Improve the life in hand

The last method chapter is the one the hope has been keeping you from, which is doing something to the life you've got. If the hum is a level, the next thing won't reach it. What might is duller and closer, and the research on wellbeing has been pointing at the same few things for years.

Find the ordinary causes. Before the next thing gets any more of your evenings, look at the Thursday you actually have for causes that don't need a move. The commute you could change without changing the house. The sleep you're not getting. The friend in the next town you haven't seen since the spring. The work you're bringing home in your head. The phone that eats the evening the listings live in. Each of those is a cause, in the chapter 18 sense, a nameable thing that's true now and could be made not true, and each one changes a Thursday at four without a removal van. Most of them are also the subjects of earlier books in this series, and the point of the series is that each is a habit with a fix.

Use what's known to help. The NHS lists five things the evidence supports for mental wellbeing, and none of them is a purchase. Connecting with other people. Being physically active. Learning new skills. Giving to others. And paying attention to the present moment. The page is plain and the list is old, and I include it because the hum has an answer to every item on it, which is "I'll do that when things are settled". The list is what you do instead of waiting for things to be settled. Pick the one you're doing least.

Do one thing for a month. Not all of them. One. Choose the ordinary cause or the item from the list that would change the most Thursdays, and do it for a month before the next thing gets another evening. If it's the commute, ask about the earlier train. If it's the friend, book the Thursday. If it's the sleep, that's an earlier book too. If you find you want a plan for the month and you've made wishes before that didn't survive a wet week, another book in this series, A wish isn't a plan, is about how to build the kind that does.

At the end of the month, ask the Thursday question about the life in hand. What's different at four on a Thursday from a month ago? If there's a fact in the answer, you've done what the next thing was going to be asked to do, and you did it without the season and without the hangover. If there isn't, you've spent a month and learned that the cause wasn't that one. Either way you've stopped waiting, and stopping waiting is the change that the research on adaptation suggests might reach the level. The next thing might still be right. It'll be chosen by someone with a Thursday worth staying in, and that's a different person from the one on the sofa at nine.