It is not the economy. It is not your job. It is not luck.
In ten days you are going to see it. Written down. In your own handwriting.
Begins Wednesday 30 September · Free · From 52 countries
Here is what people wrote back.
WesleyBuying lottery tickets every 2 days. Spending ZAR 1000 weekly and winning about ZAR 200 or less. Doing so for 15 years.
RoshanCigarettes. Rs 270 a day. It has been running for more than 25 years since school days.
HalaPaying for training courses and books. Every single month I say enough. Then I see a training on a new skill and I pay. I keep spending. It's been running since ever.
KashEvery time I go to the petrol station to fill the car up I end up spending money on drinks, snacks. This has been going on for years.
BibiThe TV channels package. It's been running for many years. And I don't even remember when I sat down to watch even 1 channel.
SumaiahThe loan interest. Just the interest. No principal. 30k per month, running for the past 2 years. That is my worst nightmare.
ShailieeWhat stands out is actually the opposite. I don't feel that I spend enough on myself. I haven't consistently made myself part of the budget yet.
Wesley15 years. ZAR 1,200,000.
ImanI can go back 10 years. Total money wasted on patterns and bad decisions: 1.7 million.
JeannieI keep postponing opening my pandora box of worms. It has cost me my whole life savings and even much more than I can say.
GeoffI did not know on day 1 that those casual spendings were so significant. R90k over 12 years.
Not one of these people knew their number before day one.
Every one of them had been paying it for years.
You have made money before. You have also watched it leave.
You have had the good month, the good year, the deal that was finally going to change things. And somehow you are still here, doing the arithmetic at night, telling yourself next year.
It is not that you do not work hard enough.
You work harder than people with ten times your money. That is what makes it unbearable.
Something inside you is set to a number.
Every time you get near it, something quietly pulls you back.
The deal that dies at the last moment. The price you did not raise. The invoice you did not chase. The account you have not opened in months.
I live in a paradox between wanting success and deep down resisting it. Deep down a part of me is sure I never get it.
That is the thing. It has a name, it has a beginning, and it can be ended.
Cash you can reach today. Total you owe. What comes in. What goes out. Most people have never written all four on the same page in their lives.
Not theoretically. Your own accounts, the last thirty days. Almost nobody gets through this day without finding something they did not expect.
This is the hardest hour of the ten days, and it is the one that changes people.
Abeer found hers on day seven: I always make bad money choices.
She had been saying it to herself since she was a child.
It is almost never being poor. It is usually something far more specific — and once you can name it, it stops driving.
The account. The invoice. The person who owes you. On one of these days, you handle it.
People finish these ten days holding a document about their own life that did not exist before.
— a real constraint, in your own words, for when the pattern comes back. And it will come back.
doing the same thing on the same morning. That is why you will finish this and not abandon it like the other things.
Not a theory. Not a feeling. A specific, nameable thing you can point at.
Today I called my old friend and asked him about the money he took from me. I got a part of the loan back. My wife was happy about it.
I followed up on the 30,000 I was owed, even after the person had gone silent.
She had been avoiding it for months.
I finally asked for what I was worth instead of staying quiet.
I proved I can send offers to potential clients and nothing bad will happen.
I have been living in survival mode without any means to get income, and that thinking ends here. I sent out an offer already.
Selling bread and samosas, getting a stall at the flea market. I'm putting my products out there. No turning back.
The savings I made by stopping the leak have started a new investment. I've started keeping a weekly ledger.
Hala committed to running her first paid training — after avoiding it for more than three years.
I proved that when I set my mind to it, I can beat my fear and take action.
Today I called my old friend and asked him about the money he took from me. I got a part of the loan back. My wife was happy about it.
I followed up on the 30,000 I was owed, even after the person had gone silent.
She had been avoiding it for months.
I finally asked for what I was worth instead of staying quiet.
I proved I can send offers to potential clients and nothing bad will happen.
I have been living in survival mode without any means to get income, and that thinking ends here. I sent out an offer already.
Selling bread and samosas, getting a stall at the flea market. I'm putting my products out there. No turning back.
The savings I made by stopping the leak have started a new investment. I've started keeping a weekly ledger.
Hala committed to running her first paid training — after avoiding it for more than three years.
I proved that when I set my mind to it, I can beat my fear and take action.
Ten days. All of it while doing their normal jobs and their normal lives.
Jeannie wrote one sentence and nothing elseI got it. It's my heart that changed.
AneelaTen days did not solve my problems, but they removed some of my excuses for not facing them.
NimishaMy biggest threat is not that I don't know what to do. It is that I have quit before, and I have made quitting sound reasonable to myself.
ShailieeI don't need more awareness now. I need repetition, especially when nobody is asking me to do it.
GeoffThere has been a shift in me. I know it.
Hala, asked what not having this had cost herWasted 14 years of my life.
Thirty years asking one question: why do people who know exactly what to do still not do it?
I have asked it in fifty-two countries, of more than a million people. In stadiums and in living rooms. Of billionaires, and of people who could not pay that month's rent.
Twelve books trying to answer it.
Here is the answer, and it costs nothing:
Nobody is stopped by what they do not know. They are stopped by what they will not look at.
These ten days are the most direct thing I have ever built to make you look.
Every morning, wherever you are on earth, it begins.
— in the real world, today, with proof.
Day one: open every account you have. Every single one. Then open the last thirty days of your spending and tell me what you see.
Not a template — a real reply to what you actually wrote.
and tell you what just happened to you, and why.
Ten days. Fifty moments where you either look, or you look away.
Some will not make it past day two.
If that is you, do not start. I would rather you kept your ten days.
The moment it begins you are in a room with everyone who started that morning. Different countries. Different currencies. Different amounts of money, and exactly the same problem.
You will see their names. You will see who is ahead of you. You will see someone in Dubai finish today's task while you are still deciding whether to open the app.
Last time, people were still going at two in the morning rather than break a streak they had held for nine days.
Please keep the app open after we finish. Let us go back to our answers. Pleeeease.
I would rather you never started than started and quit on day three.
When it begins, it closes. There is no joining on day four — the whole thing works because every person is on the same day at the same time.
The next one is a month away. And you already know what the next month looks like if nothing changes.
Free · Begins 30 September
You will either know the exact thing that has been stopping you for twenty years —
or you will be here again, at midnight, doing the arithmetic, telling yourself next year.
Somebody who finished this wrote: “Wasted 14 years of my life.”She wrote it on the day she stopped wasting them.
Free · Begins Wednesday 30 September
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