Setting the line

The next two chapters are the method. This one draws the line. The next one moves the keys.

A mile and three floors. That's where I'd start, and I'd start there rather than somewhere ambitious because a line that's easy to keep is a line that gets kept. A mile is twenty minutes at the talking pace. Three floors is a minute and a half. Below those, you walk, unless there's a reason you'd say out loud. Above them, you decide as you always did. In a month you can move the line if you want to.

Draw the map. Take a map of where you live and draw a circle a mile across, centred on your front door. Do the same for work. Everything inside the circle is inside the line. Most people find the shop, the school, the pharmacy, the post office, a friend or two, the station and the pub inside the first circle, and the sandwich place and the meeting across the road inside the second. That's the list of trips this book is about, and seeing them on a map does something a rule doesn't.

List the regulars. From the week's list in chapter 1, pick the five trips you make most often inside the circle. Those five are the habit. If they go on foot, the rule is mostly kept, whatever happens with the rest.

Time the top five. Once each way by car, door to door, honestly, with the parking. Once each way on foot. Write the numbers next to each other. This is chapter 3's test done properly, and it's the single most persuasive thing you'll do, because for at least one of the five the walk will be as quick as the car, and for the rest it'll be closer than you'd have said.

Say the reasons out loud. Before the rule starts, write down the reasons that would let the car win. The big shop. A downpour. A child who can't walk today. A route that isn't safe in the dark. A bad knee on a bad day. Three or four of those. The test for a reason is whether you'd say it to a friend without embarrassment. "It was raining" passes. "I had the keys in my hand" doesn't.

Move the line later, not now. After a month, if a mile has become nothing, make it a mile and a half. If three floors is easy, make it five. The line is yours and it's meant to move. It just shouldn't move in the first fortnight, because the first fortnight is where the default fights back and a fixed line is what beats it.