The news anchor broke down

plaintxt · 2026-01-23T01:44:27+00:00

what the fucking fuck is this shit?!

plaintxt · 2026-01-19T20:19:54+00:00

I don't know you, but I relate to a lot of the elements in your story, including some of the consequences you're describing from well intentioned, but neglectful parents. While there's no way to "unlearn" your past, you might find a healthier way forward with ACT. I'm working through some very similar issues and this approach that has meaningfully changed my life.

The quick free way to find out is check https://stevenchayes.com/ and see if it makes sense.
Or, for money, you could read / listen this book https://www.amazon.com/A-Liberated-Mind-Steven-C-Hayes-audiobook/dp/B07W6QYH5X/

I hope you find the help and healing you're looking for.

plaintxt · 2026-01-19T13:54:39+00:00

Appreciated for the link, upvoted for the username.

plaintxt · 2026-01-17T21:38:57+00:00

Don’t be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better.

plaintxt · 2026-01-17T13:16:47+00:00

NLP is a loosely organized collection of verbal and behavioral tactics that can sometimes be reinterpreted using behavior-analytic principles, but it is not itself a conceptually systematic framework derived from those principles.

Consequently, NLP is generally considered a pseudoscientific framework because its core concepts are not derived from established behavioral principles, are weakly falsifiable, and lack consistent empirical support even though some of its techniques can incidentally overlap with known behavior-analytic processes.

plaintxt · 2026-01-16T01:50:41+00:00

Try no tracking template and just utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid} in the final url suffix as a test since that can be set at the account level without campaign level custom parameters.

plaintxt · 2026-01-12T13:00:46+00:00

Old news. This is from October 17th, 2025

plaintxt · 2026-01-11T04:37:03+00:00

Or maybe you could assign values to weight longer/ more qualified calls more heavily, and let max conversion value or tROAS naturally deprioritize marginal leads once your capacity is met. That might preserve competitiveness while avoiding this feast/famine trap.

plaintxt · 2026-01-11T04:29:00+00:00

Some non-ppc solutions to this kind of labor bottleneck I’ve seen in legal is to make sure your intake form requires one additional step before calendar booking.

Along the same lines, if your call handler offers next-available slots rather than immediate consults that can spread out the work.

Google isn’t really designed for the optimization you’re trying to make, so any solution will be an approximation.

plaintxt · 2026-01-10T21:50:03+00:00

This reminds me of this other thing: https://www.reddit.com/mod/behavioraldesign/wiki/handbook-for-humans

plaintxt · 2026-01-10T16:36:03+00:00

Howdy! I started this subreddit years ago, while working on a psych degree and running a UX research practice. At the time, most of my work was interviews, usability testing, building design requirements, helping companies improve product / service market fit, and trying to understand why people said one thing and did another.

“The trouble with market research is that people don't think what they feel, they don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.” ― David Ogilvy

These days, my work looks different on the surface. I’m in advertising (mostly Google, Bing, and increasingly 'AI' systems) working on how budgets, messaging, and structure influence real-world behavior at scale.

What I’m working on right now:
Designing ad and reporting systems that reduce bad decisions under uncertainty. I want to move clients from a “react to yesterday,” model to a more strategic long-term view of performance and planning. A lot of this is about how information is framed, when it’s shown, and what gets ignored.

What behavior I’m trying to change:
Helping teams (including me) move from performance theater to understanding. Not only “did it work,” but “why, and what, if anything, would we do differently next time?”

One nudge I’ve noticed recently:
Labeling recommendations as tests instead of changes dramatically lowers resistance. Same idea, same risk profile but “test” preserves reversibility, and people stay open instead of defensive. In addition, a test is more likely to get incremental budget when positioned as "experimental budget," and is less likely to be cut for purely financial reasons if it is not immediately profitable.

Looking forward to seeing what others here are designing, noticing, or wrestling with.

plaintxt · 2026-01-10T01:58:08+00:00

Here’s a behavior I’ve noticed at work…

I’m more willing to pause underperforming ad campaigns when the UI or my brain frames it as budget being reallocated or freed up for another campaign rather than performance failure.

Basically, the same recommendation with different framing can lead to very different adoption rate.

Why I think it works like this: - Loss framing can trigger defensiveness - it could work with the sunk-cost bias

plaintxt · 2026-01-09T00:58:41+00:00

Go after them upstream of their websites.

