You will collect a week of real data on what sets you off, how you react and what it costs.
By now you probably have a good guess about what sets you off. Guesses are unreliable, though. Memory favours the dramatic moments and forgets the small ones that happen every day, and it is often the small ones that wear you down. A week of notes written on the day gives you something better than a guess: evidence.
This exercise asks for a few minutes each day for seven days, then about half an hour at the end to look for patterns. Arif kept his log in the notes app on his phone and typed each entry on the MRT home. You can use a notebook or a spreadsheet instead.
Each entry gets a row, and each row has the same columns.
When: the day and time. What happened: the facts, in one line, as a camera would have recorded them. Who and where: the person involved and the channel, such as in person, on a call, by email or in a chat. Feeling: the most precise word you can find, plus a second word for anything underneath, as in lesson 2.3, Put a precise name on what you feel. Intensity: a rating from 1 to 10, where 1 is a flicker and 10 is the strongest reaction you have had at work. Story: what you told yourself it meant, word for word. What you did, and what followed. Conditions: how you slept, whether you had eaten, and how heavy the week was.
The intensity rating matters more than it looks. Without it, a mildly irritating email and a meeting that left you shaking get one line each and seem equal.
Write each entry on the day it happens, ideally within a few hours. By the next morning the story has usually been tidied up, and the feeling has faded or grown. If you miss a day, add what you remember and mark it as recalled later.
Log every reaction you would rate at 3 or above, including the small ones you would normally shrug off. A week with no entries usually means a week where you did not stop to notice, rather than a calm one.
Here are two of Arif's entries, written as he wrote them. Monday, 10am, stand-up call. Jason unmuted and talked over my update to raise a vendor issue. Feeling: angry, worried underneath. Intensity 6. Story: he thinks my updates don't matter. Did: said nothing, sent him a sharp chat message at 10.25. Followed: Jason replied "sorry, urgent" and we were awkward all day. Conditions: slept OK.
Friday, 5.15pm, email. Grace moved two of next week's deliverables forward and added a third. Feeling: resentful, anxious underneath. Intensity 9. Story: she plans badly and I pay for it. Did: replied "Noted" and spent Saturday morning on it. Conditions: under six hours of sleep, skipped lunch, heavy week.
At the end of the week, read every entry in one sitting. Group them by type of situation first. Then look across the other columns: the same person, the same time of day, the same channel, the same conditions.
Arif had eight entries. Once grouped, Jason talking over him came up three times, rated 6, 7 and 8, which averages 7.0, and Grace's late priority changes came up twice, rated 8 and 9, an average of 8.5. Being left off client email threads also came up twice, at 4 and 5, so it averaged 4.5, while a slow reply from a vendor appeared once at 3.
To pick the top two, start with the average intensity and use how often it happened as a check. On that basis Grace's changes came first, with the highest average, and Jason's interruptions came second: slightly lower on average, but the most frequent. Being left off emails stung, but at an average of 4.5 it was a background irritation rather than something that ran his day.
The last column is the one people skip, and it often explains the most. Tiredness, hunger and a heavy week lower your threshold, so the same event lands harder.
Four of Arif's eight entries came after 4pm. His three highest ratings, a 9 and two 8s, all fell on days when he had logged under six hours of sleep. Jason's interruption on Thursday afternoon got an 8. The one on Monday morning, after a decent night, got a 6. The event was much the same. Arif was not.
This does not make the trigger imaginary. It tells you when you are most exposed, which is useful for planning. Module 3 uses it.
A finished log has at least five entries across seven days, each with every column filled in, and a short summary paragraph. The summary names your top two triggers, gives the number of times each appeared and the average intensity, and describes the pattern behind them.
Arif's summary read: "My strongest triggers are Grace changing priorities late in the week (twice, average 8.5) and Jason talking over me on calls (three times, average 7), which touch fairness and respect. Both hit harder after 4pm and when I have slept badly. My usual story is that people don't value my time or my work. My usual response is to go quiet, then send something sharp later."
That paragraph became the starting point for module 3, where he wrote a plan for each trigger. Your log and summary are the activity below, and the seven days start today.
Keep the trigger log for seven days, then write a one-paragraph summary of your top two triggers and the pattern behind them.
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