Chapter 5 — The honey-do list you've been avoiding
Oldest item first
Go get your household's yellow pad, or the mental one. Find the oldest item — the 2019 regrout, the thing that's outlasted two presidents. Type this, filling in your particulars: "I've been putting off [the thing] since [the year, confess it]. Ask me your questions one at a time, then give me a plan in two-hour sessions, cheapest reasonable approach, starting with a first session so easy I can't refuse it."
That final clause is the whole strategy. Momentum doesn't care where it starts. Frank's first garage session was, in its entirety, "carry the obvious trash to the curb." He was sorting paint cans forty minutes later, purely out of spite, which the plan may or may not have been counting on.
The garage-door four
1. The un-staller
I want to finally deal with [item]. Ask me your questions one at a time, then give me a plan broken into two-hour sessions, in order, cheapest reasonable approach first.
2. The photo identifier
[Attach photo]
What is this, what would it be called at a hardware store, and what does its condition tell you? I found it [where]. One-to-ten, how concerned should I be?
3. The referee
[The thing] is [age] and [what it's doing]. Replacement runs about [$X]. Honest case for repair, honest case for replace, cost and hassle of each — then give me the one question that should decide it.
4. The contractor briefing (the other kind)
I'm getting bids on [job]. Teach me enough to be a smart customer in ten minutes: how this job is typically done, the questions to ask each bidder, the answers that should worry me, and what's worth paying extra for. Plain English — I'll be reading this in the truck before they arrive.
Diane, reviewing the freshly organized garage, has asked whether the machine takes requests from her side of the legal pad. It does. Chapter 6 is hers — and Marlene's.
Works in ChatGPT, Claude, or any of their cousins.