Two minutes a day

Most days don't get decided. They get survived. You clock in, the orders pile up, the shift bleeds into the drive home, and somewhere in there a whole day went by without you once asking what it was for or how it went. Tomorrow runs the same way. That's not a character flaw. It's just what an unexamined day does — it fills itself.

This week is about two short minutes that change that. One in the morning, to aim the day. One at night, to check it. Not a system, not a journal you'll abandon by Thursday. Two minutes.

Seneca pointed at the missing half. The busy man, he said, has friends among the wise "whose advice he may ask daily about himself, from whom he will hear truth without insult, praise without flattery" (Of the Shortness of Life XV, Stewart). Daily. About himself. A standing appointment with the truth of how you're actually living — held every day, not at year's end when it's too late to spend the time differently.

A nurse, a line cook, a delivery driver, a parent on the early feed: none of you has spare hours. You have two minutes. That turns out to be enough.