November 9th, 2025!

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November 9th, 2025 will probably go down as one of the brightest red-letter days of my life. It marked a breakthrough I’ve started calling “Lulu Vs. Sage: The End Of My Cold War.”

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How I Was Able To Have A Breakthrough This Time

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I’ll need to give you some background before the significance of this breakthrough really comes into focus.

Many of you already know my distinction between our Now and our Next. Our Now is the part of us that cares about comfort in the moment—enjoying right now and steering clear of anything painful or unpleasant. Our Next, by contrast, is the part of us whose primary job is to safeguard the future—making sure things turn out well later, that we’re happy then, and that we avoid future pain, trouble, or even danger.

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For a more personal, intimate feel, I’ve started calling these two parts of myself Lulu (for Now) and Sage (for Next). Yes, they’re usually thought of as female names, but they suit me—and them—perfectly well.

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If I had to name just one thing—above anything else I can think of—that would make the biggest difference in the quality of our lives, it would be ending the battles, skirmishes, and constant tug-of-war between our Lulu and our Sage. Instead, imagine them working together, complementing each other, and creating the best possible life both now and in the future.

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Lulu And Sage Have Already Made A Lot Of Progress

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I used to experience some pretty intense conflicts between these two parts of myself—and I suffered more than I needed to because of it. Over time, though, I discovered and put into practice a whole range of peace-keeping and cooperative strategies. As a result, I can honestly say that, compared to almost everyone I know, my Lulu and Sage have been getting along remarkably well.

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And Still, Although Not Major Fighting Like Before...

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However, beneath all that progress, there remained a deeper, more fundamental conflict between Lulu and Sage—one that resisted every peace-keeping and cooperation strategy I had previously used. It lingered at a level that simply didn’t respond to the methods that had worked so well for them in the past.

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This ongoing tension—more of a cold war than a hot one—seemed rooted in two deeply entrenched positions. Lulu refused to budge from her stance, and Sage stood just as firmly in hers.

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Both Lulu And Sage Were 

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Lulu’s non-negotiable position was her insistence on keeping veto power. Even if she and Sage agreed on something in advance, Lulu wanted the unquestioned right to back out at the moment of action if she simply preferred to do something else.

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Sage’s unyielding stance, on the other hand, was her refusal to fully accept that she could never take on all the wonderful things—maybe not even a tiny percentage of them—that endlessly accumulated on her Someday/Maybe buffet list.

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Both Lulu and Sage had spent plenty of time hashing out this ongoing dilemma. Either Lulu held enough sway to repeatedly pull out her veto card and shut down something Sage wanted to do, or—less often—Sage managed to seize the upper hand and impose her agenda at the expense of Lulu’s freedom.

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Again And Again In Vain I Looked for Breakthrough Until...

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Most of the time, I’d talk through this problem with one of my afternoon assistants listening in, I might have tried to address this problem dozens of times before, hoping to stumble upon a fresh angle that might finally make a difference. But nothing really changed—until Sunday, November 9th, when I sat down with my assistant Mia for yet another attempt… and everything shifted.

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What I Did Different This Time

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One thing I did during my conversation with Mia (which, to be honest, was about 97% monologue while she listened—something she does exceptionally well) was look back at two earlier breakthroughs in my life. I wanted to see whether some essential insight from one of those moments could be applied to the dilemma I was facing now.

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One of those breakthroughs came at a time when I was under serious pressure to figure things out—so much pressure that failing to solve it could have put my health, and even my life, at immediate risk if I didn’t act quickly.

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I used two methods from the past that had Helped me create a breakthough

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Without going into the whole story, I’ll simply say that in 1998 I had an abscessed tooth and flat-out refused to go to the dentist—something I couldn’t make sense of at all. Why wouldn’t I do the obvious, sensible thing?

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Eventually, I discovered the real issue: an identity that had quietly been running the show. It sounded something like, “I’m going to find a better, more natural, more integrated solution to things than anyone else has.” That identity was so strong it even included the fantasy of reinventing how tooth problems should be handled in the first place.

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Once I finally saw what was really going on, my identity didn’t have to change at its core—it just stopped trying to apply itself to “reinventing dentistry.” The next day I called my dentist, got the tooth taken care of, and the abscess cleared up.

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My current dilemma isn’t an emergency in the way that abscess was, but when I consider the long-term cost of letting the conflict continue, the price would still be enormous. Yes, I would still have a good life—but a life where Lulu and Sage genuinely cooperate would be immeasurably better.

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The second method that I got from the past was the clincher

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The second breakthrough I reflected on was the one involving my second wife, Yuko, when I spent far too long avoiding a clear decision—either to fully commit to continuing our marriage or to separate and divorce. By default, my indecision kept the marriage going, even though I wasn’t choosing it.

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We had lived together for about five years. Over the last year or so, we’d seen counselors, talked things through, and made various efforts to repair things. But the truth was, she wasn’t happy, and neither was I. And for reasons I won’t get into here, she wasn’t going to initiate a divorce. If it was going to happen, it had to come from me.

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Yet despite all my thinking, all my weighing of pros and cons, I wasn’t arriving at a real decision—just a default one I was quietly enduring.

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Good questions make all the difference in the world

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But then I asked myself a new question—one I had never considered before. While things can change, the most reliable way to predict the future of a situation is to look at its past unless there’s a compelling reason to believe it will be different. If I stayed in the marriage and we continued living together, yes, some things might shift, but the overall quality of our relationship would likely stay the same—or even deteriorate—because we were both merely tolerating, not thriving.

