🗓 Last Sunday I said you haven't got a normal week, you've got about nine of them.

I said I'd tell you the one thing I'd do in each. So here it is; nine weeks, one move in each.

Read the one you're in and ignore the other eight.

🙂 The on-it week

Shopping done, dinners planned. Happens twice a year.

The move: write down what you did, then find the one bit you'd still manage on your worst week.

That's the only part worth keeping. The rest of it is a holiday from your actual life, and using it as your baseline is why every Monday feels like a failure by Wednesday.

😵 The wrecked week

Late nights, no shop done, three takeaways.

The move: hold ONE slot. Breakfast. Same one, every day, whatever else happens.

Don't try to rescue the week — you can't, it's already gone. Rescue one twenty-minute window in it. A week with one thing standing is a completely different week to one where everything fell over, and it's the difference between starting again on Monday and just carrying on.

🎂 The someone's-brought-cake-in week

Birthday, leavers' do, a tin of Roses on the side from November to January.

The move: have a piece. Off a plate, sitting down, once.

The cake has never been the problem. The tin of chocolates left open on the side is the problem, because that's forty decisions instead of one, and you'll lose about thirty of them. Take one, walk away from it, done.

👨‍👩‍👧 The kids-are-off week

Half term, inset day, six weeks of summer. Structure gone.

The move: decide your lunch once, for the whole week, and eat the same thing every day.

You're going to be feeding other people all week and picking at what they leave. Fine. But the one meal that's yours should require no thought at all, because you haven't got any spare.

🚗 The away-with-work week

Hotel breakfast, service station, dinner at nine.

The move: pick your hotel breakfast and your service station order NOW, before you're stood in front of either.

Same order every time, forever. I have one and it's boring and it's saved me more than any diet I've ever been on. You cannot make a good decision at a Costa at 7am with a meeting in Leeds — so don't make one, just collect the thing you already decided months ago.

🤒 The ill week

Toast and sympathy.

The move: nothing. Genuinely nothing.

Eat what you can, sleep, drink water, let the steps go to zero. Don't weigh yourself and don't start again on Monday as a punishment for having a virus. One of the nine weeks has no job in it and this is it.

🧳 The weekend-away week

Which is really a nine-day week once you count the unpacking.

The move: the fix isn't the weekend, it's the Tuesday after.

Go, eat, enjoy it, come back. Then don't compensate. No skipping meals, no penance week, no "undoing" it. Just the normal day you had before you went. The weekend has never been what costs people; it's the ten days of chaos that follow it while they try to pay it back.

⏰ The deadline week

Eating at the desk, standing up, out of a bag.

The move: one thing you can eat one-handed, bought in advance, same thing all week.

e.g. a bag of beef jerky and a protein yoghurt pouch It doesn't need to be good, it needs to exist at 2pm so that the alternative isn't whatever's in the vending machine and a second lunch at four.

🎄 And December

Which isn't a week, it's a climate.

The move: stop trying to lose anything. Aim to come out of it the same.

Keep your breakfast, keep your walk, let everything else go completely. Arriving in January the same weight you were in November is a genuine win and almost nobody you know has ever had one. It also means you start the year off a real number instead of digging out of a hole you spent three weeks making.

⚠️ Right. Have another look at those nine.

Eight of them have the same answer written in different ways: make fewer decisions. Pick one slot and hold it, decide the thing in advance, take one biscuit instead of standing next to the tin. Not try harder; decide less.

And the ninth one's answer is to do nothing at all, which is the one people find hardest.

Nothing in that list needed you to be motivated, and nothing in it needed a good week. That's not a coincidence; it's the entire argument I've been making for seven Sundays: a 'normal week' you can repeat beats a 'perfect week' you can't.

✉️ And if your week isn't in the nine,DM me and tell me what it is. A few of you already have e.g. shift work and looking after a parent came up more than once, and both deserve their own answer; and I'd rather write about the week you're actually in than the one I guessed at.

Joe

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