The forty-five minutes before a first date

Most getting-ready advice is a list of things to do. The problem is almost never the things. It is the order, and the fact that the last ten minutes always get eaten by a decision that should have happened at minute five.

Work backwards from the door

Pick the time you need to leave. Subtract forty-five. That is the start, and the first thing that happens is not a decision.

1. Minutes 0 to 12: shower. Do not think about the outfit. You will think about it anyway and it will be better for having happened in the background.
2. Minutes 12 to 20: get dressed. Fully, including shoes. The outfit you chose in your head rarely survives contact with your actual shoulders, and finding that out now costs eight minutes instead of two.
3. Minutes 20 to 32: face and hair. With the clothes already on, you can see what the whole thing looks like instead of guessing.
4. Minutes 32 to 35: scent. Skin, not fabric — pulse points, two sprays, and leave it alone.
5. Minutes 35 to 45: nothing. Sit down. Drink some water. This is the part everyone skips and it is the part that makes the difference.

The ten minutes of nothing is not padding. Arriving flustered is the single most visible thing about a person in the first thirty seconds, and it comes almost entirely from having run out of time rather than from nerves.

The two things worth deciding the night before

Where you are going, and what you are wearing. Both are decisions that expand to fill whatever time you give them, and neither improves with the pressure of a countdown.

Nobody has ever noticed the shirt. They notice whether you looked like you had to run for the train.