Doing mode is now engaged!
You’ve ordered your mind in planning mode.
For much of life, that’s all you’ll need. With an ordered mind, you go forth, doing the things you’ve already thought through while planning.
The human brain can keep you on track for a while. But it will vary.
If you plan the night before, get a good night’s rest, and wake up naturally, you might be able to go a few hours without getting distracted.
Or maybe only a few minutes. Everyone is different.
Doing mode is a habit, just like planning mode
And the habit is to check back into your plans as often as needed. Every 5 minutes or every five hours.
It’s up to you.
In terms of Cue, the key will be that it shows you the daily plan you made, scrolled to roughly the point where you are at.
Yes, you can check stuff off when you’ve done it. The hit of dopamine that comes from that will build momentum as you go through your day.
But you can also rearrange your day, or defer things to the future using your tickler files.
Building Habits Is Hard. Cue Can Help.
The name Cue was chosen for a lot of reasons. One of those is that the tool will give you cues that you set up, to help you build habits and remember the most important things.
When planning, you can mark any individual item with a “cue time”. When that time comes, Cue will give you a notification that lets you glance at your daily plan at that point.
This way, you can build habits at certain times of the day, remember appointments, avoid missing deadlines.
It’s obviously useful for appointments, which you don’t want to miss.
But it’s also important to use it to build a habit of checking in with your plan. How often you need to do that is something you’ll have to judge, and may vary a bit day to day. Regardless, you can use these cues to remind yourself as often as you wish.
Building them in at certain times can create habits that will last long after you stop using cues to remember. And those habits can enable and accelerate habit stacking.
In the end, it’s up to you
Ultimately, no tool can make you do the work.
You have to want it.
All Cue can do is give you a place to express those desires in the form of plans, cement them in your mind as you order each day, each week, and each month.
And then remind you.
If you make the plans, then Cue’s job is to make sure you don’t forget.
Cue can help, but it’s still on you.