Find the Leak, Patch the Loop

Momentum can slip away quietly. One day you notice fewer wins, the spark dims, and the routine feels heavier. It’s not failure—it’s drift. Without a check, small leaks grow into stalls that steal your progress.

Why Audits Matter

Momentum drifts over months. Work piles up in the wrong places. Habits soften at the edges. A monthly momentum audit catches the drift before it turns into a stall. The audit is simple: find the weakest lever, patch one loop, and run the fix for two weeks. You are not judging yourself. You are servicing a system you rely on.

Start with Proof

Start with a quiet hour and your museum of proof. Scroll back thirty days. Notice the cadence of artifacts. Do entries cluster and then disappear? Do they stay steady but feel small?

Check the Numbers

Now look at your three numbers by week—proof days, finish rate, and feedback latency. One of them will look wobbly. That wobble points at the lever that needs love.

Common Leaks and Fixes

• Activation Leak: If starts feel heavy and proof days sank, your priming routine likely slipped. Files are not staged. The first move is unclear. Patch by:

  • Restoring priming rituals
  • Adding a gentle public commitment for a week
  • Staging tomorrow’s file before closing the laptop
  • Setting a named alarm that cues a fifteen-minute push
    Keep the promise tiny and real. Measure proof days. The goal is easy starts, not heroics.

• Finish Rate Leak: If finish rate fell under your usual range, slices probably ballooned. You may have slid back into bundles that feel responsible but never end. Patch by:

  • Rewriting active items as outcomes fitting a forty-minute window
  • Enforcing hard stops
  • Hitting the red button when you drift
    Measure finish rate. You should see the ratio rise as you end more sessions with an artifact.

• Feedback Latency Leak: If feedback latency stretched, you are shipping into silence. The ask might be too heavy, the channel might be wrong, or you might be avoiding asks altogether. Patch by:

  • Sending three direct messages after every ship for two weeks
  • Keeping the question specific and the reply path easy
  • Varying channels—DMs, email, small communities
    Log first reply times and compare. The right channel will show itself in hours.

• Evidence Leak: If evidence feels thin even when you move, your capture habits slipped. You do the work but fail to log it. Patch by:

  • Adding a minute to the end of every session to drop a screenshot, a sentence, and a link
  • On Fridays, assembling a tiny highlight with two artifacts and the next step
    Notice how seeing proof changes your desire to start.

Watch Energy Patterns

Beyond the levers, scan for patterns that waste energy. Are you switching lanes mid-box? Running long and resenting the system? Stacking meetings across prime hours then blaming yourself for slow ships? The audit is your chance to tweak the environment. Consider clustering calls, adding buffers, or tightening your active list to three. Small structural changes restore flow. (Advanced tactics like multiple fixes or deeper structural tweaks can come later.)

Write a Diagnosis

Write your diagnosis in three lines: lever, symptom, fix. For example:
“Finish rate low. Bundles instead of slices. Halve scope and enforce 40-minute stops for two weeks.”
Put the lines at the top of your weekly note. If you work with a partner, share the lines and ask for accountability. Do not add five fixes. Pick one. Run it long enough to see a signal.

Close with a Re‑Bet

Close with a re-bet. Archive a project that hit a stop rule. Move one “someday” idea off your plate. Double down on the work that moved people. You are pruning, not retreating. The space you create now becomes energy for the next month—and the next quarter. Momentum is not a sprint but a long game. Keep the loops tight, the patches small, and the system honest. Find the leak. Patch the loop. Move on.