Who it is for
People whose illness, pain, fatigue or capacity changes unpredictably, plus the partners, families and friends planning alongside them.
The problem
You’ve been given two forecasts. Both are broken.
The hopeful one — stay positive, book the holiday, you’ll be fine — is one optimistic prediction with no plan attached for any other kind of day. When the bad day comes anyway, it arrives as your failure.
The braced one — don’t commit, you never know — never technically fails. It just quietly deletes your life, one “maybe” at a time.
They look like opposites. They’re the identical mistake — one forecast, everything bet on it — the exact planning failure that sinks billion-dollar companies. Except when you get it wrong, you miss your sister’s wedding.
You don’t need to predict your body.
You need to be ready for it.
The method
Five weathers. Three moves. That’s the whole vocabulary.
Nobody apologises for rain. You check the sky, you carry a coat, and when the forecast is wrong you blame the sky — not yourself. TomorrowYou borrows that entire arrangement and points it at your body. Instead of planning one unknowable “tomorrow”, you keep a small plan ready for each of five kinds of day:
Clearyour best realistic day — what do I want to spend this on?
Standardyour ordinary — what does sustainable look like?
Heavysymptomatic but functional — what’s the smaller version of today?
Stormthe bad one — what runs on autopilot?
Goldunexpectedly good — what do I seize, without paying for it?
Gold is the signature move: the good day, planned as seriously as the storm — because being ambushed by good news you’re too braced to use is its own quiet tragedy.
The three moves
- Know your weather. Debrief your last five storms; keep only the warning signs that pass two questions — does it usually show up before a storm, and does it give me time to act? The point of tracking is to earn the right to stop.
- Have a plan for each. The star tool is the Branch — a “yes” made in versions, declared up front: “I’m in, one of three ways. You’ll know by 6pm.” It was never the cancelling that cost you people; it was unpredictability with no protocol around it.
- Tell your crew. The illness is yours; the uncertainty is everyone’s. Agreements made in calm weather — trigger, package, boundary — so nobody has to guess.
Then you live it in five words a morning: name the day, run its plan.
One important line, printed here as it is in the book: you are the world expert on your own illness. This method teaches you nothing about your body — it offers shelves for what you already know. Borrow the five names above or rename every one of them tonight.
Free tools — made to be sent
The method works best when it reaches the people around you.
Everything below is free, works on a phone in a hurry, needs no account, and makes sense to someone who has never heard of this book. Send them. That’s what they’re for.
Daily practice
The Forecast
Name the day, run its plan, one line at night. A sky of stars that never goes dark — no streaks, no health scores, everything stays on your device.
Open the app → The three-way yes Branch builderTurn any invitation into a “yes” that can’t fail — full version, smaller version, graceful miss — composed and copied in thirty seconds.
Build a branch → For the people who love you For your crewA page written to them, not you — send it instead of having the exhausting explanatory conversation for the hundredth time.
Read it, then send it → For the fridge door The fridge sheetThe five weathers, the agreement card and a branch template on one beautiful printable page. Household law lives on the fridge.
Print it →The book
Where this comes from
TomorrowYou is the second of three books about living well with uncertainty. TomorrowBrand adapts scenario planning for healthcare brands; TomorrowYou brings it into the intimate uncertainty of everyday life; TomorrowWork applies the same method to professional careers. Companies pay serious money to prepare for futures they can’t predict; people facing the most personal uncertainty of all are too often handed “stay positive” instead. This book corrects that.
The first draft is complete and is being shaped with real collaborators who live with chronic illness — their stories, their vetoes, their words in their own Field Notes. It stands on the shoulders of tools the community built first: Spoon Theory, pacing, and the energy-envelope tradition.