Universal edition
Do, don't just read
Things to
do.
Hands-on activities for each of the eight essentials. Pick one and actually do it this week.
Try one this week.
Each essential has its own set of activities. Choose one that fits your week, your space and your people. Start small; done beats perfect. More activities are on the way.
Three ways to do these
Every activity on this page works on your own, and every one of them works better with company. Pick whichever fits the week you are actually having.
- On your ownA few minutes, no audience, nobody to explain yourself to. Most of these need nothing but you, and this is the easiest place to start. If you would rather not tell anyone you are doing this yet, you do not have to.
- With other peopleA friend, a small group, a class, or your family. Doing it next to someone else is usually the thing that turns a one-off into a habit, because somebody notices when you are not there. There are discussion questions ready for groups if you want a starting point.
- With an AI agentThe honest problem with anything you do by yourself is that nobody notices when you stop. An agent notices. It holds the thread, remembers where you got to, checks in when you asked it to, asks the questions you would rather skip, and points you at the next thing when you are ready to do more. That is what the skill.md files on this page are for.
What is a skill.md file?
A skill.md is a plain text file, written in markdown. It tells an AI agent how to do one thing: who to be, what the goal is, the steps to follow, the questions to ask, and where to stop. There is no code in it and nothing to install. Every activity on this page has one, and it is yours to read, edit and keep.
Why they help
- Your agent runs the activity properly, and the same way every time, instead of improvising.
- The safety notes and boundaries travel inside the file, so the tone stays right.
- It is yours to change. Shorten it, reword it, or add your own notes at the bottom.
- It is portable. The same file works in any harness that can read markdown, so you are not locked into one tool.
- It sets delivery up for you: how often the activity runs, how you want to be reminded, and how it arrives.
How to use one
- Find an activity and press skill.md.
- Copy the text, or download the file.
- Give it to your agent. Either save it where your agent keeps its skills or instructions, or paste it in as the first message of a new chat.
- Tell your agent to start by setting up delivery: how often you want it, how you want to be reminded and at what time, and whether you want it as chat, audio, imagery, a web page, or a combination.
- Run it. Keep the file and run it again whenever you like.
Which harnesses they work with
These files are plain markdown, so they are not tied to one tool. They work with any agent harness that can load an instruction file. These eight are a good place to start:
- Hermes Open source and self-hosted, with persistent memory and skills that grow with you. Save the file where your agent keeps its skills, or paste it in as your first message.
- QwenPaw A personal agent workstation you run yourself, extensible with Skills and MCP. Add this activity as a skill.
- DeepSeek Harness A developer preview where every capability is a plugin, skills included. Add the file as a skill plugin.
- Agent Zero An open source agentic framework that runs on its own computer and builds its own tools. Give it the file as an instruction and it will follow it.
- Msty Go Scoped agents you run from desktop or mobile, reviewing each step as it goes. Paste the file as the first message of a new agent.
- OpenClaw An open source assistant on your own machine, reached through WhatsApp, Telegram or any chat app. Paste the text into the chat.
- LM Studio Bionic LM Studio’s agent for work and code, running open models locally on your device. Paste the file in as your first message, or as the system prompt.
- Abacus AI Bot Free and open source, a coding agent on your own machine that remembers your project across sessions. Paste the file in as your first message, or add it to your agent’s instructions.
Where a harness has a skills, prompts or instructions folder, save the file there under the activity’s name. Where it does not, paste the text in as your first message. Your harness’s own documentation will tell you which place it expects, and an ordinary chat window in any capable model will work too.
The ability to sit in silence.
Stillness / attention
The three-minute sit
Set a timer for three minutes, put your phone face down, and just sit. Notice what comes up. When it ends, write down one thing you noticed.
One notification off
Turn off every notification that isn't a real human talking to you, for one full day. At the end, write down what changed and what didn't.
The phone-free hour
One hour a day with your phone in another room. Use the time for one thing that needs your full attention, and notice how it feels.
The first thirty minutes
No phone for the first half hour after you wake up. Before the messages, before the feed, before anyone else's day arrives in yours. The first three minutes are the hard part.
Delete one app for a week
Remove one app completely for seven days, not just from your home screen. Then notice what filled the gap, and whether you actually want it back.
The waiting test
Next time you wait, do nothing. One ordinary wait: a bus, a queue, a lift. No phone, no scrolling, even once. Watch what your hand does.
A silent meal
One meal a day with nothing playing: no screen, no podcast, no music. Just the food, and whatever your head does when it has nothing to watch.
A day with nothing playing
One day with no background audio at all. Nothing in your ears, nothing playing while you do something else. Find out what the noise was covering up.
Your body is a home.
Body / care
The one-thing walk
Twenty minutes a day, just you and the road, no headphones. Walk, look, breathe. It is not a workout; it is a way of being home in your body.
