17 Practices — Printable Planner
Print the daily sheet each morning before reaching for your phone, then carry it with you and fill it in by hand throughout the day. Print the weekly sheet once each week for the three deeper practices.
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The Programme · 17 Practices
Daily Practice Sheet
| Date | |
| Day |
Upon Waking
Before any screen · phone stays in another room
~10 min
Practice 4
Extended-Exhale Breathing · 4 min
Inhale for a count of 4 · Hold briefly for 4 · Exhale slowly for 7–8. Roughly ten to twelve full cycles.
Practice 6
Name What Is Happening · 1 min
Precision matters. Not "stressed" but the specific quality of tension here. Not "tired" but the particular kind of heaviness today. Name it and move on — the naming is the intervention.
Right now I feel...
Practice 16
Anchor to Purpose · 3 min
Write before the day has made its demands. The answer does not need to be profound. It has to be honest.
Today, the thing that matters most to me — for reasons that are genuinely mine — is...
Morning Movement & Nature
Practices 5 + 7 combined
20–30 min
Practices 5 + 7
Move the Body Outside
Brisk walk, run, or any movement that raises your heart rate — outside where possible. No phone. No audio. Let the mind go where it goes. The goal is physical completion of the stress cycle and genuine, non-directed mental rest.
Mid-Morning Break
~90 min after starting work
~7 min
Practice 4
Extended-Exhale Breathing · 3 min
Inhale 4 · Hold 4 · Exhale 7–8. Phone in a bag or left behind.
Practice 12
Metacognitive Pause · 3 min
Ask not what you have been thinking about, but what kind of thinking you have been doing. The act of naming the process weakens its automatic hold.
This morning my mind has mainly been...
Threat-scanning
Ruminating
Comparing
Planning
Resting
Other:
— page 2 —
Early Afternoon Break
~90 min after mid-morning
~6 min
Practice 4
Extended-Exhale Breathing · 3 min
Inhale 4 · Hold 4 · Exhale 7–8.
Practice 8
Finish Something Small
Name one genuinely completable task. Not progressed — finished. When it is done, pause to register the moment: the loop has closed.
The one thing I will finish today is...
Done. I have paused to register it.
End of Working Day
~5 min
Practice 12
Metacognitive Pause — second
This afternoon, my mind was mainly...
Threat-scanning
Ruminating
Comparing
Planning
Resting
Practice 13
Notice the Filter · 1 min
What was the filter amplifying today? Note without drama or self-recrimination. The observation is the practice.
Today the filter was mainly running...
Threat
Inadequacy
Gap / should-be
Openness
Presence
Evening Wind-Down
At least one hour before sleep
~10 min
Practice 9
Connection Check
Did you make contact today with someone in whose presence something in you genuinely rests — not someone you perform for, however warmly, but someone whose company actually settles you?
Yes
Not today — I will reach out on:
Practice 4
Extended-Exhale Breathing · 4 min
Inhale 4 · Hold 4 · Exhale 7–8. Begin the physical transition to sleep.
Practice 10
Sleep Preparation
Screen off for at least last hour
Phone in another room
Room cool and dark
Consistent sleep time tonight
Close of Day — Three Observations
The loop I closed today — the small thing I finished and registered:
The filter pattern I noticed most clearly today:
Tomorrow, I will begin by...
Weekly Practice Sheet — print separately once per week
The Programme · 17 Practices
Weekly Practice Sheet
| Week of |
Practice 11
Build Cognitive Flexibility
Engage with something genuinely novel that makes a real cognitive demand — a new skill, an unfamiliar conversation, a creative medium you have never tried. The goal is not accomplishment. It is the evidence, accumulated gradually, that your system can encounter the new and arrive intact on the other side. That evidence recalibrates the system's relationship with uncertainty in a way that no amount of reflection can.
Day I will do this:
The novel challenge I have chosen this week:
What I noticed during and afterwards — including whether the activation felt different from chronic stress pressure:
Practice 14
Work With Shame
Identify something you carry shame about. Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of a genuinely wise and compassionate friend — someone who knows the full complexity of how you arrived here, who understands the conditions that shaped it, and who regards your humanity, including this particular difficulty, with warmth rather than judgement. Not an excuse. Not a performance of self-acceptance. An honest, compassionate account of why a reasonable and decent person might find themselves exactly where you are.
The thing I am bringing into the light this week:
My letter to myself ( Dear , ):
Practice 15
Reclaim Your Values
Answer honestly. Do not answer with what sounds appropriate. Writing by hand is preferable — it slows the process in a way that is genuinely useful. Do not analyse while writing. Just answer each question as directly as you can.
In the last month, the moments — however brief — when I felt most like myself. Not most competent or admired. Most myself:
What I have consistently made time for, even when most depleted. Not what I think I should value — what I have actually protected:
What makes me quietly angry when it is absent or violated — the things that produce a disproportionate internal reaction when treated as unimportant:
The patterns across these three answers — where my actual values live, not the ones I have professed but the ones running the filter when I wasn't looking: