The arrangement, in one sentence#

Attempts find the fights. Sittings do the work.

Every sitting attacks exactly one thing, named before you start.

That constraint is doing more than bookkeeping#

A sitting that attacks nothing in particular is the study equivalent of farming a lane in a game that has already been decided somewhere else.

It feels productive. It produces a win in your log. It moves nothing.

If a sitting fits nothing on your list, that is information#

And it is usually good news: you have probably just found a fight you could not have named last week.

Add it. A list that has not changed in a fortnight is one you are no longer reading.

Every sitting is a win#

If your win rate is above about eighty per cent, your win conditions are too easy.

You have quietly converted the mechanism into a device for feeling good.

The verdict has to be able to come out L, or it is not a verdict.

The boss that never dies#

One boss sits open for the entire run while others close around it.

It is not hard. It is unnamed — a kill condition you cannot check keeps a fight open forever.

Rewrite the condition. Do not grind the fight.

Ceremony creep#

The protocol acquires a field, then a second one, then a weekly review.

Every field you add is a reason not to run it on the day you least want to.

The mechanism becomes the subject#

You spend Tuesday improving the tool.

It is the most enjoyable failure in the whole course, it looks exactly like work, and the thirty hours are the thirty hours.

Your log flatters you, and here is how#

Currency inflation#

Whatever you score, the standard drifts. Things that weren’t worth a point in week one are worth one by week three, the totals climb, and nothing changed.

Guard against it: take an old entry and a new one, and ask whether you would still score the old one the same way.

Retrospective editing#

You judge a sitting kindly an hour later.

Judge at the end of the sitting, or not at all.

What to do this week#

Change one rule, and write down why.

A mechanism you have not adjusted after two weeks of real use is one you are not actually reading.