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No exercise today.
Nothing has been posted for Thursday, August 27, 2026. Come back tomorrow — or write anyway. That was always the point.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
No. 109
Nothing has been posted for Thursday, August 27, 2026. Come back tomorrow — or write anyway. That was always the point.
Every day, a new exercise appears on this page — a small invitation to sit down and write for a few minutes. There's nothing to sign up for, nothing to submit, and the page wipes itself clean tomorrow. Today's exercise is today's only.
Each exercise runs in three moves: Prepare, Write, Reflect. One instruction each, and you interpret it. The idea is to work fast and notice what the instruction turns up in your prose.
You can write right here on the page. Your words never leave your browser — nothing is uploaded — and you can download the exercise and everything you wrote as a markdown file whenever you like.
Prepare for the week with a preview, delivered to your inbox.
I publish a daily writing exercise here. Left to my own devices, I tend to write each one at the last possible minute — not because I lack motivation, but because my brain doesn't register "I should work ahead" as urgent until a deadline is breathing down my neck.
The little line in the footer is a commitment device. By making my buffer visible, I'm turning a private goal ("work ahead") into an external signal I can't easily ignore. If the count is high, everything is fine. If it's low, I'm cutting it close — and you can see it too.
The idea comes from Perceptual Control Theory: we act to control what we perceive, not what we intend. A private goal to work ahead produces no error signal when I procrastinate, because no one can see the gap. Making the buffer public changes what I perceive, which changes how I act.