Your Next Charge
You finished the book. The Micro-Steps only work if you do them.
So I put all twenty-one on one printable page, with a 21-day tracker to go with it. Put it on the fridge. Fold it into your wallet. Check off one a day.
The 21 Micro-Steps
One small, doable thing from each chapter of Batteries Included. Nobody has to see you do any of them.
- 1The next time you answer someone, catch the half-second before you speak where you shrink your real answer.
- 2Pick one room you already feel safe in and, this week, widen by five percent: say one sentence in your own cadence.
- 3Say one sentence that protects the person under the function. Say it once, and stop talking.
- 4Write down one true thing and say it out loud to the person it's for.
- 5Write a bare receipt of reality: three lines of fact, the way they'd read in a court record.
- 6Think of three people and put one word on each in your head: audience, ally, or friend.
- 7Name what you've been funding. One sentence: I am performing ______ to buy ______.
- 8List everyone you pour yourself into and ask of each name: if I stopped being useful tomorrow, would they still call?
- 9Before you say yes to the next thing, write three lines: what you're doing, what you're getting, when it's done.
- 10Write two lists side by side: Standards I'm living by, and Standards I actually chose.
- 11Write two sentences: They told me to... and I did it. My gut said...
- 12This week, do one thing that is entirely, completely, unapologetically for you. Not a grand gesture.
- 13This week, do not tell someone something. Take one real thing you would normally hand to the nearest room and keep it.
- 14Tomorrow morning, before you check your phone, send yourself a message: three to five lines in your own words.
- 15Treat the pull to go silent as the signal; ask the question out loud, to the one person who can answer it.
- 16What is your no? Find the one line that would mean the deal is over, and name it today while you're calm.
- 17When something hits you and you don't have words yet, take the walk; then say the small true thing before it ferments.
- 18Before you begin the task, decide what done actually is. Name it out loud. Not your ceiling, the need.
- 19When guilt floods in after you hold a line, ask: is it how I behaved, or that my choice cost someone?
- 20Schedule the empty time and guard it like a paying client. Put it on the calendar in ink.
- 21Pick one thing that's yours and work it where nobody can see it, thirty minutes before the day takes you.
Used, then topped back up.
One page for the fridge. One for the wall.
The 21-day tracker
One row a day. Check the box when you did it. Not when you did it well.
The phone image is the same tracker at phone size. Save it as your lock screen.
Want it one step at a time?
I'll send one Micro-Step a morning for twenty-one days, at 6:30. That's when my own message shows up.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
One more thing. If this book was useful to you, I'd be grateful for an honest review wherever you bought it. It's how the next person who's running down finds it. I read every one.