Who this is for
Something ended or changed — a job, a relationship, a move, an illness, a long stretch that took more than it gave — and the structures that used to hold your weeks together are gone. Not a crisis. More that the scaffolding is missing and everything requires deciding from scratch.
This template is not a self-improvement plan. Improvement assumes a stable baseline to improve from, and the whole difficulty here is that the baseline is what disappeared.
The design assumption is low and unreliable available energy, so the map is built to be workable on a bad week rather than an optimistic one.
The branches
Rhythm before goals. Sleep, meals, some fixed points in the week. Not optimised — just existing. Almost nothing else on this map is achievable while the week has no shape, and attempting goals first is the most common way a reset stalls in its second week.
One fixed thing that is mine. A single recurring commitment that exists purely because you want it, not because it is productive. A class, a walk, a night with a friend, an hour of something you are bad at. The point is that it happens on a schedule you did not have to negotiate.
The admin I am carrying. Letters, appointments, cancellations, forms, the things you keep half-remembering. This branch exists mostly to move them out of your head, where they cost attention continuously. Most items here are Todos rather than branches.
People I have gone quiet with. Specific names, one small action each — a message, not a reunion. After a difficult period the social edges tend to have thinned without anyone deciding, and the repair is smaller than it feels.
What I am not attempting this year. Named explicitly. Fitness overhaul, career change, the big project, whatever is sitting there generating guilt. Writing it down as a deliberate decision converts it from a failure into a choice, and it is the branch that makes the rest of the map bearable.
Something to look forward to. One thing, dated. Small is fine. A reset with nothing ahead of it is just maintenance, and maintenance is difficult to sustain without a horizon.
How to use it
Import it and delete at least two branches. Six live areas is more than this situation supports. The ones you cut are not failures — they are what this season is not for.
Then mark one branch Focus. One, not three. This template is the deliberate exception to the usual guidance, because the design assumption is that energy is limited and unreliable.
Dates: almost none. An appointment is a Deadline. Everything else stays undated, and Minty Path keeps a passed Aim date calm rather than turning it red — which matters more here than anywhere, since a map of a difficult period covered in missed targets is an instrument for feeling worse.
What to add once it is yours
Replace the branches with your specifics — the actual names, the actual letters, the actual thing you are not attempting. Delete anything that produces guilt rather than direction; that is the test for this map.
Attach Proof when something genuinely completes, and let it be small. A photo of the cleared surface. The message you sent. A branch cannot be marked Proven without evidence, and during a reset that record is the main counterweight to the feeling that nothing is changing.
Signs it is working
- You open it without dread
- The week has some fixed points in it
- The admin branch is emptier than it was
- You have deleted something on purpose
- One thing exists that you look forward to
Signs it is not
- Every branch is Focus
- The map has grown faster than anything has completed
- It has become a more detailed description of the same stuck feeling
- The "not attempting" branch is empty, so everything is still nominally on