Chapter One

      I encounter an existential elephant

      Project: Monday morning routine

      Objective: Arrive at work on time, healthy, rested and ready for action

      6.15: Wake up (exact wake time determined by ‘wake easy’ app to ensure optimal brain function)

      6.15–6.25: Visualise day ahead (visualisation leads to peak performance)

      Critical event: Waking up on time

      The alarm wakes me at 6.17. The air is cool. Inside my apartment it is always twenty-three degrees Celsius – the optimum temperature for sleeping. Adrian slept over but left at five am to go running. He’s been running a lot lately. At first it was once a week, then twice, then three times, then daily. He’s training for the City to Surf.

      My dream lingers. I banish it. Unproductive energy. I only have eight minutes for structured goal visualisation. Dream analysis isn’t on the schedule – I work with the conscious, not the subconscious; the concrete, not the airy-fairy. Airy-fairy has been evicted from my life.

      Generally speaking, I don’t dream much these days, but when I do it is always the same. Awake, my eyes scan my room. The pristine white walls reassure me – everything is as it should be. The apartment was a dreary yellow when I moved in but that couldn’t last. White. It had to be white. I had no idea white came in so many varieties.

      The hardware shop man raised his eyebrows when I showed him the colour chip. ‘Enough for a one-bedroom apartment please,’ I said.

      ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer White on White, Natural White or Whisper White?’ he said.

      I shook my head. Despite their names, these colours were varieties of cream. If there’d been anything whiter than Antarctica I would have bought it. My apartment is like a hermetically sealed compartment – white as snow, surgically clean. No cobwebs hang across my lights, no cockroaches loiter in dark corners. An antiseptic fragrance greets me as I open the door each evening. Bliss.

      Cleaning products are my one indulgence. Over the last year I’ve discovered I love to clean. Under the sink I have Vim and Ace, Gain and Gumption. I have products for glass and products for wood, three types of dishwashing detergent and four types of laundry detergent.