Run your own table
The book was built in study groups. Two or three people is plenty. Here is how the live cohort runs, so you can run one at a kitchen table, a library, or online.
Free. Everyone watches before the session; nobody plays it in the room.
Free. One per episode, printed, with a pen.
One copy each. The full chapter and every exercise.
Ten weeks. Same day, same time.
The hour
The same shape every week. Week one swaps the check-in for introductions and the table agreement. Week ten spends the live pages on inventory day and the date you'll do it again.
Check-in. How last week's practice went, including the days it didn't.
Teach. The chapter's idea, in your own words. Bring one true story of your own, under two minutes.
Your aims. One or two volunteers bring a real page and the table works it out loud.
This week. The three practices from the guide sheet. Everyone says which one they'll start with.
Close. One line, and the date of next week.
The house rules
Read them aloud in week one as the table agreement and ask for a thumbs-up from everyone. Repeat any one of them, in a sentence, the moment it's needed.
Nobody diagnoses a spouse, a boss, a parent or a coworker. If a story drifts into what someone else is doing wrong, thank the speaker and bring it back to the page in front of them.
Chapter 3 asks for a number and some people will show theirs. Work the edges of a number: what it buys, what they will give for it, the date, the first step. Never whether the number is right, how to earn it, or what to do with money.
Nobody is asked for their number, ever. A volunteer can bring a page with the number hidden and still get the full work.
The six fears and the symptoms lists are the book's, and the book calls them weaknesses to be mastered, not conditions.
The person who says “I did it for four days and stopped” has given the table its most useful data.
Online, the chat is for anything that needs everyone. The mic is for volunteers.
Say this in weeks 2, 4, 8 and 10, and any week where dread, numbness, sleeplessness or the fear of death comes up: “And one thing this isn't: if the dread won't lift, if you can't sleep for weeks or you feel nothing at all, that's not a pattern to journal about. Talk to a doctor, or a mental-health line where you live.”
Keep the room the way Walt does
In the episodes, Walt keeps the room, asks the question nobody else will, and never teaches. At your table you do both jobs: keep time, ask the question, tell the table one true thing about yourself when it costs you something, and teach the chapter. Use the scenes as shared vocabulary: Hal's Wednesday, Dez's someday, Carla's shoebox, Dev's hand over the number.
What to watch for
The group turning into a money-advice swap.
Stop it the first time, in one sentence. The edges are the subject; the amount never is.
The person who wants to skip to Chapter 3.
Chapter 3 builds a box around whatever is in Chapter 2. A box around a borrowed aim is a well-organized mistake.
The one who has done every goal program and is cynical.
Treat them the way the episodes treat Dev: never a villain, never a punchline. Ask what they did for four days last time, and what happened on day five.
The quiet person who never shares a number.
Fine. Give them every other way in: the hardest pattern, the evidence list, the when-then.