Chosen or arrived

Chapter 1 asked you to keep a record for a fortnight, writing a C or an A next to each treat. This chapter is about reading it. If you haven't kept it, start now and come back, because the rest of the method rests on it and guessing won't do.

The three questions. For each day's treat, ask three things, and be strict. Did I decide, before the hour, that today would have one? Could I say why, in a sentence I'd say to another adult without it sounding like an excuse? Did I notice it while I was having it? Three yeses is a C. It was chosen. Anything less is an A. It arrived. Most people who keep the record honestly find a fortnight of A's with one or two C's, and the C's are usually a Friday or a day that had something in it.

What the letters tell you. A run of A's is the daily. It means the treat is arriving on the cue of the hour, without a decision, without a reason you'd say aloud, and mostly without being tasted. That isn't a verdict on you. It's what habits look like from the inside, and Wood's diary studies in chapter 4 would predict it. What it tells you is that the earning, which you've been saying every day, wasn't a decision either. It was found after the hand moved. The C's tell you something too. They tell you what a chosen treat looks like for you, what kind of day gets one, what the reason was. Those are the days to keep.

The hard cases. Some days you'll want to write a C because the day was awful and the treat felt needed. Ask the three questions anyway. "Needed" isn't a reason you decided before the hour. It's the earning. Some days you'll have written a C in the morning and by six not fancied it and had it anyway. That's an A wearing a C's clothes, and it's the most useful entry in the fortnight, because it shows you the hour running without you.

What to do with the record. Nothing yet. Read it, notice the ratio, and go to chapter 18. The record isn't there to shame you. It's there so that the two ways out are a choice you make with the facts in front of you, rather than a resolution made on a Sunday about a habit you haven't looked at.