A practice kept since 16 June 2017

Lower the bar until it is
impossible to break.

This is not a list of the right habits. It has one opinion and it holds it hard: whatever you picked, you picked it too big.

The method

Shrink it to the seed

Take the habit you chose. Cut it in half. Cut it again. Keep cutting until skipping it would take more effort than doing it.

Half a litre of water. Five pages. Two minutes on the mat. Ten reps. One line of gratitude.

People resist this because it feels like nothing. That is the point. The seed is not the achievement, it is the door. Nothing walks through a door it cannot fit through.

"The yes is small. The change is not."

A seed is not small because small is the goal. It is small because of what it becomes. Every chart raises the floor. Half a litre, then a litre and a half, then two, climbing toward three. Not one chart. A staircase of them, each starting where the last one ended.

That is why it is called the slow yes, not the small yes.

Three rules

What to do when it breaks

01

One miss, keep going

Life happens. The chart absorbs it. Nothing is broken and nothing needs restarting.

02

Two in a row, go smaller

Not a moral event. Data. The yes was sized wrong. Start a new chart and write a smaller one.

03

Add, never subtract

Not "no sugar." Protein first. Not "stop eating after six." Dinner before six. One of those you can lose. The other you can only win.

Streaks are data. No shame.

The first Slow Yes chart, hand-drawn on yellow notepad paper, dated 16 June 2017 to 6 July 2017, twenty-one boxes each ticked in green

chart one. 16 June 2017.

Nine years

This is not a theory I read

The first chart is on yellow paper, dated 16 June 2017. Four charts failed before any of it worked.

The breakthrough was not discipline. It was noticing that the failure was a sizing failure, and that a small enough yes cannot fail.

Anyone can copy the design. Nobody can copy nine years of running it on a real life, around real shifts, through real bad weeks.

"The chart forgets, so you do not have to.
You do not need a Monday to start again."
the slow yes.
21
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1

slow is the only way that lasts

The printable

21-Day Habit Tracker

$9Instant download
  • Hand-designed chart, counting down 21 to 1
  • Five colourways: sage, lilac, taupe, evergreen, blue
  • Print at home, A4 or US Letter, unlimited times
  • Includes the method on one page
  • No app, no account, no subscription
  • No attempt numbers. Every chart is a clean sheet.
Get the chart on Etsy

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Do the sizing first

Before you buy anything, size the yes. The Find Your Yes worksheet is one page and it is free. Take the habit you already picked and cut it down until skipping it would take more effort than doing it.

Get the worksheet

No email needed. Open it, print it, keep it.