How to Tell You're Sliding Back Into the Old Pattern Before It Tips Over

You can tell by three small signs: you skip a routine and don't make it up, you postpone your review, and you justify an exception with words that sound new but are old. A ten-minute review every Friday shows you the slide before it tips over.

Which three early warning signs show you're sliding into the old pattern?

There are three signs. You skip a routine and don't make it up. You postpone your review. And you justify an exception with words that sound new but are old.

Each sign is small on its own, so you let it pass. An example: you've decided to write quotes in the morning, before you open your inbox. On Tuesday you check your email first, just for a minute. By Thursday the quote has slipped to the afternoon.

The excuse changes its clothes along the way. It used to be "no time". Now it's "it's peak season, things will settle after". The same goes for tasks you've handed off. If you take them back "because it's faster", that's the same excuse, only now it lives in your team.

An old pattern doesn't announce its return. It gets a small permission from you every day.

How do you tell a bad day from the start of a relapse?

A bad day has a reason you can name, and it ends when that reason ends. A relapse begins when the same exception keeps happening after the reason is gone.

An example: on Wednesday your morning block falls through because a customer calls with a complaint. That's a bad day. On Thursday and Friday it falls through again, with no call, simply because the inbox was closer. That's a new default.

My rule for this: if you make the same exception twice without a new reason, you treat it as a pattern, not as bad luck. You don't need to make a drama of it. You only need to write it down. If the relapse is already here, Overcoming Procrastination: What You Do After a Relapse So It Lasts shows you the way back.

How do you check in ten minutes a week whether your change is still holding?

You check with a fixed appointment: every Friday at the same time, ten minutes, three questions. Each question tests one link in your chain of Become, Do and Have.

• Become: Which routine did you skip, and whose habit took its place?
• Do: Which exception did you make twice, and how did you justify it?
• Have: What result can you show, an actual result and not just work?

You write one sentence per question. Where you hesitate or dodge, that's the link that is giving way right now. If the first question only brings up reasons, the problem is in Become. If you did a lot and have little to show for it, the problem is in the step from Do to Have.

I keep the review to ten minutes on purpose, because otherwise it's the first thing to go in a full week. Those are exactly the weeks when you need it. If you drop it, you're already showing the second warning sign.

Ten minutes on Friday are your guardrail. In the free challenge I show you how to build the chain itself so that it holds. It takes four days and gives you a concrete first step. Sign up at impruvement.com/en/challenge.