The decision

Everything so far has been the reasoning. This chapter is the decision, and I'd rather it were one sentence you can keep than a programme you'll abandon.

The rule is this. I close the day on paper, I cross on purpose, and I answer the passenger with a line rather than an evening. The first part is the last ten. The second is the marker and the drive. The third is chapter 20, name it, check the list, say so, return. That's the whole method, and none of it takes more than fifteen minutes of a day you were already having.

I'd write the rule down and put it where the last ten happens. Then make three plans in a form that's been tested more than most things in this book. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 studies of what they call implementation intentions, plans of the form "when this, then that", and found that people who make them are considerably more likely to follow through than people who merely intend. The form matters because it names the moment, and the moment is where habits are decided.

When it's ten minutes before I'd leave, then I stop and write the last line. The trigger is the clock, not the task, because the task will always want ten more minutes.

When I'm at the roundabout and the rerun starts, then I ask what's first tomorrow and go back to the road. Pick your own roundabout. The point is a place on the way home where the rerun reliably begins, and a fixed answer to it.

When I notice I'm at the desk at home, then I name it, check the list, and say so. This is the one that does the work, and it's the one you'll use most in the first fortnight.

What to expect, and this is my expectation rather than a finding. The first week the passenger will get in most days, and you'll notice it later than you'd like, and the noticing will feel like failure. It isn't. It's the thing being learned. Hahn's training study saw detachment rise within a week and hold at three, from two sessions, which suggests the change can be quick once it's begun. Phillippa Lally and colleagues, following 82 people forming a new daily habit, found automaticity built over weeks and that a missed day didn't materially set it back. I'd expect the last ten to feel like a chore for a fortnight and then like the natural end of the day. The crossing takes longer, because the rerun is old. The knock at twenty past eight will keep coming for a while, and get quieter.

The measure isn't whether you thought about work this evening. You will. It's whether the evening was yours, with the passenger visiting, or the passenger's, with you visiting. That's the difference the rule makes, and you'll know which it was by nine.