What are Trigger-Action Plans (TAPs)?

post by Lulie · 2018-05-07T18:28:58.550Z · LW · GW · 9 comments

Contents

  Automatic Habits
  Creating a TAP
    1. Pick a goal.
    2. Find a trigger. 
    3. Choose an action.
    4. Do practise runs. 
  Breaking a TAP
    Further Reading
None
9 comments

Disclaimer: This is a technique I learnt at CFAR (which said it's backed by a large amount of Science!, but I haven't looked into original sources much). This post is to explain TAPs simply, including for people unfamiliar with CFAR/LW, with a quick 'getting started' guide. It is not intended to be a complete account nor thoroughly researched. For a more data-driven account, see this post [LW · GW] by Kaj_Sotala [LW · GW].


Trigger-Action Planning is a technique for changing and creating habits that are totally automatic and don't require conscious thought.

The basic idea is that you tie the habit to a specific, simple, concrete thing that activates the 'do this habit' program in your brain.


trigger - The simple, specific sight/sound/smell/thought/feeling/etc. which you hook a behaviour onto.

action - The behaviour you enact on contact with the trigger.

plan - A deliberate plan to create the above pattern of trigger-action.

pattern - A pattern of trigger-action, whether deliberate or not, sometimes created unconsciously.

(TAP can mean either Trigger-Action Plan or Trigger-Action Pattern.)

Automatic Habits

It's far easier to change habits when you don't need to think about them. If we try to use our slow, conscious thinking to do a desired habit, it's effortful, we often forget, and it takes up attention we could be using elsewhere. Automating habits makes actually doing them effortless and reliable.

Fortunately, human thinking appears to be designed for this kind of automation. (For more on this, see Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.)

Trigger-action patterns occur naturally in everyday life. They can be useful, such as [Finish lathering hair wash shampoo out] or [Close front door lock door], or they can be detrimental, such as [Feel restlesscomfort-eat].

Understanding how they work means you can intervene and break undesirable patterns, or create your own patterns.

Creating a TAP

1. Pick a goal.

A desired habit or behaviour change. Usually, we make TAPs in order to move the needle a little, or give a pause to remember the desired behaviour, rather than completely overhaul entrenched habits in one fell swoop.

It is possible to chain TAPs together to build up a more complicated automatic behaviour. You probably have such a chain already, such as when showering or driving to work.

But this can take time to build up. When you first drive to your new office, you already have a bunch of driving-related TAPs running; so installing a "go left, left, right, left, straight for a mile, right" series of TAPs is already built on top of some complicated automatic behaviour. If you want to make a big behaviour change that isn't already based on something you've got automatic sub-habits for – such as doing a workout series at a gym when you've never been before – it will take some training.

Simple, modest goals are easiest to start with. E.g. "drink more water", "get out of bed earlier", "remember to floss", "do a few push-ups every day", etc.

2. Find a trigger.

Properties of a trigger:

3. Choose an action.

In addition to sharing the above properties of Specific (non-vague), Appropriate and Reliable (actually happens), further properties of actions are:

4. Do practise runs.

The way a TAP gets installed isn't just by thinking "wouldn't it be nice if I had this behaviour trigger-action" – you have to actually do it (or visualise doing it) several times before it becomes a trigger-action pattern running in your brain.

Typical install time: 10 rehearsals.

(Yes, rehearse it 10 times. This may sound like a lot, but the point is to help your brain clock on to the fact it's going to do this TAP every. single. time.)

Breaking a TAP

Undesirable habits are simple (if not always comfortable) to break. "Never break a habit twice" applies in reverse to bad habits: if you intentionally break it a few times, this disrupts the automation and breaks the trigger-action process.

It might be quite uncomfortable and quite difficult to break a bad habit. We have bad habits for a reason. Change takes practise.

You might have processes that stop you from even noticing you're doing the habit until it's too late. In which case, you could try installing some TAPs to notice when you're about to do the habit.

Note: Breaking the automatic nature of the habit doesn't necessarily stop you from doing the habit. It just means that if you do the habit, you're now doing it consciously instead of mindlessly. It means you're given back the choice.

(If you find yourself still doing a bad habit even though you've broken the automation, you may have some kind of internal conflict about whether the habit is bad. In which case, CFAR's Internal Double Crux is a better technique for that situation.)


Further Reading

Hammertime Day 3: TAPs [LW · GW] by alkjash [LW · GW] summarises how to install a TAP and gives lots of tips and troubleshooting advice, as well as explaining the power of the Sapience Spell.

