The post-slip protocol

Have a procedure so you're not improvising while you feel terrible. Four steps, in order.

1. Stop the episode now. Not tomorrow, not after the weekend. Now. This is the single highest-value action and it's available at every moment.
2. Do not do the debrief tonight. Nothing you conclude about yourself in the hour after a slip is reliable. Log the bare facts — time, situation, how you felt beforehand, and how much it's bothering you right now — and stop. Analysis tomorrow.
3. Tomorrow, run the facts. What was the cue? What state were you in? What happened in the two hours before? Was a plan in place and did it not fire, or was there no plan for this? Note it: your trigger map has just been updated with real data.
4. Adjust one thing. One. Not a new regime. If it was midnight on the laptop, the change is about the laptop at midnight.

What's deliberately not in this protocol: apologising to the app, punishment, promising harder, or a fresh-start speech. Fresh-start energy is a sugar high — it feels like progress and produces nothing. A single specific adjustment beats a renewed vow every time.

The one number we do ask for on the night is how much it's bothering you, 0–10. Not to score you. It's the only way the app can tell the difference between a bad evening and something that needs more than an app — and if it starts reading high, we quieten everything else down and put the right lessons in front of you.

Takeaways

• Stop now, log the bare facts, do the thinking tomorrow, change one thing.
• Fresh-start energy is a sugar high. One specific adjustment beats a renewed vow.
• The 0–10 isn't a score. It's how the app knows when to get out of your way.