Practical exercises · free, no email
The exercises where the work starts.
When someone sits down in front of me with a crossroads, the first thing I do is not give advice. I pull out one of these. They are the exercises I start working with clients on: before the plans, the facts. Each one takes between five and fifteen minutes, with pen and paper or right on the page, and none of them asks for your email. At the end you take away a verdict and one concrete move, to download as a PDF or an image.
One honest line, before you start: none of these is a clinical test. They are practical compasses. They tell you where to start, not who you are.
Twelve exercises, five Ds
Pick one. One only.
Every exercise lives under one of the five Ds of the 5D Method, Data · Direction · Decision · Destination · Desire, and answers a different question. Start from the one that keeps you up at night. If you don't know which one that is, start from the Stay-or-Leave Test: it tells you.
The Stay-or-Leave Test tells you which of the five Ds you're missing. Ten questions, three minutes, and you know which exercise to start from.
How long can I last? The runway calculator
The question that wakes you at three in the morning is always the same: what if nothing comes in? Four numbers and it has an answer. How many months you last at zero income, and the date your reserve runs out.
Start Data · pricingThe price that keeps you standing
There is a price below which you are not selling, you are paying to work. Seven numbers and you find it. Out come two rates, the survival one and the breathing one, counted on the hours you can actually bill.
Start Data · businessThe business tune-up
"How is work going?" "Fine, I guess." If even you don't know the real answer, this is the tune-up: six checks with numbers, from cash to your biggest client, with the thresholds declared. You leave knowing where the project creaks.
Start Data · lifeThe wheel of life
A coaching classic, done properly. You give two scores to eight areas of your life, how satisfied you are and how much each matters to you, and the wheel draws itself while you answer. The gap counts, not the lowest score.
StartWhich value are you betraying?
Saying "family comes first" is easy. Seeing it in your calendar from the last few weeks, less so. From 36 values you get to your 5, anchored to recent facts, and then you give each one a consistency score.
Start DirectionToo many ideas?
Ten ideas in the drawer and not one gets going. I know those lists. Here you line them up with three scores and a matrix, and you leave with the idea to start from, without throwing the others away.
StartThe pre-mortem
Imagine your project has already failed, and ask yourself why. It hurts for ten minutes and saves months. You go through the fifteen most common causes, because on your own you only see the obvious risks. It is the tool Kahneman recommended above any other.
Start DecisionThe decision journal
Hindsight is a liar: six months from now you will swear you "knew it". Here you write the decision before you make it, with the alternatives you discarded and what you expect, and then you reread it with a cool head. The story stays the true one.
Start DecisionStay or shut it down? Exit conditions
The client who wears you down, the project that hasn't taken off in two years. You keep it open because nobody ever wrote down when it would be over. Here you write it: a measurable state, a date, and the cost in euros of every month of waiting.
StartThere is one more
The Crossroads Workbook. But it takes the book.
Readers of "Stay or Leave?" get the book's digital companion: the tools from the fifteen chapters ready to fill in, plus the full loop in ten moves, from the doubt to the signature. It opens with a code you find in the book.
How to use them
One at a time, for real.
The worst way to use these exercises is doing them all in a row like magazine quizzes. Pick one, do it calmly and make the move that comes out of it. Then, if needed, come back for the next one.
If you don't know which one to start from, this is the advice I always give:
- You're at a crossroads and don't know whether to stay or change→start from the Stay-or-Leave Test.
- You already know what to do, but you keep putting it off→take the procrastination test.
- You work for yourself and feel something isn't turning→do the business tune-up.
- You work a lot and little stays, or you're afraid to raise your prices→calculate your minimum rate.
- A client or a project has been wearing you down for months→write your exit conditions.
- You have a big decision ahead→write it in the decision journal before you make it.
- Everything is fuzzy and you don't even know what the problem is→start from the wheel of life.
The step after
Every exercise is the start of a piece of work.
On their own, these exercises give you the starting point. If you want to do the rest of the road with me at your side, the next step is simple: a thirty-minute coffee, online, no strings attached. You tell me what came out of the exercise and we close with the first clear move. In English, Italian or German.
Want to see first how I work for three months straight? Meet Decision Lab.