His second post on TAPs [LW · GW] explains how to find triggers, and how to use the Sapience Spell more powerfully.

Cognitive Trigger-Action Planning For Epistemic Rationality on the Agenty Duck blog is a short post that has some nice example TAPs you may wish to steal.

Making intentions concrete - Trigger-Action Planning [LW · GW] by Kaj_Sotala [LW · GW] explains what kinds of problems trigger-action planning helps a, is more precise with the technical details than my post, and has actual data and citations.


To really understand TAPs (and many more super useful techniques like this), I recommend doing CFAR's Applied Rationality Workshop. On top of the in-workshop training, they give you a handbook that has a lot more troubleshooting advice and how to improve TAP skill. But I hope this post will give you a good start to play around with the technique. Enjoy your new habit mastery!

9 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by Said Achmiz (SaidAchmiz) · 2018-05-07T23:05:19.991Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Could you give some examples of the concepts you describe?

(I clicked through to all the links you provided, but they were either very short on concrete examples, or the examples weren’t really of installing useful practical habits. Or am I misunderstanding, and TAPs aren’t intended for that sort of thing?)

Replies from: Elo, Raemon
comment by Elo · 2018-05-07T23:41:54.958Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

When I get home I hang my keys on my door handle.

When I get home I take my laptop out of my bag.

When I get into my car I put my phone in the car-holder.

When someone says, "we should catch up" I take out my diary and say "when?" When I hear about an event I open my diary and look at the date/put it into my diary the first time.

When I wake up I take my vitamins.

When I have a shower I charge my watch.

When my fridge is empty looking I write a shopping list.

Replies from: Raemon, SaidAchmiz
comment by Raemon · 2018-05-07T23:54:19.845Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

A lot of the power of TAPs comes when combining them with introspection techniques, so you get:

When I notice that I'm showing signs of anger or defensiveness, take a deep breath and ask myself "what is my goal here?"

When I notice that I've flinched away from a thought, look again at that thought

Replies from: adam-scherlis
comment by Adam Scherlis (adam-scherlis) · 2022-01-17T00:45:53.914Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

How do you install a TAP like that? It seems hard to do 10x in a row when you're currently in "deciding I should have a TAP for this" mode and not already feeling angry/defensive.

(Actually, same question about "when my fridge is empty looking".)

EDIT: From conversation with other people it sounds like it's usually sufficient to imagine the trigger and action, in detail, several times.

Replies from: Raemon
comment by Raemon · 2022-01-17T00:54:13.799Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I recommend reading Logan Strohl's posts on Noticing. I don't know how well organized they are but I suggest starting here: http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/p/noticing.html

Replies from: adam-scherlis
comment by Adam Scherlis (adam-scherlis) · 2022-01-17T08:28:02.243Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Hmm, these posts feel like they're skipping over the step I'm asking about, though.

Like, I don't know how to do either of these things:

http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-art-of-noticing.html "Whenever you notice your trigger, make a precise physical gesture."

http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2014/12/how-to-train-noticing.html "I keep a search going on in the background for anything in the neighborhood of the experience I predicted. Odds are good I'll miss several instances of weak contrary evidence, but as soon as I realize I've encountered one, I go into reflective attention so I'm aware of as many details of my immediate subjective experience as possible."

The thing I'm having trouble with is: at some point in the future, the trigger I'm thinking about will happen. How will I notice/remember that that was a trigger? What can I do now, when the trigger has not yet happened, to make me remember later? I don't think I know how to keep searches going in the background, or anything like that.

Partial solutions, to gesture at the gap:
* Phone alarms for triggers that happen at a specific time (for the first few triggers, before the habit is formed)
* Assign someone to watch me 24/7 and poke me in the side whenever a desired trigger happens
* When I come up with an idea for a TAP, [my single-point-of-reference productivity Google Doc, under the "TAP" section, tells me to] close my eyes and imagine the trigger happening for 5 minutes

I'm confused by the number of posts on TAPs (excluding OP) that gloss over this part.

comment by Said Achmiz (SaidAchmiz) · 2018-05-08T00:03:11.661Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks, that’s helpful!

comment by Raemon · 2018-05-07T23:39:09.864Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I thought the Kaj post had fairly concrete examples.

(I do agree it'd be handy if this post included some too though)

comment by damionx7 · 2020-01-26T18:05:24.265Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

You can use 1 day flashcards via ANKI app as gwern suggested.

Some examples I use:

1. If a task takes less than 5 minutes, I will do it.