The Next Step

The gap between “that was the best week of my life” and anything changing at home is where almost all training goes to die. This is the cheapest known bridge across it.

How it runs

1. Home groups of four or five, formed on day two and meeting daily all week. By the last morning these people know each other.
2. Write one next step on a card. The test is brutal and it is the whole design: a stranger reading this card would be able to tell whether you did it. “Use more nature methods” fails. “Run a sit spot with my Tuesday group on 14 October” passes.
3. Read it aloud to your home group. They are allowed exactly one question: what would stop this?
4. Rewrite it in the light of that question. Most people’s second version is half the size of the first, and that is correct.
5. Everyone photographs everyone’s card, or writes them into a shared document with dates.
6. The home group schedules its own online call, now, in the room, six weeks out, in everyone’s calendar before anyone leaves.
7. On that call, each person says whether they did it. Nobody is judged; the only rule is that you say the true answer.

Facilitator notes

• Step 6 is the part that gets skipped and the part that makes it work. Do not let the group leave without the calendar invitation actually sent.
• The facilitation team joins none of these calls. It is not a report to us.
• Ask groups to post a screenshot of their call in the participant channel. Not as surveillance — as a signal to the other home groups that it is really happening.
• Six weeks is deliberate. Two is too soon to have failed; three months is long enough for the week to have faded.