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Yuko and I had been living together for nearly five years. Over the last year or so, we talked endlessly, saw several different counselors, and made what changes we could—but not much shifted. She had done what she could, I felt I had too, and still neither of us was truly happy.

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So I laid out two paths.

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The first was to imagine living my life indefinitely into the future with this woman.

The second was to separate, disentangle our finances, eventually divorce, and then build my life within a new environment—one where I had complete freedom to create without the constraints our relationship imposed. I had lived alone before and had no trouble with it. In fact, even if I never had another partner, I knew I would still prefer living alone over living with her.

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Even though that second path was far more “unpredictable,” because it required creating something new, I could still clearly imagine my future unfolding along it.

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Once I compared those two possible futures, the decision was a no-brainer. From that moment, my marriage was over in my mind. There were still plenty of practical steps to take, but internally it was complete. I committed myself to creating the best separation and divorce possible.

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Applying this second method (question) to my current dilemma

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Using the breakthrough that helped me make a clear, confident choice about whether to stay with my wife, I asked myself to look indefinitely into two possible futures for Lulu and Sage—specifically around their ongoing “cold war.”

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A “divorce,” of course, was impossible. No matter what shape their relationship took, they were in this together for the rest of my (their) life.

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So the two futures were these:

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One: continue indefinitely with the current level of cooperation, along with the familiar back-and-forth of each occasionally dominating the other when their desires collided.

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Or two: acknowledge that each would need to compromise—each would have to be willing to surrender the particular “rights” they had been clinging to whenever one of them happened to hold the upper hand and their interests didn’t align.

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And even though we didn’t yet know all the details of how that future would unfold—or how it would continue unfolding for the rest of my life—I could still imagine a future built on cooperation between Lulu and Sage, even if that cooperation required some compromise from both of them.

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Once again, the decision was a no-brainer. I’m choosing that second life.

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Lulu and Sage deciding and peace and cooperation was more important that the tug of war

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It was pretty clear what Lulu’s number-one “right” would need to give up. Yes, she would still have plenty of time set aside where she was primarily in charge. And she would still have a strong voice in how things were done even during the times when Sage was leading. And when Sage planned projects or scheduled tasks, she would check in with Lulu to make sure those things were likely to be enjoyable—or at least acceptable—when the moment to do them arrived.

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But when Sage was in charge, Lulu would no longer have the freedom to simply cancel a task on the to-do list because she happened to be absorbed in something else and wanted to keep going, even if that meant spilling far beyond the time originally allotted.

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Of course, if something unexpected came up—something even Sage agreed warranted a change—then adjusting the plan would be perfectly fine. But tasks would no longer get knocked off the list just because Lulu “didn’t feel like doing them in the moment” compared to whatever she was currently enjoying.

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Once I clearly envisioned these two possible paths—one where the cold war dragged on forever, and the other where Lulu and Sage each agreed to give up their “right” to dominate whenever they had the upper hand, choosing instead to act as partners in their shared mission of making Dwight’s life the best it can be—the choice was obvious. A total no-brainer. We’re making peace here, and this time it’s going to stick.

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New structures and approaches

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Of course, there was still plenty of work for them to do—building new structures, forming new agreements, and figuring out how to actually move forward on this new path. But since that day (November 9th, 2025), Lulu and Sage have been working together, and overall they’re both far happier. And if either one of them ever feels tempted to slip back into their old habit of lording things over the other, all I have to do is ask, “Do you want to go back to the way it used to be?” That snaps them right back into clarity.

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Both Lulu and Sage were eager to start working together right away on my daily covenant list

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Now that Lulu and Sage are committed to cooperating instead of pushing back and forth, each day flows more smoothly—and far more happily. But the most immediate and striking result of their peace treaty, the first real sign that this new era had begun, showed up the very next day: they started building a clear, rigorous understanding and accountability structure for what I call my daily covenants.

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These daily covenants have long been a list of 20 to 30 tasks that Sage considers important to complete each day. And even though there was always plenty of time to do them—and nothing particularly unpleasant about any individual task—Lulu would almost inevitably get absorbed in something else, usually diving into new lyrics and a Suno.com–generated song for my Guest House. That absorption would derail the flow and crowd out time meant for the covenants.

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As a result, on most days I’d complete somewhere between 60% and 85% of them, but rarely all. Sage, feeling powerless, grew frustrated and unhappy, yet she had no way to override Lulu when Lulu insisted on using all available time to keep indulging in whatever she was enjoying in the moment.

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So after the breakthrough on November 9th, early Monday morning Lulu and Sage teamed up to refine the entire list—with a shared intention and a new, playful check-off system in Google Sheets—to bring full rigor to getting 100% of the covenants done each day. And although Lulu had previously indulged her in-the-moment whims, she reaffirmed that every single covenant was something she could enjoy when its time arrived.

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Of course, they both recognized that unexpected circumstances might occasionally require a mid-day change of plans. But realistically, that kind of disruption would probably happen less than once a month.

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With this new system, my covenants—now a daily checklist—could live in a single Google spreadsheet, with a fresh sheet created each day by duplicating the previous one and resetting the check-off marks. From time to time, a few tasks might be removed, adjusted, or added.

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And with that setup, I’d have a complete record of every day’s finished covenants starting from November 10th, 2025.

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Below is an image showing my covenants for Monday, November 24th—the 14th consecutive day in which Lulu and Sage have joyfully completed every covenant together. Beneath the image, I’ve added a few notes of explanation.