Imagining the win feels great. Imagining the hard parts and how you’ll handle them actually helps.

Picturing the finish hands you a small taste of the reward, and your motivation quietly spends it. Picturing the hard parts does something different, because it builds a plan for the moment you would otherwise freeze. The difficulty then arrives as something you recognise rather than something that stops you.

Write down the three likeliest ways this week’s plan falls apart, with one sentence each on what you will do. Oversleeping, losing momentum by Wednesday, someone cancelling. Deciding in advance is far easier than deciding while it happens.