When the passenger gets in anyway

The last ten was done and the crossing was crossed and at twenty past eight, halfway through the film, the meeting is back. This will happen, and this chapter is about what to do when it does, because a method that only works when it works isn't one.

Name it. Not fight it. The moment you notice you're at the desk, say to yourself what the passenger is, in a few words. "The meeting." "The March tab." Naming it does something small and useful, which is that it turns a fog into an object, and objects can be put down. Chapter 3's split is worth remembering here too. Is this the fret or the working-out? It's nearly always the fret, and knowing that is most of what you need.

Check the last line. Is what you're thinking about on the list? If it is, it's already got a place and a next step, and the thought has nothing to add. If it isn't, that's the one case where a thought at twenty past eight has done something, and it takes ten seconds to add a line. Then it's on the list, and it has a place, and you're back to the film.

Say so out loud. If someone's with you, tell them. "Work's in my head, give me a minute." It costs nothing and it does two things. It stops the quiet being read as being about them, and it makes you accountable for the minute. The passenger thrives in the unspoken.

Book it if it's real. Once in a while the thing that arrives at twenty past eight is the working-out, an actual idea about the actual problem. If so, write it down in one line and decide whether it needs the booked half hour from chapter 12, tonight or tomorrow. If tonight, book it, do it, close it. If tomorrow, it's on the list and you're done. What you don't do is have the half hour without booking it, in your head, on the sofa, for the rest of the film.

Return. Whatever you were doing, go back to it, and expect the passenger to knock again in ten minutes. It's not a sign the method failed. It's what a habit does while it's being changed. The earlier book The feeling will pass without help described urges as waves that rise and fall on their own if they're not fed, and the passenger's knock is that kind of thing. It gets weaker each time it's named and put down, and stronger each time it's given the evening.

None of this stops the thought arriving. Nothing does, and I'd distrust anyone who said otherwise. What it changes is what happens in the ten seconds after it arrives, and those ten seconds are the difference between a knock and a night.