Morning-routine gurus insist the day is won before 6 a.m., which is why they have so little to say about the rest of it.

Win it earlier still. Shower, breakfast and commute at eleven at night, and wake with the morning already done. Field notes: the test subject arrived at the office at 23:40, gained three empty hours, and spent them on the step until the building opened. By day four they had started doing the night before the night before, and are now, by our estimate, somewhere around Thursday.

Workplace coaches teach ownership — admit the mistake, state the fix, move on — as though the customer wanted a process and not an apology.

Skip to the apology that works. Whenever something goes wrong, say sorry, it’s your first day, and keep saying it. Field notes from one branch: a colleague has been on their first day for two years and four months, has eaten three onboarding lunches, and was recently asked to train the new starter, who is also, as of this week, on their first day.

Gift-giving guides recommend a shared wishlist, which removes the surprise, the suspense and the chance to be disappointed on purpose.

Seed the hints early. Mention in May that the casserole dish is on its last legs; note in August that you’d love a new tablet if only there were time to buy one. Then, when asked directly in December, insist you want nothing at all. Our researchers have run this for six Christmases and received socks each time, which they also mentioned, in March, that they didn’t need.

Dog trainers sell recall as the foundation of everything — treats, whistles, a six-week course — and the dog still stops to consider its options.

Change the measurement, not the dog. Say its name only once it has clearly turned and is heading back; mark, reward, and log the result. Our field researchers report a recall rate of 100 per cent across 340 trials, a personal best for every participant. In the remaining trials the dog’s whereabouts were not recorded, as the dog had not technically been called.

Recipe developers spend whole careers on clarity — scaled quantities, metric beside imperial — so that nobody ever has to think while holding an egg.

Keep the units and change the prefixes. Call for 6 dekagrams of sugar, 30 centilitres of juice and 0.25 kilograms of flour: every line is correct and none of it is usable. The cake came out fine, eventually, after the cook sat down with a pencil for twenty minutes and texted you three times. They have not asked for another recipe.

Laundry-care guides recommend cold washes, flat drying and reading the label, as if a label has ever been read before the damage was done.

Plan for the shrinkage. Buy every jumper two sizes up and let the machine tailor it down over the season. WARNING: the certification board rates this dangerously close to useful — there is, in theory, one wash where it fits. Field notes put that wash at number seven, give or take four, with no notice: before it you wear a tent, after it, a vest.

Cleaning influencers agree the only reliable motivation to tidy is the threat of a witness, which is why their homes are photographed and yours is not.

Close the gap. Invite someone round tonight, and tomorrow, and keep going — the flat stays clean because nobody has had a chance to live in it. Eleven weeks in, the skirting boards have never looked better, the sofa has not been unoccupied since August, and the hosts now eat dinner in the bathroom, which is also spotless.

Smart thermostats promise to end household temperature disputes by learning everyone’s preferences, which is exactly how the disputes started. Return to diplomacy.

Partner: It’s freezing in here.

You: I can offer 19.5.

Partner: 21.

You: 19.6, and I’ll include a blanket.

Partner: 20.4 and the good blanket.

You: I’ll need to take that back to my side.

Field note: talks ran for eleven weeks and closed at 19.8°C, by which point it was May and both parties wanted it off.

Physicists have argued for decades over whether running or walking through rain keeps you drier, and neither camp has ever tested going nowhere.

Close the gap in the literature. When the rain starts, stop, stand to attention and wait it out. Field notes: in a 47-minute shower our researcher absorbed 3.1 litres, against 0.4 for a colleague who ran home and 0.6 for one who walked. Peer review is pending, as the researcher is still standing there.

Home-working guides recommend a dedicated workspace, clear boundaries and a door that closes, none of which have ever been explained to a cat.

Meet it halfway. Place a spare keyboard beside yours, warm it with a hot-water bottle and gesture towards it encouragingly. Field notes: over 30 working days the cat sat on the spare for 11 minutes and on yours for 212 hours. You now type on the spare, which is not plugged into anything, and the cat has answered 40 emails, most of them better received than yours.

Sleep-tracking apps log every toss, turn and REM cycle, on the principle that nothing improves until it has been measured.

Bring the classic method up to standard. At 11 p.m., open a spreadsheet and log one sheep per row — breed, fluffiness out of ten, fence clearance in centimetres — with anything under 30cm highlighted red. Field notes: 1,412 sheep catalogued on night one. Sleep arrived at 04:10, face down on the keyboard, and row 1,413 reads zzzzzzzzzzzz all the way to column AZ.