Every plan looks brilliant on a Sunday. The real test is Tuesday, 7:40pm: you're tired, the fridge is half-empty, and the plan says 'grilled salmon with three fresh sides'. If a plan collapses the first evening life gets in the way, it was never a plan — it was a wish.
What survives a Tuesday
Meals with under eight ingredients and under thirty minutes. A default dinner you could cook half-asleep. Frozen vegetables treated as a feature, not a failure. Tinned fish, eggs, pre-cooked grains — unglamorous food that actually gets eaten beats aspirational food that gets replaced by toast.
A good plan also has a written 'plan B' for its three most likely failure points: the late meeting, the empty fridge, the night you simply can't be bothered.
Run the test on your own plan
Look at this week's plan and ask: which of these meals would survive my worst evening? If the answer is 'none', the plan needs redesigning around your actual week — not the perfect one. That's the entire philosophy behind how I write protocols: nothing you can't sustain on your worst week.
