A short pause to notice the time you are living through.
Most of the time we move through our days without stopping to ask what kind of period we are actually in. Things are beginning, or ending, or changing, or waiting to change, and we are usually too far inside them to see it. This is a practice for stopping, briefly, and looking.
It is a handful of questions, asked one at a time, answered in your own words. It takes five to ten minutes.
This practice is new and is being tested. You have been asked to try it and then say how it felt — which is the part we cannot do without you.
The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes: five to ten for the practice, and a few more for the feedback. You can stop at any point in either.
A short pause to notice what you are living through. A few questions, one at a time, answered in your own words — or skipped, or left blank. It is not a test, and there are no correct answers.
Go and do something else for a few minutes. This matters more than it sounds: we want to know how the practice felt once you had left it, not while you were still inside it.
Questions about the practice — what was clear, vague, useful, demanding, or unnecessary. Not about what you reflected on.
Five to ten minutes. Best done when you have a little quiet, but an ordinary moment is fine — an ordinary day is one of the things we need to know about.
At the end you will be offered a session note: a short plain-text record of timings only — how long you spent, what you skipped, where you stopped. None of your words are in it. It is there for you to read, and to keep if you want it.
If you go from the practice straight to the feedback form, these details are carried across and filled in for you. There is nothing to copy, and nothing to remember. Copying the note by hand is only useful if you are giving feedback much later, on a different device, or did the practice on paper.
Split into short sections with a bar at the top showing where you are. Every question is optional, and one button cuts it down to six questions if you would rather. It shows you everything you would be sending before you decide to send it.
Please do use the break. Feedback given straight after the practice tends to describe the reflection; feedback given a little later describes the practice, which is what we can actually act on.
This is the part worth reading carefully, because the answer is more restrictive than you may expect.
| Recorded | Never recorded |
|---|---|
| How long you spent on each question | Anything you wrote in the practice |
| Whether each was answered, left blank, or skipped | No text, no copy, no summary, no word count |
| Where you stopped, if you stopped | Your name, email, or any way to contact you |
| Your answers on the feedback form | Anything from your device or browsing |
| A random code, so the two halves stay together | Your name, or anything that could be traced to you |
The words you write during the practice never leave your browser tab. They are not saved, not sent, and not held anywhere after you close the page. This is enforced in the page itself and again on the server, which refuses any submission that looks like it is carrying reflection text.
The feedback form is different, and deliberately so: your answers there are recorded, because they are about the practice rather than about your life. You see the exact text before you choose to send it, and you can copy or download it instead.
Your browser generates a short random code the first time you open this page — something like p-8x2k-a7f3. It files your practice and your feedback in the same place, so the two halves are not orphaned from each other. There is nothing to be given, remembered, or typed.
The code is random. It is not derived from your name, your device, or anything about you, and there is no list anywhere connecting it to a person. It is the one thing these pages store on your computer, and it holds nothing else — no answers, no timings, none of your words.
Sharing a computer with another participant? Start fresh with a new code so their session and yours are not filed together.
Everything collected is deleted on a date fixed before the pilot began. Ask if you want to know the date — it is written down, and deleting it is a single command rather than a promise.
You are giving us something we cannot get any other way, and we are grateful for it.
A practice like this cannot be tested by thinking about it harder. It only reveals itself when someone actually sits down, tries it in the middle of a real day, and then says honestly how it went. That is what you are doing, and there is no substitute for it.
What is most useful to us is not praise. If the questions felt vague, if the sequence felt like a form, if you stopped halfway because it was not worth continuing — that is the feedback that changes the practice. Saying so plainly is a genuine contribution, not a disappointment.
The other half of this is simpler. Whatever the practice turns out to be worth, you took ten or fifteen minutes to stop and notice what you are living through. That is unusual, and it was yours before it was ever ours.
Whether or not anything came of it — whether you finished, stopped early, or found nothing clear to say — the pause itself was real. We hope it was worth having on its own terms, separately from having helped us.
It is not therapy, coaching, or crisis support, and it is no substitute for any of them. If something urgent is happening, please go to the right kind of help rather than to this.