Screen Time Triggers Worksheet

A client with ADHD who is a financial analyst knows their phone use interrupts work but cannot articulate why it happens. When asked, they say 'I just pick it up' or 'I don't even notice I'm doing it.' They have tried setting intentions not to use their phone but cannot identify what to intercept because the behavior feels automatic. Coaching focus is on building intentional behavior around distraction.

Frame trigger identification as forensic work, not introspection: 'We're going to look at a specific episode - not your behavior in general, but one actual instance. Walk me through the last time you picked up your phone without meaning to. What were you doing right before?' The worksheet's value is in making this reconstruction systematic rather than leaving it as anecdotal conversation. Some clients resist the idea that there is a trigger because accepting that means accepting they are reacting to something rather than making free choices. Do not argue that point. Stay with the specific episodes: 'Whether or not there's a trigger, let's see what was happening right before.'

Watch for the client's trigger entries being either too vague ('I was working') or too specific to generalize ('my coworker knocked on the door'). The useful trigger level is task-type - 'I was working on something that required sustained reading' or 'I was in the middle of a task that felt unclear.' If the entries are all situational, ask a category question: 'What do those situations have in common?' The pattern usually becomes visible within 4-5 specific episodes. Also watch for the client identifying external triggers (notifications, sounds, other people) while missing internal triggers (boredom with the current task, confusion, anxiety about what comes next).

Start with the most frequently appearing trigger across the client's entries. Ask: 'What is it about [specific trigger] that sends you to your phone?' This question usually surfaces the function of the phone use - relief from boredom, escape from difficulty, social connection. That function is the coaching material, not the trigger itself. Once the function is clear, ask: 'Is there anything else that provides what the phone is providing in that moment?' This opens the conversation about alternative responses that is more useful than willpower-based avoidance.

A client with ADHD who is a program manager has a detailed understanding of when they use their phone at work but cannot figure out why some projects produce more escapes than others. They have noticed that they check their phone four times as often during certain types of work - specifically anything involving creating original content - versus routine administrative tasks. They want to understand the mechanism so they can address it rather than just managing the symptoms.

Frame this as a specificity investigation: 'You already know the trigger category - content creation. This worksheet helps us get precise about what specifically within that category is producing the pull.' Walk the client through a recent content creation session and use the worksheet to reconstruct what happened: what was the task, what did the phone-reach feel like immediately before it happened, what emotion or internal state was present. The ADHD dimension here is that the trigger for phone use during difficult creative work is almost never external - it is internal task-demand avoidance, specifically the discomfort of not knowing what to produce next. Naming that mechanism before the client fills in the worksheet gives them a target to look for.

Watch for the client conflating the trigger with the task itself - 'the trigger is content creation.' That is a category, not a trigger. Press for the specific internal moment: 'Right before you reached for your phone, what was happening in the task? Were you stuck on a specific sentence? Had you just finished a section and weren't sure what came next? Were you looking at something and feeling like it was not good enough?' The resolution of the trigger identification needs to be specific enough to build an interception strategy.

After identifying the specific within-task trigger moment (usually: task transition, uncertainty about next step, dissatisfaction with what was just produced), ask: 'What would need to happen in that exact moment to give you something to do other than reach for the phone?' The answer is a micro-protocol - a specific if-then instruction the client can build. 'If I finish a section and don't know what comes next, I [write a placeholder sentence / look at my outline / set a 3-minute timer before touching my phone].' The trigger worksheet leads to the micro-protocol; do not end the session without building at least one.

A client with ADHD who is an operations manager has completed trigger identification work over two weeks and has an accurate list of their primary triggers: task transitions, low-stimulation tasks, anticipatory anxiety before meetings. They now want to move from knowing their triggers to actually doing something about them before they fire. The coaching conversation is about environmental design based on the trigger data.

This scenario uses completed trigger data as its input. Frame the session as the design phase: 'Now that we know what fires the triggers, we can build the environment so fewer of them fire in the first place.' Walk through each identified trigger and ask: 'What would need to be true in your environment for this trigger to occur less often?' The ADHD-specific interventions are largely environmental rather than behavioral: task-transition triggers are reduced by planning the first action of the next task before ending the current one; low-stimulation triggers are reduced by structuring low-stimulation tasks in shorter blocks with designated breaks; anticipatory-anxiety triggers are reduced by building a pre-meeting ritual that addresses the anxiety directly rather than routing it through phone use.

Watch for the client designing interventions that address every trigger simultaneously. ADHD clients often generate comprehensive plans in the session that have no realistic chance of being executed in their current daily structure. Apply the single-intervention rule: 'Of these three triggers, which one is costing you the most? Let's build one intervention for that one and hold the others.' Getting one intervention working consistently is more valuable than three interventions that collapse in the first week.

At the next session, ask specifically about the single chosen trigger: 'Did the environmental change you made affect how often that trigger fired this week?' If yes, examine what made it work and whether it can be maintained without active effort (a sign the intervention is becoming a habit). If no, examine whether the environmental change was actually implemented or whether it got bypassed. The distinction between 'the intervention didn't work' and 'I didn't implement the intervention' is critical and often requires direct questioning to surface.