These six prompts come from the companion pack prepared for the pilot. Start with the council interview if you haven’t chosen your seats yet.
This is the original prompt text, with reading notes added for the website. Its scoring lenses reflect my work and business goals. Change those lenses if your next chapter is about something else. Scores are discussion aids, not measurements. Treat the cap of three as a limit on chosen projects, not on family responsibilities or everything life asks of you.
Six prompts for after your council exists. Run them in the same conversation where you built it. If you are starting a fresh chat, first paste a short summary of your seats (name, the one question each asks, the failure each guards against) so the council comes back to life, then use the prompt.
1. The weekly run (the habit that makes this work)
Convene my council for the weekly run. Candidates: [list everything you are
tempted to work on this week, plus anything left over from last week].
For each candidate, have the council score five lenses from 0 to 2:
Coherence (does it feed my main goal), Positioning (does it deepen what I want
to be known for), Money (does it move me toward income I control), Cadence (is
it a small repeatable rep I could hold for years), Leverage (does it compound,
or is it a one-off).
Sort by score. The top items become my do-now list, hard cap of THREE.
Everything else gets parked with a one-line trigger for when it earns another
look. End with the three do-nows, each with the smallest step I can ship this
week and its one binding constraint.2. Staffing a new seat
I want to add one seat to my council. The gap I keep falling into is:
[describe the failure or blind spot].
Propose three candidate voices for this seat (well-known thinkers, authors, or
archetypes). For each: one line on how they would push me, the ONE question
they would always ask me, and the specific failure they guard against. Then
recommend one and say why. If an existing seat already covers this gap, tell me
straight and do not add the seat. My council stays at five seats or fewer.3. The park-or-kill call (run this BEFORE touching a new idea)
A new idea just hit me: [describe it in two or three sentences].
Run it past the council before I touch it. First: is it finishing something
already in flight, or is it new? If it is new, each seat weighs in briefly,
then give one verdict. DO NOW: only if it beats the weakest item on my current
list of three, and name which one it replaces. PARK: write the one-line trigger
for when it comes back. DROP: say why, kindly and clearly. Do not let me hold
four active priorities. My current three: [list them].4. The monthly gate (sustainability, not output)
Run my monthly sustainability check. This is not about output; it is about
whether the pace and direction are ones I can hold and will be glad I held.
Four questions, one pass: (1) Looking back from five years out, am I glad I
spent this season this way? (2) Is this coherent with the life I am building,
or an unexamined belief dressed up as a plan? (3) Is my time going to deep work
on what matters, or to novelty that feels like progress? (4) Is the pace one my
real life (family, health, energy) can actually hold?
End with a color. GREEN: keep going. YELLOW: keep going after one named
adjustment, and state it. RED: stop, and tell me plainly what has to change
before I continue. Be honest. You protect me, not my output.5. The cap audit (“did I break the cap of three?”)
Audit me: did I break the cap of three?
Here is everything I actually worked on since our last run: [list it honestly,
including the small stuff and the detours].
Compare that against my stated three priorities. Name anything that got real
time but never went through the council. For each stray: was it a genuine
emergency, recreation I should own as recreation, or a drift? Then give me the
one thing to do differently next week. Keep it short; this is a spot check, not
a re-plan.6. Re-entry after a missed week (no shame, no re-plan)
I missed [a week / two weeks / a while]. Life happened. Re-enter me without
shame and without a re-plan.
Do three things: (1) restate my three do-nows exactly as they were, unless one
expired on its own; (2) shrink this week's version of each to the smallest rep
that keeps the streak alive; (3) remind me in two sentences why this direction
was chosen, so I do not relitigate it. Add nothing new this week. The comeback
rep is deliberately small.One rule above all of them: the council exists to make your list SHORTER. If a session with it ever produces more work than you arrived with, close the chat and go do the smallest item on your list of three.
After the conversation
Write down the decision in your own words. Did the council respect your constraints, and what did you choose to leave out? Revisit the result after using it; don’t score the usefulness of the session by how polished its plan looked.
The re-entry prompt assumes the old direction still fits. If your responsibilities or priorities changed while you were away, update the context first. You don’t owe an old plan a streak.
Prefer keeping instructions in a project? The file template gives you a shorter, editable version of the two-council structure.