Five minutes · Three lines · One notebook
You sit at a table in the morning. Not the desk. The kitchen table, a bench, the corner of any surface that is not where you do your work. The location matters. The location is doing some of the work.
Open a real notebook. Write the date. Write three lines.
Line 1 — The body
Green, yellow, or red. If you do not yet know what these words mean, write what the body is doing in your own words. After a month, you will have your own version.
Line 2 — The work
Did I move toward the thing yesterday, or did I move away from it? If you do not yet know the thing, write I do not yet know the thing. The not-knowing is the work, until the knowing is.
Line 3 — The relationships
Who did I love well yesterday? Who did I fail to love well? The verb is love, broadly. One sentence. The line is for noticing.
You will, on the data of two weeks of doing this, want to write more. Resist. The five-minute practice is the practice. The longer practice is a different practice.
Twenty minutes · Same table · One paragraph
Sunday afternoon is the cadence. You may settle on a different one. The cadence matters less than the consistency.
You sit at the same table. You bring the notebook. You read the seven entries from the past week. Slowly. In order. When you finish reading the seven, write one paragraph at the bottom of the seventh entry's page. The paragraph is the answer to one question:
The question
Where did I move toward the thing this week, and where did I move away from it?
The paragraph is honest. The paragraph is short. The paragraph is for you. It is not for the version of yourself who is going to read it on the next Sunday. That version is going to read it fresh, and the freshness is the point. Do not write to yourself. Write the paragraph as if it is the only paragraph that will exist about that week.
Two hours · Once a month · Not at home
The meeting is with yourself, in a place that is not your home. A café, a corner of a library, a park if the weather allows. The place does not have your laptop. The place does not have anyone you know.
You bring the notebook. You bring the pen. You sit. You do, in two hours, the audit. Four columns:
Origin
For each thing in your life — did you choose it, or did it drift to you?
Direction
For each thing — are you moving toward something with this, or defending something?
Compounding
For each thing — does it build on what you already are, or merely repeat what you already do?
Cost
For each thing — what does it cost you, not in money, but in the man or woman it makes you?
The audit is seasonal. Once a month. For the rest of your life. The columns shift because you shift. That is the practice.