Water before the screen
Drink a full glass of water before you check your phone each morning. A two-second reset that tells your body the day starts with you.
The sleep experiment
Pick a bedtime and a wake time, and keep them for a week. Then notice how you feel: mood, focus, energy. Let the evidence argue.
The strength baseline
Test what your body can actually do: push-ups, squats, a plank, a walk. Write the numbers down, then test again in a month. Function you can measure beats a look you cannot.
Ten minutes of daylight, first thing
Get outside, or to a bright window, within the first hour of waking, no sunglasses. Morning light sets your body clock for the whole day and the night after it.
Ten minutes of movement you actually like
Not a workout and not a step count. Ten minutes of movement you would do for its own sake: dancing, swimming, kicking a ball. Then do it again tomorrow.
The energy log
Rate your energy 1 to 5 three times a day for a week, and note what you were doing. Your body has a pattern, and almost nobody has looked at theirs.
Book the check-up you keep putting off
Book the GP appointment and the dentist. Most young people have not had a proper check-up in years. If your body is a home, this is the maintenance.
Useful skills for real life.
Capability / skills
Cook one real meal
Make a proper meal from scratch, not from a packet. Invite someone to share it. You are allowed to be terrible at it the first time.
Fix one thing
Repair something in the house rather than replacing it: a button, a bike, a cable. The skill is the confidence that you can.
The money audit
Track every dollar you spend for a week, then find one leak you are happy to plug. Not a budget; just a look at where it all goes.
Regrow vegetables from scraps
Save the ends you would bin: spring onion roots, a celery base, a lettuce core, a sprouting potato. Roots and leaves appear in days. Free food, and a lesson in how little a plant needs.
Ferment a cabbage
Salt, cabbage, a jar and time. Make sauerkraut and learn the oldest food-preserving skill there is. Nothing here needs power or equipment, and the waiting is the work.
Make your own jerky
Dry meat into jerky you made yourself. Cheap protein that keeps for months without a fridge, and one food safety rule worth learning properly.
Grow mushrooms from a kit
A grow kit, a cool dark corner and a fortnight. Harvest mushrooms you grew yourself, then use the same block to do it again.
Grow sprouts from pantry seeds
Seeds from the grocer turn into food in three days in a jar. The cheapest fresh food there is, and you grew it on a bench.
Build a crystal radio
Make a radio that runs on nothing but the signal in the air. No battery, no plug, no chip. Wire, a diode and an earpiece will do it, and the point is understanding the technology you use rather than only consuming it.
Pack a 72 hour go bag
A bag packed to keep one person going for three days if they had to evacuate. Also called a bug out bag or an emergency kit. Water, food, warmth, light, health, documents, and one thing for comfort. Packed before, not during.
Digital self-defence.
Digital / privacy
Two-factor, today
Turn on two-factor authentication on your email and your most important account. Then change one weak password. It takes five minutes.
The scam test
Find a suspicious message and spot the three things that give it away: urgency, a stranger's ask, a link you cannot verify. Pause before you tap.
The privacy sweep
Review your app permissions and privacy settings. Delete, revoke and lock down anything you do not actually use.
Test your email for exploits
Put your email address into Have I Been Pwned and find out which breaches already hold your data. Then fix what you find: change the password, turn on two-factor, stop reusing it.
Install malware protection
Put real protection on the device that holds your accounts, run a full scan, and read what it finds. Twenty minutes that also teaches you to spot a fake security warning.
Set up a password manager
One app generates and remembers a unique password for every account, so one breach cannot open five. This is the change that fixes password reuse, which is the whole problem.
Upgrade to an authenticator app or key
Move your two-factor off text messages, which can be intercepted, and onto an authenticator app or a physical security key. Start with your email account.
Switch to an encrypted messaging app
End to end encryption means only you and the person you are writing to can read it. Move one real conversation across this week, starting with whoever you message most.
Move to a private browser
A privacy-focused browser blocks the trackers, cookies and scripts that follow you from site to site. Set it as your default and import your bookmarks, or you will not use it.
Use aliases to sign up
Give a sign-up form a forwarding email, a virtual number or a single-use card instead of your real details. Every form is a database entry waiting to leak.
Real community.
Belonging / community
One real hello
Start one genuine conversation with someone you usually walk past: a person in your class, a neighbour, someone new. Ask a real question and listen.
The invite
Invite one person to do something, even just a walk. It is the single fastest way to turn an acquaintance into a friend.
Turn up
Show up to one group, club or event you would normally skip. Then do it once more. Belonging starts with just being there.
The follow-up message
When you meet someone you like, message them within two days about something specific they said. Friendships start in the follow-up, not in the conversation.
