Write it down

The way we build any habit is a page a morning and a short list that grows a little each week. You read something short, you add the day's thing to your list, and after three months the list is three months of small things you have actually done rather than a plan you once made.

We would push it one step further. Write, by hand, every morning, for two minutes. A notebook and a pen, never the phone, because the phone is where your attention goes to die and the whole idea is to keep it.

Three lines is enough. What you did yesterday that you are glad about. Three things you are thankful for this morning, and they can be as small as the kettle working. What today needs from you, in one sentence.

It will feel like a chore for a fortnight. But a man or woman who has written down three things they are thankful for before seven in the morning walks into the day differently from one who has read the news, and after a month the notebook is a record of a life that has been paid attention to. Most of us have never had one of those.