. Not the whole method. Put the phone in the kitchen at six and leave it there. Tomorrow morning, look at what came in and ask which of it needed you last night. That's the argument of this book in one evening, and you'll know by breakfast whether it holds.