Learn and use names
Learn three people's names this week and say them out loud. Not to get anything, just because being called by your name is the cheapest belonging there is.
Host something small
Invite two people to something you arrange: a meal, a walk, a game, a film. Being the host rather than the guest is a different and much rarer kind of belonging.
Call the oldest person in your family
Ring the oldest person in your family and ask them about their life. Write down one thing they tell you. Most young people have never actually asked.
Repair one relationship
Reach out to someone you lost touch with, or apologise to someone you fell out with. One honest message, and no expectation of a reply.
Knowledge you can carry.
Learning / knowledge
The Feynman test
Explain something you learned to a friend in the plainest words you can. If you get stuck, that is exactly where to learn it again.
One deep dive
Spend thirty minutes genuinely reading about one topic you are curious about, no app, no video. Then write down one thing you now know.
Teach it back
Teach one skill you already have to someone else. Teaching is the fastest way to discover what you actually know.
Ten stoic quotes you can recite
Learn ten Stoic quotes by heart, then give one away in a real conversation. A line you can say from memory in a hard moment is worth more than a thousand saved posts.
Go greyman for a week
Be unremarkable on purpose for a week: plain clothes, phone in your pocket, headphones off. Stop for two seconds before you enter any space and look. Awareness as a habit, not a costume.
Learn first aid and mental health first aid
Do a real course with a qualified instructor, both physical first aid and mental health first aid. This is the one activity on this page where the certificate is the point.
Learn walking stick self defence
An ordinary walking stick, learned properly, to make space and get away. Not to win a fight. Find a qualified instructor, and know the law where you live before you start.
Change a flat tyre
Jack, wheel brace, chocks. Learn the order of operations and how to change a wheel safely, and learn when to call for help instead. You will almost certainly meet this for the first time in the dark.
Make room for the outside.
Nature / outside
The daily sky check
Look up at the sky for ten seconds, once a day. You are allowed to do it from a window. Notice what the sky is doing today.
One green hour
An hour outside, no phone, in a park, a reserve or a green space. Sit, walk, or just watch. Let the outside do what it does.
The walk without a map
Take a walk with no destination and no phone. Notice three things you would usually walk past.
Try forest bathing
Not a hike and not a workout. Go slowly into trees, stand or sit, and let your senses do the work. No phone, no destination, no pace to keep.
Grow microgreens
A tray, some soil, a windowsill. Cut your own greens in ten days. The smallest garden there is, and it still counts as one.
Set up a Kratky tub
Grow lettuce in a tub of water with no pump, no power and no plumbing. Fill it once, leave it alone, and harvest in about a month.
Save seed from twenty plants
Grow twenty common plants and keep the seed at the end. You finish with a seed bank you own and a full season behind you.
Build a terrarium
A glass vessel, gravel, charcoal, soil and small plants. Seal it and it waters itself for months. A whole small outside that lives on your shelf.
Catch rainwater with a tarp
A tarp, a weight, a container and the next rain. Learn to catch water that falls for free instead of watching it run down the drain.
Learn to forage edible weeds
Learn to identify a short list of common edible and medicinal weeds growing near you. Start with plants that have no dangerous lookalikes, learn from someone local, and never eat anything you are not completely certain of.
Test what you believe.
Convictions / beliefs
The steel-man
Write down a belief you hold, then argue the strongest honest case against it. If you cannot argue against it, you do not fully understand it.
The why chain
Pick a belief and ask "why" five times, each answer becoming the next question. Keep going until you reach a reason that is genuinely yours.
Disagree kindly
Have one calm conversation with someone who disagrees with you about something that matters. Your job is to understand, not to win.
Read another tradition's scripture
Read a text that is not your own: the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada. Read it the way its readers read it, to understand rather than to argue. You cannot test a conviction you only know from one side.
Rate the belief
Score one core belief out of a hundred, then score it again: how true it feels, and how true it looks on the evidence. The gap between the two numbers is the interesting part.
Trace the belief to its source
Work out where this belief actually came from: something that happened to you, your family, a community, or something you saw online. You cannot test what you have never traced.
Check the evidence both ways
Two columns: the hard facts for, and the hard facts against. The same standard for both, and feelings do not count as facts in either one.
Name what would change your mind
Write down the exact evidence that would move you, before you go looking for it. A belief that nothing could disprove cannot be tested, whatever else it may be.
Run one real experiment
Design one small, safe test that puts the belief against the world: act slightly outside it and record what actually happens. Write the predicted outcome down first.
Ask only generative questions
For one conversation a day, ask only open questions that create new thinking rather than collecting facts. One question, then listen, then silence.
How to use these
An activity is only an activity if you actually do it. Start with one that fits this week, not the one that sounds most impressive. If a group is running one, let everyone opt out without needing a reason. More activities are being added here as we build them out.