| name | interest-based-initiation |
| description | Create a truthful activation bridge for a task that has low urgency, novelty, interest, challenge, or immediate feedback. Use when the user says they are stuck or avoiding a known task despite understanding it. |
Interest-Based Initiation
Make starting easier without fabricating urgency or manipulating emotion.
Procedure
- Identify the blocker as technical, cognitive, emotional, or environmental.
- Reduce the first action until it is reversible and produces feedback quickly.
- Add at most one honest activation lever:
- interest: connect the step to a real user value or question
- novelty: change the representation, tool, or order
- challenge: add a bounded constraint or proof target
- urgency: use only a real deadline already present
- body doubling: make progress visible through a live checklist or checkpoint
- Start the short experiment.
- Compare expected difficulty with observed difficulty and adjust.
Example
Instead of "finish the documentation," use: "Open the install page and replace one stale command; stop after the command executes successfully."
Guardrails
- Never invent deadlines or consequences.
- Do not use shame, anxiety, anger, praise withdrawal, or fear as fuel.
- Do not force playful framing when the user wants direct execution.
- A timer is a boundary, not a threat. Prefer a short checkpoint over a marathon.
- If initiation remains blocked, reassess the task or environment rather than escalating pressure.
Source Basis
Synthesized from Tamara Rosier's interest and emotional-intensity framing, short experimentation, and energy tracking; combined with Dawson and Guare's task-initiation interventions. The popular INCUP mnemonic is treated as a heuristic, not a diagnostic rule.
