Most checklists for a slower life are too long to finish and too aspirational to start. They’re built around the version of the week that doesn’t yet exist; one with more time, fewer obligations, and a better relationship with your phone.
In the meantime, nothing gets checked off.
Small changes tend to fail because they’re attached to plans too large to actually sustain. These are plans built around circumstances you don’t currently have, and they collapse the moment real life catches up. What actually moved things for me was reading for half an hour before bed, something easy enough to attach to the end of the day as it already was.
The principle behind this checklist is finding that one thing, specific enough to actually do, small enough to survive a Thursday evening when you’re already tired. Pick one. Leave the rest.
None of these are new. They’re drawn from the chapters in You Are Already Here, which means each one has a fuller version if you want it. The checklist is just the entry point rather than the whole argument.
Research on habit formation suggests that missing a day here and there has very little effect on whether a habit sticks. What tends to derail habits is the belief that missing a day means starting over, which is a different problem to the habit itself.
If you’d like to go a level deeper, the Slow Living Audit on this site is a free resource that helps you work out which area of your day has the most room for change, so you’re not just picking at random.
