Diagnose failing behavioral agents by component — trigger salience, condition scope, or action effort each require different fixes

Why This Is a Rule

A behavioral agent — an if-then rule you've designed for yourself ("If I open my laptop in the morning, then I write for 30 minutes before checking email") — has three components that can independently fail. The trigger (opening the laptop) might not be salient enough to activate the rule in the moment. The condition (morning) might be too restrictive, excluding valid firing opportunities. The action (30 minutes of writing) might require too much effort, creating resistance that overrides the trigger.

Two weeks is the diagnostic window because it's long enough to establish whether a pattern is forming (Lally et al.'s habit formation research suggests 18-254 days for full automaticity, but consistent firing should be visible by week two) and short enough to course-correct before the agent is abandoned.

The critical insight is that each failure type requires a different fix. Low trigger salience → make the trigger more obvious (sticky note, phone alarm, environment change). Too-restrictive condition → broaden the condition (any time you open the laptop, not just morning). Excessive action effort → reduce the action size (5 minutes of writing, not 30). Applying the wrong fix wastes effort: making the trigger more salient doesn't help if the action is too effortful.

When This Fires

• When a behavioral rule you designed for yourself hasn't been firing consistently after two weeks
• When you notice you "keep forgetting" to do something you committed to
• During weekly reviews when assessing which behavioral agents are active vs. dormant
• When debugging someone else's failed habit or behavioral commitment

Common Failure Mode

Diagnosing all agent failures as motivation problems: "I guess I don't want it badly enough." Motivation is rarely the bottleneck for well-designed agents. The bottleneck is almost always structural: the trigger doesn't activate in context, the conditions exclude too many opportunities, or the action is too costly relative to the trigger's activation energy. Fix the structure before questioning the motivation.

The Protocol

(1) After two weeks, assess: is the agent firing consistently (>70% of valid opportunities)? If no, proceed to diagnosis. (2) Check trigger salience: "Am I noticing the trigger when it occurs?" If not → make it more salient: visual cues, alarms, environment design. (3) Check condition scope: "When I notice the trigger, am I often in conditions where the rule doesn't apply?" If yes → broaden conditions or redesign the trigger. (4) Check action effort: "When I notice the trigger and conditions match, do I still not act?" If yes → reduce the action to its minimum viable version. (5) Change one component at a time and re-evaluate after another week. Changing multiple components simultaneously makes it impossible to identify which fix worked.