Clearly there is little point in working through a book like this unless you are prepared to continue practising the techniques you have learned. You should, therefore, keep practising for the next few weeks at least.

• It is best if you can find some time each day for practice. How much time you spend on this practice is for you to decide. Thirty minutes will probably suit most people. If you set aside a longer amount of time, there is the risk that you will find reasons for not practising on those days when you have been particularly busy with other matters.
• Keep a record of your progress in this practice. As has been stressed previously, accurate feedback is essential at all times if you are really to know how well you are doing and where the areas are that need special attention to bring them up to scratch.
• Find some time each month to review some of the less well-remembered parts of this book. You may well be able to identifying new ways of bringing about improvements.
• Make periodic checks on your performance in the key areas discussed in Part 1. Any deficiencies can then be remedied at an early stage and prevent you backsliding into being a headless chicken.
• Every year, check through the book as a whole to see if you need to brush up on any points. This need not take long, a few minutes at most if you have been practising what you have learned.

Follow-up tests, if you wish to use them to introduce some variety into your continuation procedures, might take the form of asking yourself how headless chickens and laidback bears would act differently in various situations. Some examples might include dealing with an in-tray, finding there are more things to be done than time in which to do them, and responding to requests for assistance from colleagues when you already have a full schedule. You might like to make entries in your diary for the dates when you will tackle a follow-up exercise. Three months, six months and one year from now should be worth considering.

The main point is to keep the idea of improvement in mind all the time. Do not let yourself fall into the complacent trap of thinking that your achievements at the end of working through this book represent a final picture. In some respects, you will have only just begun to tackle the problems of improvement and may still need to watch for any tendency to revert to being a headless chicken.