A living, one-page brief. Rebuilt lean Jul 17: the glance, the loop, the current protocol, three short topics, and the Jul 27 decision. Under ten minutes end to end.
Updated Jul 17, 2026 · pre-session · the Jul 27 decision is the next session's headline
What changed since Jul 3 (the short version)
N5 is closed. On Jul 13, Nick withdrew the SDR offer in a clean 63-minute call; friendship intact. Sean owes Nick $1,600 cash, target Aug 30, and will complete a voluntary systems handoff. Work is DJ plus S.Chi Labs. The old N5-versus-agency decision no longer exists.
Karla ended Jul 14 after the third jealousy-trigger fight. Her birthday, Jul 27, is the next live decision point and it gets decided in session, not alone at night. Detail in Karla + Jul 27.
A full life-strategy review ran Jul 16 (his own document). It names one loop under everything and installs one protocol against it. Both are below, and they are the operating system this brief now sits inside.
State at a glance
Work & moneyRESET
N5 closed; DJ floor, S.Chi Labs ceiling
$1,600 owed to Nick by Aug 30; the daily send is the one metric
KarlaOFF, JUL 14
Ended Jul 14; her goodbye is unanswered
Her birthday Jul 27 is the next live decision point
Body & sleepREBUILDING
Nights run to 5-6am; the night gate starts now
His words: "I wake up and feel fucking cooked." The gate below is the answer being tested
The loop: the one thing under all three
The loop: no aim → unguarded evenings → games/porn to 6am → dead morning → no send or gym → no wins → games supply progression → money stays stuck → mission stays survival math → no aim.
Underneath: "if I show up as myself and I'm not enough, I'll be left" (mom died when he was 11). The loop creates respectable substitute work so the rejection-risky rep never happens.
The counter: the daily send is the exposure rep; the night gate is the mechanical cut; Cockpit, the 5am brief, and Tannoz are the witness stack.
All of the above is Sean's own formulation from his Jul 16 review, in his own words, brought here for you to test, not asserted as clinical fact. The send-as-exposure framing also replaces the old behavioral assignment from the IFS sessions (5 dials before 3pm), which by his own accounting went undone for 14 straight days; that non-completion is the data the redesign leans on.
The current protocol (running now, 30-day sprint to Aug 15)
Night gate. Phone to a desk dock (not the bed) at 1:50am, grayscale and DND on, lights out 2:00am, up by 10:00 in weeks 1-2, then the taper moves earlier. Ten minutes outside on waking before any recreational screen.
The send, with veto power. Before games, reels, or porn: send one revenue-rep message from Sean's own pipeline. A day without the send counts as lost no matter what else went right; green health boxes cannot hide a zero money day.
Six-box day, scored 5 of 6. Night gate, morning launch, the send, movement, clean dopamine (games earned, capped at two hours), and a night voice note. Auto-judged from real data, not self-report. Not 6 of 6 on purpose: his own read is that one miss turning into a full reset was the actual failure mode.
Escalation triggers, you are the witness. A Karla contact attempt in either direction, three lost days in any seven, or a non-gig night past 5am. On any trigger: scoreboard screenshots immediately, a 72-hour reset (games, porn, feeds unavailable), and the screenshots come to the next session with you. His rule: no plan edits until that session.
The mom / Gaia containers. The lock-screen line ("Hand of Gaia. Mom is in everything alive; I move things for her."), a photo of his mother by the desk, and a weekly ten-minute rep helping one other ADHD person. His standing rule: anything about his mother that gets heavy routes to you, not to a productivity system. Named by him as grief work.
Topic 1 · Money & work
N5 is closed and the decision that used to eat these sessions is gone. What remains is simple: DJ is the floor (booked weddings, largely autopilot), S.Chi Labs is the ceiling (his own web agency, mornings), and the one metric is asks sent per day, not pages built.
The Nick closeout. Jul 13, a clean 63-minute call; Nick pulled the SDR offer, friendship intact. Sean owes Nick $1,600 cash, target Aug 30, funded by an already-booked Aug 29 DJ balance, plus a voluntary handoff of the systems he built.
The live work question. Not which vehicle, but whether the daily send actually happens. The known pattern is building around the send instead of sending; the protocol above exists to force the send first.
The debt frame. Booked DJ money clears most creditors on autopilot before Oct 10; the remaining wall is what the S.Chi sends exist to close.
Topic 2 · Karla, and the Jul 27 decision
Ended Jul 14 after the third jealousy-trigger fight (Jun 2, Jul 5, Jul 14, same Instagram trigger each time); her goodbye is unanswered. This time the hold has no expiration date built in, and the one live question, her birthday on Monday Jul 27, is pre-committed to be decided in session with you.
Jul 27 decision (her birthday): his to make, in session
In session, decide: silence, one low-investment text, or flowers. He leans toward a low-investment touch. Nothing sends before session.
What he's said he wants (his words, Jul 16): "make sure she's still thinking of me without investment." He doesn't expect to want it back before October, expects her to test the wall first, and admits "if she reaches out, I'd likely want to reach out."
The 4 questions he's bringing you
Is the birthday-text urge the wound or the strategy? His own test: would he still want to send it if he knew it worked but she never told him so?
What does "win" mean if he doesn't want it back before October, and he's returning to her city that day?
The jealousy trigger, his own and untreated, 3 for 3 as the detonator. Is the real Jul 27-week risk his text, or his reaction to whatever she posts that night?
(Standing) Oct 10 means landing back in her city. What's the frame for that, whatever state Jul 27 leaves the door in?
If she contacts him first: 24 hours minimum of nothing, screenshots to this thread, any reply decided in session, never at night. A slip triggers the same-day escalation reset above, not a dead campaign.
Topic 3 · Body & the night gate
Night gate: dock 1:50am, lights 2:00am, up by 10:00 in weeks 1-2. Games are earned, capped at two hours. Gig nights get their own variant (straight home, docked on arrival, lights within 45 minutes) so a paid 1am gig never reads as a broken night.
Where it starts from. Nights have been running to 5-6am on games and feeds, mornings starting near 1pm. The gate is deliberately mechanical because his own accounting says a plan written by regulated-him at noon has never survived depleted-him at 2am.
Movement. After the send: gym 20+ minutes or a 30-minute walk, with a bodyweight fallback for gig days. Scored as one of the six boxes, from watch data, not self-report.
Can't sleep rule. Paper or nothing; screens-off is the rule, not sleep-on-command. A grief wave gets one 60-second voice note at the desk, then bed; it is not a message draft.
Session agenda: next session (his proposal)
Next session: not booked yet
Not booked yet, but it needs to land before Jul 27. His proposal, headline first. A pacing guide you run, not a script.
HEADLINEThe Jul 27 decision. Silence, one low-investment text, or flowers; his stated want and the 4 questions are in the block above. Decided in the room, in daylight.
THENReview the daily S.Chi Labs send, the debt/handoff, and the night gate. How the first days of the protocol actually went, against the loop it exists to break.
STANDINGThe jealousy trigger and Oct 10. The trigger is his and untreated; the return to her city is on the calendar either way.
Leave Sean a note
Anything between sessions, a reflection, a piece of homework, a nudge. It's emailed to Sean so it reaches his inbox.