What does it mean that five types of cues?

Time location emotional state other people and preceding action are the main cue types.

Example: A project manager named David noticed he always craved a cigarette at exactly 10:15 AM, standing outside the east entrance of his office building, right after his Monday standup meeting ended and two of his smoking colleagues headed for the door. He had been blaming willpower for years, not realizing that four distinct cue types were converging simultaneously — a specific time, a specific location, the presence of specific people, and a specific preceding action — creating a trigger so overdetermined that no amount of resolve could reliably override it.

Try this: For the next three days, carry a cue log. Each time you notice a habitual behavior firing, immediately record all five cue dimensions: what time it is, where you are, what you are feeling emotionally, who else is present, and what you were doing immediately before. After three days, review your entries and highlight which one or two cue dimensions appear most consistently across your habits. You are identifying your dominant cue channels — the sensory pathways through which your environment most reliably triggers automatic behavior.