Bilal has a dissertation chapter due in eleven days and has opened the document four times since Ramadan.

His sentence is: when I have finished Maghrib, I will sit at the kitchen table, open the chapter, and read what I wrote last time for two minutes.

Monday he does the two minutes and stops. He notes it down and feels slightly foolish about how little it was. Tuesday he does two minutes and then writes for forty. Wednesday he misses Maghrib at home entirely and does nothing, and the old machinery starts up about how he always does this.

Thursday he goes back to the same sentence. That is the part that mattered. He did not need a better plan after Wednesday, he needed the same one again.