two minutes, thats the only bit that stuck

okay so, I have read a lot of these books. the ones where a man explains how to fix your whole life in eleven chapters and there is always a chart. usually I get forty pages in and start skimming and then I feel guilty and the book sits on the arm of the sofa for six weeks. this one I actually finished. twice, once on audio in the hospital car park because I was early for once, and once on paper because my mum bought it for me at christmas which is its own kind of hint isnt it.

here is the thing about my job that makes most of this genre useless to me. I dont have mornings. I dont have a routine, I have a rota. these books all assume you wake up at six and have a nice kitchen and nobody bleeps you. so when he says stack the new habit onto an existing one I laughed out loud, because my existing habits are handover, obs, drug round, and none of those are things you can hang a gratitude journal off.

but the two minute rule works. genuinely, and I say that as somebody who was ready to hate it. make it so small it is embarrassing. I wanted to start walking again after a really bad winter and the version I could actually do was put my trainers by the door and go to the end of the road and come back. thats it. some days thats all it ever was. and its not that the small thing magically turns into a big thing, its that on a day where I've had four hours sleep and cried in the sluice room, the small thing is still possible, so I dont lose the thread of being a person who walks.

the identity chapter got me too, and I was ready to hate that as well because it sounds like something a manager says at an away day. every action is a vote for the person you want to be. but I have watched people change and watched other people not change and the ones who manage it are almost never the ones with the best plan. we had a gentleman on the ward last year who packed in smoking after forty odd years and when I asked him how, he said he stopped being a smoker first and the cigarettes took a few months to catch up. he got there without the diagrams.

what I didnt love. the case studies. every one of them is a cyclist or an entrepreneur or somebody who wanted to write a novel, and they are all so tidy. nobody in this book has a chronic illness, nobody works nights, nobody is caring for a parent. the failure he describes is laziness, and honestly? the failure I see, in myself and in the people I look after, is exhaustion. those are not the same thing and treating them the same is where these books get quietly cruel without meaning to.

also the environment chapter assumes you control your environment. put the fruit at eye level, hide the biscuits. the break room is not my environment. the break room is a communal tin at 3am maintained by twelve people who love me. I am not moving that tin.

the habit tracker I tried and gave up on inside a fortnight. I had a little grid stuck on the fridge and it just turned into another thing I was failing at, which is apparently a known problem and he does mention it, briefly, and then moves straight on. anyway. a fortnight.

audiobook wise he reads it himself and hes fine, a bit flat, but its the right kind of flat for this, no big inspirational swells. I sped it up to 1.4 and it improved. the paper copy is nicer for going back to bits and I did fold corners, which my sister considers a crime.

I keep going back and forth on the number. as a book its a 7, it repeats itself and the last third is padding and he says the same four things with different diagrams. as a thing that changed something in my actual life its a 9. so, 8. I would give it to a friend who is stuck. I would not give it to somebody who is drowning, they need different help and this will only make them feel like the problem is willpower

sorry this is long im tired