How to work out the situations it happens in
Updated 2 September 2026
The short answer
Spend three or four days noting only two things each time it happens: where you were, and what had finished just before. Do not note the amount, the time or how you felt. At the end you will usually find between two and five situations covering most of it, and one of them will account for far more than you expected.
The reason this is worth doing before anything else is that a plan attaches to a situation, not to a thing. “Drinking” is not something you can write an instruction for. “The twenty minutes after I sit down” is.
- Note two things only: where you were, and what had just finished. Everything else is a distraction at this stage.
- Three or four days is normally enough. A fortnight of notes produces more data and no more clarity.
- Expect the list to be shorter than you think, and expect one situation to dominate it.
- “Evenings” is not a situation. “When I sit down after dinner” is, because you can see it coming.
- A situation has to be something you would notice happening. If you cannot tell from inside it whether you are in it, it will not work as a cue.
- Do not change anything while you are doing this. Watching and changing at the same time gives you neither.
Why the thing is not the unit
Ask someone what they want to stop and they will name a substance or an activity. Ask them what they will do about it and they will describe a rule about that substance or activity. The gap between the two is where most attempts fall, because a rule about a thing has to be applied by you, live, everywhere, all week.
The situations are the unit that can carry a plan. There are only a few of them, they repeat, they are visible from the outside, and each one has an obvious physical version of the plan attached to it — what is in the room, what is in reach, what happens in the ten seconds before.
The method
Note two things. Where you were, and what had just finished. A phone note or the back of an envelope. Six words is plenty: “kitchen, after the washing up”.
Do not note the amount. It is the number everyone reaches for and it tells you nothing about where a plan should go. Recording it also converts the exercise into keeping score, which changes what you write down.
Do not change anything yet. Three or four ordinary days beats a fortnight of days you were trying to be good in. You are looking for what your week is actually made of.
Stop after four days. The list stops changing quickly. If you are still going after a fortnight, the exercise has become the project.
What the list normally looks like
Two to five entries, and one of them is most of it. That is the useful surprise: people arrive expecting a diffuse problem spread across the week and find a twenty-minute window that accounts for the majority of it.
Common shapes, from the situations the app itself offers as prompts: a transition home, the twenty minutes after sitting down, waiting for something, being alone in the evening, and the gap after the thing you were watching ended. Notice that four of the five are seams rather than places — the end of something, with nothing yet started.
Mini Breaks asks for these at setup and offers the usual ones as prompts under an empty field, so the situations you end up working on are yours rather than its. See Mini Breaks on the App Store.
Making a situation specific enough
The test is whether you would notice being in it. “When I am stressed” fails, because you find out afterwards. “When I get in the car on my own” passes, because there is a door and a seat and a moment.
A second test: could someone else standing next to you tell whether the situation had started? If yes, it is concrete enough to hang an instruction on. If no, keep going — usually there is a physical version of the same situation one layer down. “When something has gone wrong at work” becomes “when I get home before anyone else is in”.
Then pick one
Not all of them. One, and preferably the one that happens most days rather than the one that feels worst, because a situation that occurs daily gives you an answer within a week and a situation that occurs monthly does not.
Leave the others written down and unplanned. They are not being ignored; they are waiting. Widening to the second one when the first has gone quiet is the whole shape of the thing, and it is the reason the plan gets bigger rather than harder. The next step is writing the plan itself, which has a form worth following: if-then plans for stopping something.
Common questions
What if it happens all day, not in situations?
Then note where you were anyway for three days, without judging it. Almost everything that feels continuous turns out to be clustered, and the clusters are usually a room and a transition. If it genuinely is continuous, that is worth talking to a professional about rather than an app.
Should I use a tracking app to do the noting?
Only if it lets you record a place and a moment. Most of them are built to record an amount and a time, which is the data that does not help here.
What if I only remember afterwards?
That is normal and it is fine. Write it down when you remember. You are looking for the shape of the week, and the shape survives a few missing entries.
How specific is too specific?
When the situation stops occurring most days. “Friday when the football is on and my brother comes round” is very specific and will give you an answer some time next month. Widen it until it happens often enough to learn from.
Do I have to write down what I am stopping?
Not for this. And if you use an app for it afterwards, it is worth checking where that goes: in Mini Breaks the thing, the situations and anything you type stay on the phone, and none of it is ever sent anywhere.