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Self Improvement
I Don’t Make Decisions in the Middle of the Month
Neither should you
Are you thinking about buying a new car? Maybe a new house? What’s the date today? If it’s before the 9th or after the 21st, go ahead, but think twice if it’s the middle of the month.
Every night, I journal what happened throughout the day. I recently did a read-through of all sixteen years of my journal entries and made an interesting find: I make better decisions closer to the beginning of the month.
When I make major decisions in the middle of the month, it almost always turns out badly.
- I traded my 2000 Toyota Celica for a Nissan Sentra on the 11th.
- I almost always quit diet or workout plans around the 15th.
- I sold $1,500 worth of comic books for $20 on the 17th.
- I charged $4,000 on a credit card to go to Disneyland on the 19th.
The second-act slump
Like a bad script, the middle is where things slow down, maybe even becoming monotonous. What happens when you get bored? Your mind wanders.
In the middle of the month, I tend to get existential in my thoughts. I don’t look at the silver linings and dwell on the dark clouds. It’s easy to…
