I’d add onto this that over several years of teaching Trigger-Action Planning at CFAR workshops, our organizational conception of them has shifted a bit. These days, when I’m responsible for teaching TAPs, I highlight a couple of things more strongly than you have above:
TAPs are best used as a “summon sapience” spell. They’re more valuable for noticing opportunities than for brute-forcing behavior change (e.g. a TAP of “when I feel the metal of the door handle in my hand, I’ll LOOK AT the stairs” seems better than “when I feel the metal of the door handle in my hand, I’ll TAKE the stairs). Once you’re regularly noticing the absence of the behavior you want, it should either a) automatically correct itself, or b) be the inspiration for doing some tinkering with your motivation.
TAPs fail in two places: trigger doesn’t fire, or action isn’t chosen/taken. Thus I’d change your “three requirements” a little bit to be more like: has a specific, concrete, and relevant trigger; has a simple, effortless, atomic action; does actually further your goals.
Thanks for writing this up, especially including references and footnotes!
Can you describe this a bit more or maybe give some more examples because I thought TAPs, or at least implementation intentions, were supposed to be kind of like “instant habits”. So, instead of having to think about the action you just do it. If you are just using them to notice the opportunity, then you still need to think about taking it which I think could be problematic and would remove one of the main benefits (automaticity of the response).
A TAP of “when I feel the metal of the door handle in my hand, I’ll LOOK AT the stairs” seems better than “when I feel the metal of the door handle in my hand, I’ll TAKE the stairs”
Maybe this isn’t because it “summons sapience”, but because the then component of the TAP works better as the simplest and first action in the greater overall action, so as action initiation rather than the complete action.
From the meta review paper:
“Specifying an effective goal‐directed response in the then‐component of the plan endows the control of this response with features of automaticity (immediacy, efficiency, redundancy of intent). Whereas the person who has only formed a goal intention still has to deliberate in situ about what goal‐directed response to undertake and/or energize the self to perform it, forming an implementation intention means deciding these issues in advance, thereby delegating the control of goal‐directed behavior to specified situational cues. Once these cues are encountered, action initiation is triggered automatically”.
I’d add onto this that over several years of teaching Trigger-Action Planning at CFAR workshops, our organizational conception of them has shifted a bit. These days, when I’m responsible for teaching TAPs, I highlight a couple of things more strongly than you have above:
TAPs are best used as a “summon sapience” spell. They’re more valuable for noticing opportunities than for brute-forcing behavior change (e.g. a TAP of “when I feel the metal of the door handle in my hand, I’ll LOOK AT the stairs” seems better than “when I feel the metal of the door handle in my hand, I’ll TAKE the stairs). Once you’re regularly noticing the absence of the behavior you want, it should either a) automatically correct itself, or b) be the inspiration for doing some tinkering with your motivation.
TAPs fail in two places: trigger doesn’t fire, or action isn’t chosen/taken. Thus I’d change your “three requirements” a little bit to be more like: has a specific, concrete, and relevant trigger; has a simple, effortless, atomic action; does actually further your goals.
Thanks for writing this up, especially including references and footnotes!
Can you describe this a bit more or maybe give some more examples because I thought TAPs, or at least implementation intentions, were supposed to be kind of like “instant habits”. So, instead of having to think about the action you just do it. If you are just using them to notice the opportunity, then you still need to think about taking it which I think could be problematic and would remove one of the main benefits (automaticity of the response).
Maybe this isn’t because it “summons sapience”, but because the then component of the TAP works better as the simplest and first action in the greater overall action, so as action initiation rather than the complete action.
From the meta review paper: “Specifying an effective goal‐directed response in the then‐component of the plan endows the control of this response with features of automaticity (immediacy, efficiency, redundancy of intent). Whereas the person who has only formed a goal intention still has to deliberate in situ about what goal‐directed response to undertake and/or energize the self to perform it, forming an implementation intention means deciding these issues in advance, thereby delegating the control of goal‐directed behavior to specified situational cues. Once these cues are encountered, action initiation is triggered automatically”.