- How often
- Every few weeks, at the same time as the rest of the upkeep.
- How long
- Two minutes.
- What it prevents
- Drift. The gap between what you decided while calm and what you now actually do.
- If you skip it
- Nothing visible, which is the point. Drift is invisible from inside it.
- How you notice you stopped
- This is the task that notices, so nothing notices this one. Put it on a calendar rather than trusting memory.
What to check against
| What you wrote | What to ask |
|---|---|
| Order size limit | Have the last few orders been at or under it, or has it quietly crept up? |
| Balance ceiling | What is actually sitting there right now? |
| The per session routine | When did you last check a signature, honestly? |
| Your exit plan | Does it still describe what stopping would involve? |
| Where things live | Is anything now living somewhere you did not choose? |
The signals worth taking seriously
- You have stopped checking signatures. The strongest single predictor of a bad outcome, and it arrives quietly after a stretch where nothing went wrong.
- You are funding more than you spend. A balance that grows is a decision being made by inertia rather than by you.
- You are consistently in a hurry. Urgency is what every manipulation needs, and being rushed changes your odds more than any setting.
- The amounts would now matter if they went. That is a different situation from the one your limits were set in.
What the signals meanNone of these say stop. They say a decision is due, and a decision that is due and not made gets made by default in the direction of drift.
Why writing it down is the whole trick
Because you cannot compare against a memory. A limit you decided in your head six months ago is now whatever you currently feel it was, which will conveniently be slightly above whatever you just did. A line in a file does not move, and that immovability is the entire value of having written it.