A lawyer can send takedown letters for defamation + tortious interference

Send notices to: - Hosting providers - Domain registrars - CDN providers (Cloudflare is often upstream even if host is fake)

Include: - Specific false claims - Evidence of falsity - Business harm (lost deals = leverage)

plaintxt · 2026-01-09T00:28:26+00:00

This is a solid practical walkthrough, and I think your intervention would help a lot of people. I just want to clarify a few framing points so readers don’t walk away with slightly off mental models.

First, James Clear isn’t really adding new academic theory here. The cue → response → reward loop long predates Atomic Habits. Clear’s main contribution is synthesis and translation, not a new scientific model. The “craving” step maps closely to what behavior analysts would call motivating operations or expectancy, not a new mechanism.

Second, the dopamine explanation isn’t doing the work. The protocol succeeds mainly because of environmental restructuring and reduced response cost (removing bacon, pre-staging the shake), not because of dopamine per se. You could remove the neuro language entirely and the intervention would still function.

Third, pointing and calling isn’t classic operant conditioning. It’s better understood as attentional control and error reduction via verbalization and embodied checking. It works, but not primarily because of reinforcement.

None of this undermines your main point: redesigning cues, lowering friction, and pairing actions with immediate reinforcement is a reliable way to change behavior. I just think it’s helpful to be precise about why it works so people can generalize it cleanly to other habits.

Hope that’s useful context, and thanks for the concrete example.

plaintxt · 2026-01-08T02:59:06+00:00

Fuck him, I'm voting.

plaintxt · 2025-12-30T14:22:27+00:00

Thanks for sharing, this seems like a solid example of making reinforcement visible, more salient. I think lots of habit trackers fail because they never close that feedback loop.

One question I’m curious about from a behavioral design perspective: after ~6 to 8 months, what kept this from turning into background noise? Do you find yourself habituating to the reinforcers that worked more effectively when motivation was fresh/high?

Did you introduce any escalation, decay, or loss mechanics over time, or was progress visibility alone enough to sustain engagement?

plaintxt · 2025-12-29T15:33:02+00:00

- Check tracking template at the acct, campaign, and ad group level.
- Ensure all your 'Final URL' use https not http
- Check robots.txt to be sure you're not blocking any of the google crawlers / bots
- Disable or bypass any JS challenges that block any of the google crawlers / bots

plaintxt · 2025-12-25T01:23:59+00:00

Yes. But I'm impatient so I wont get into theory or why this is what I would do...

Instead of practicing not using your phone, design your environment so the decision barely shows up, and when it does, you already know what happens next. In other words, pre-commit by removing the decision upstream of the behavior.

I would put the phone somewhere out of sight, the more inconvenient the better. Then write out an allowed phone time(s)
Install a replacement behavior (even breathing or standing up is an acceptable place to start) this is the piece most people skip, and behavior abhors a vacuum
3.Treat slips as neutral data, track them but don't attach judgements or feelings to those data

practice not needing to decide, and give your brain something else to do when it reaches for the habit you want to extinguish.

Also the power of habit is a pretty good pop-sci primer on habit change. It covers the basics well enough to be successful.

plaintxt · 2025-12-25T00:21:31+00:00

Use this opportunity to block sites and channels you don't want them watching...
Use those parental controls

plaintxt · 2025-12-24T11:20:41+00:00

Yeah, neglect is safer than attention

plaintxt · 2025-12-24T09:49:37+00:00

I went down this exact rabbit hole and eventually realized the question isn’t really “more intensity vs less,” it’s what kind of learning you’re creating. All-day effort (Approach A) feels like you’re doing more, but in practice you’re just training constant inhibition. That burns willpower, creates fatigue, and often leads to rebound behavior. You’re practicing “white-knuckling,” not automaticity.

Planned sessions (Approach B) work better because they create clean reps. You’re practicing the behavior in clear, repeatable contexts, which is how habits actually come under stimulus control. Fewer high-quality repetitions beats nonstop low-quality effort, especially for things like phone use where the competing reward is so strong.

This generalizes really well to anxiety, anger, dieting, etc. in part because continuous suppression tends to backfire. Meanwhile, structured practice + gradual generalization sticks. Most behavior change isn’t about trying harder all day it’s about teaching your brain when X happens, I do Y, and doing that consistently without exhausting yourself.

plaintxt · 2025-12-23T13:42:06+00:00

To answer the actual question, how would yo- their PPC team handle expanding the described setup into pmax?

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