The email, the alarm and the things you can't touch

Some checks don't have a door to walk back to. This chapter is the method for those, and it's mine throughout.

The sent email. The once is before sending. Read it for facts, then read it for tone, aloud if you can, as the person receiving it. Then send, and the sent folder is closed for that email. If the doubt arrives, it gets the sentence. "Read it twice, sent it at eleven." If you find you can't stop opening the sent folder, move it out of sight in your email program, or set the folder to hide read items. Making the recheck harder is legitimate, because it's the availability of the check that keeps the doubt going.

The alarm. Set it, look at it, say it. "Alarm set, half past six, tomorrow." Put the phone face down, and it stays down. Picking it up again is the recheck, and the little bell will be no more convincing the second time. If you find you can't trust a phone alarm, buy a plain alarm clock with a physical switch, set it once, and let the phone stay in another room. A switch you can feel is a once that's easy to make vivid.

The bag, the passport, the tickets. Pack once, from a list, ticking each thing as it goes in. The list is the sentence. Then close the bag. If the doubt arrives at the station, the list is in your pocket and every item has a tick. You don't open the bag. You read the list.

The things you do on the way out. Most morning rechecks are about four or five things. Door, hob, straighteners, windows, taps. Put them on a card by the door, in the order you meet them, and do them as a single walk, once, saying each one. "Straighteners off. Hob off. Windows shut. Taps off. Door locked." Then the walk is the once for all of them, and the card is the sentence. Some people find this too much like a ritual, and I understand the worry. The difference is that it's done once and then finished, and the point of it is to make the recheck unnecessary rather than to make the checking feel right.

The thing you can't check at all. Sometimes the doubt lands on something with no check available. Did you say the wrong thing at the meeting? Did you offend someone last week? There's no door and no sent folder. The replay is the only recheck on offer, and chapter 5 showed what it does. These get the same treatment. Name it, reach for what you know, and don't go over it. If something really needs saying to someone, say it once, plainly, and then it's done.

The shape in every case is the same. One attentive act at the right moment. A sentence to hold. Then nothing. The things you can't touch are, if anything, easier than the door, because there's no handle to push and the only recheck available is the one in your head, and that one you can decline.