You do not have to leave for two weeks to find out which part of your marketing still runs through you. You have to stop deciding for two weeks, and keep a list of everything that asked.
The Consistency series ends on a test: go on holiday for a fortnight without telling the system, and watch what stops. It is the right test. It is also one almost nobody runs, because a fortnight offline is not something most owners have. This is the version you can run from your desk.
- The test measures decisions, not output. Every time marketing needs you to choose something, that is a dependency.
- Keep a log for fourteen days. The log is the result.
- Fix follow-up first, capture second, cadence last — the reverse of the order most owners want.
What you are actually measuring
The holiday version hides the point behind the absence. The point is not whether you were there. It is how many times the machine stopped and waited for you to choose something. A post that needs your yes before it goes out has you in it whether you are at your desk or on a beach. So the desk version does not remove you. It removes your decisions, and counts what breaks.
How to run it
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Choose two ordinary weeks
Not the quietest fortnight you can find. If the test runs while nothing is happening, it will pass and tell you nothing. Pick two weeks with a normal amount going on.
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Announce nothing
If the team knows a test is on, they will hold things together by hand for fourteen days, and what you will learn is how good they are at covering for you. That is worth knowing, but it is a different test.
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Decline every decision, and write it down
When something asks for your call — approve this, what should we post, did anyone reply to that enquiry — do not answer. Let whatever the default is happen. If there is no default, that is a finding. Then write one line in a log: the date, what asked, and which step it belongs to.
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Sort the log, do not count it
At the end, sort the lines by step: deciding what to say, producing it, approving it, following up, capturing. The step with the most lines against it is where you are.
Reading what you find
Three patterns cover almost every log, and each points at a different system.
- Publishing stopped. Lines cluster under approving, or deciding what to say. The fix is a default-publish rule and a written brief, not a faster you.
- Enquiries went quiet. Someone asked, nobody replied by day three, and you found out on day nine. That is follow-up, and it wants a sequence that runs whether or not you saw the notification.
- Traffic came and left. Readers arrived, read, and there was no way to hear from them again. That is capture.
A log with nothing in it is not a pass. It means one of two things: marketing genuinely runs without you, or it was not running before the test started either. You will know which. Only the first one counts.
Which one to fix first
Follow-up. It is the only step where the failure costs money that was already in the pipe — someone asked, nobody answered, they went elsewhere. It is also the cheapest to fix: a sequence behind an enquiry form is a day of setup, and then it runs. Capture comes second, because it decides whether there is anything for follow-up to act on.
Cadence is last. It is the one owners want to fix first, because it is the most visible, and it is the one that matters least while the other two are broken. Publishing more, to readers you cannot capture and enquiries you do not answer, is a faster route to the same result. The three systems are set out in Marketing Off Your Plate; this test tells you which order to build them in.
Then run it again in a quarter. Same rules, same log. The number of lines should fall. When it reaches zero across two ordinary weeks, marketing is off your plate, and you can take the actual holiday.
Common questions
What if I am the only person in the business?
Then there is no one to decline, but the test still works. Log every piece of marketing work you did that was not already on the calendar. Unscheduled work is the same finding as a decision request: it is a step that only happens when you make it happen.
Two weeks feels a long time to let things slide.
It is the point. One week is not long enough for follow-up to fail visibly — most enquiries are still politely waiting at day five. By day ten they have gone elsewhere, and that is the failure you need to see once, in a controlled fortnight, rather than every month without noticing.
What if every step has lines against it?
Then you have a to-do list in priority order, and it took fourteen days to get instead of a year. Start at follow-up, and do not touch cadence until the other two hold.
