The trick is to make drawing the default, not a project: one small sketchbook and one pen or pencil, parked where you already unwind, and a 20-minute timer. My nightly flow is simple: 3 minutes of line and circle warm-ups, 12 minutes on a tiny prompt, 5 minutes to date the page and jot one sentence about what felt easy or hard. To kill decision fatigue, prefill a 30-prompt list on a sticky note and cycle it—mug, keys, shoe, plant, hand, chair, corner of the room, profile from a photo, folded cloth, spoon, crumpled paper, etc. If you hate lists, do a weekly theme like kitchen week or hands week, so each night you draw whatever fits that theme without thinking. End each session before you're totally satisfied; leaving something unfinished makes it easier to come back tomorrow.
For progress tracking, use a paper calendar taped inside the sketchbook cover: star sticker for a full 20 minutes, dot for a 2-minute minimum, blank for a true rest day. On Sunday, spend five minutes flipping through and snap one photo into a Month Sketches album; at month's end, compare week 1 and week 4 to see line confidence and proportions improving. Build a tired-day safety net: the two-minute rule—draw the contour of your non-dominant hand, or one object on the nearest table, then you're allowed to stop guilt-free. Add two skip tokens per week so rest is planned, not a failure; burn them only when you're fried. A tiny ritual helps motivation—a specific playlist or cup of tea—so your brain associates that cue with we draw now, and because the tools and prompts are fixed, you spend your energy on marks, not choices.
