The Alignment System — Practice Worksheet
Companion practices, calibration loops, and tracking templates for finding flow between Being, Doing, Feeling, and Thinking.
Quick Start: Your First Week
Don’t try to implement everything at once. Start here:
Today (5 minutes):
- Locate: Notice where you are on the landscape right now. (30 seconds)
- Tag: Label your next 3 tasks by territory (Workshop, Library, Meadow, Garden). (2 minutes)
- Decide: If task and state don’t match → switch tasks, or take 2 minutes to bridge gently.
This Week:
- Morning: Quick check-in — Where am I starting today? (30 seconds)
- Throughout the day: Notice misalignments without judgment. (Ongoing)
- Evening: Notice one moment of alignment — What enabled it? (1 minute)
The Practices
Small Pieces (MVP Thinking)
Break projects into laughably small pieces — 30 minutes or less each. This isn’t busywork. It’s the difference between paralysis and progress.
“Write a book” becomes “write one sentence.” The sentence teaches you something that “write a book” never could, because it forces contact with reality. The gap between your plan and what actually happens is where all the real learning lives.
The MVP principle: Do the smallest possible thing that moves you forward. Not because you’re lazy, but because you’re smart. Validate every assumption through action, not analysis.
Inch by inch, it’s a cinch. Yard by yard, it’s hard.
Working in Rhythm
Whether you use sprints, pomodoros, or your own natural cadence doesn’t matter. What matters is rhythm — work and rest, expansion and contraction, doing and being.
Whatever rhythm you choose, it should have these qualities:
- A clear boundary for focus
- A built-in transition to rest
- A length that matches your actual attention span — not your aspirational one
Find your rhythm. Honor it.
The Learn and Grow Loop
Predict → Do → Review → Calibrate → Integrate → Predict...- Predict (Estimate): Estimate size and effort up front — even roughly. T-shirt sizing works: Small (under 30 minutes), Medium (1–3 hours), Large (break it down more).
- Do: Carry out the task within your chosen focus boundary.
- Review: Review outcomes quickly. What surprised you?
- Calibrate: Calibrate your next estimate based on what you learned. (People generally underestimate effort by about 20% — plan accordingly, then calibrate against your own observed results).
- Integrate: Integrate the lesson so it sticks. Reflection is feedback. Without it, experience doesn’t become learning.
Prune and Grow
The most efficient way to increase capacity is letting go. Dropping inherited goals, borrowed dreams, or stale tasks creates space for what actually matters.
- What to prune: If a task has been in your backlog for three months untouched, either do it this week or let it go. Its presence is costing you more than its absence would.
- What grows in cleared space: Tasks that match your natural territories. Goals that actually energize you. Alignment between who you are and what you do.
Consciousness-Forcing Work
Writing things down — tasks, plans, reflections, even rough notes — forces clarity in ways that thinking alone never does. A list is a consciousness-forcing tool: the act of writing it makes you confront what matters and what doesn’t, even if you never look at the list again.
Labeling your tasks by territory (Workshop, Library, Meadow, Garden) and energy type (mental, emotional, attention, presence) adds another layer of forcing: it makes you think about alignment before you start, rather than discovering misalignment twenty frustrating minutes in.
Daily Alignment Check-In
Use this quick log to align tasks with your current state before diving into work:
| Step | Prompt | Your Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Locate | Where am I right now? (Workshop, Library, Meadow, Garden) | |
| 2. Assess Fuel | What fuel is available? (Mental, Emotional, Attention, Presence) | |
| 3. Match or Bridge | Does my next task match this state? If not, change task or bridge? | |
| 4. Intention | What is the single smallest action (under 30 min) to begin? |
7-Day Territory Tracking Log
Track your territories for one week. Morning, noon, evening, night — just notice where you are on the landscape. When do you naturally shift? What triggers a collapse into your default? Where do you resist going? That resistance is information.
| Day | Morning State | Midday State | Evening State | Night State | Misalignments or Flow Noticed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | |||||
| Tue | |||||
| Wed | |||||
| Thu | |||||
| Fri | |||||
| Sat | |||||
| Sun |
Weekly Reflection Prompts
- Home base: Which territory was your most frequent resting place?
- Resistance: Which territory did you resist or avoid? What was behind that resistance?
- Transitions: Which bridges (Mindfulness, Articulation, Intention, Release, Passion, Empathy, Intuition, Contemplation) worked best for you?
- Energy impact: When you shifted the task to fit your state instead of forcing, what happened to your energy?