A New Protocol for WorkWork just isn’t progressing well enough, and I think it’s mostly because I don’t have a solid trigger.

Now normally my triggers are sequential ones, using bookending. I have my stable daily event - waking up. I wake up, I take a shower, I meditate, I do my bodyweight training, I write, and….by that time I’m a little mentally tired.

I end up dithering online for a while. Making coffee. Reading emails, whatnot. I need a bit of a break.

Earlier I had thought about incorporating a unique sound, just like Pavlov’s dog, to become a trigger. I rejected a time based alarm because my schedule changes day to day. But what if I did a timer and set a specific sound?

So today I started this. After I finished writing I gave myself 25 minutes

I selected a unique sound - “Waves” - to set my habit to.

After 25 minutes (the pic shows it counting down) my timer went off and I immediately started opening all the pages I need open for work. Now it’s “crisp” - I’m tying it to this particular unique sound at my choosing.

I think this will work, but we’ll see. My minimum is still set at 20 minutes of work. I finish, record and write on this blog, then finish up with the rest of work. But what if I set each time I start on work to the same ring tone? The trigger is still there, but now it’s going off twice, maybe multiple times a day.

My hope and hypothesis is that I will be able to really vanquish this habit in record time because of this. Why? Because I’m practicing the habit multiple times a day, it becomes triggered more often, and automaticity gets practiced more. Frequency shoots through the roof. Length of time is already maxed out, so the only thing that would need more points is identity questions.

We shall see!