2 Nov 20265 min read
Quitting Smoking: A Plain-Language Guide to Cues, Cravings and Slips
Quitting is a skill built from cues, plans and repair after slips. This guide puts the pieces in order, with links to the deeper posts.
Read the piece →The blog
Loops, cues, and
small ways out.
Break loops. Recover patterns. Writing about the patterns people repeat — what starts them, what keeps them going, and the smallest next step that helps. Everything here is free to read, with no account.
Start the free read →Cravings and quitting smoking
The urge arrives as a scene, not a thought. What it is, what helps in the first minutes, and how to handle a slip.
29 Oct 20265 min read
Cigarette Cravings: How Long Does One Actually Last?
One craving is usually a wave, not a wall. It tends to rise, peak and fade, and what you do in the first few minutes matters more than how strong it feels.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20265 min read
The First Weeks After Quitting: What Cravings Look Like and What Helps
The first weeks are the most crowded with cravings. They come in waves, at predictable times, and most pass faster than they feel.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20265 min read
Smoking When Stressed: Why the Cue Works, and What Else It Can Lead To
Stress and a cigarette get welded together by repetition. The weld is learned, which means a second ending can be learned too.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20265 min read
You Smoked Again After Quitting: What to Do Next
A slip is information about a cue, not proof that quitting failed. What you do in the next hour matters more than the cigarette.
Read the piece →Scrolling and phones
The feed is hardest at exactly the wrong time. How the pick-up starts and where it can be interrupted.
4 Nov 20265 min read
Scrolling and the Pick-Up: A Plain Guide to the Loop
The pick-up usually happens before a decision. A guide to the loop behind the scroll and the small places it can be interrupted.
Read the piece →9 Oct 20265 min read
Low Mood, Doomscrolling and Screens: How the Feed Keeps You Stuck
The feed offers relief from a heavy mood and often delivers a heavier one. Seeing the loop is the first step to using your phone on your terms.
Read the piece →29 Oct 20264 min read
Why You Pick Up Your Phone Without Deciding To
The reach often happens before the thought. Seeing that gives you something specific to change, instead of another vow to use your phone less.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
Screen-Time Limits You Ignore, and What Works Instead
A limit that asks you to win an argument at your weakest moment will usually lose. A setup that changes the cue tends to hold.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
Doomscrolling at Bedtime: Why You Keep Going When It Feels Bad
The last hour of the day is when the loop is strongest: you are tired, unguarded, and finally alone with the screen.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
Phone in the Bedroom: An Experiment You Can Try Tonight
A one-week experiment, not a rule: the phone charges across the room. You watch what changes and decide for yourself.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20263 min read
Phone Habits and Focus: Getting Your Attention Back
Attention is trained by what you repeat. A few small changes make focus a little easier each day.
Read the piece →Eating to cope
Reaching for food to change a feeling. The cue, the relief and the cost, without the shame.
4 Nov 20265 min read
Eating to Cope: A Plain Guide to the Loop
Food is one of the fastest ways to change how you feel, which is why the habit is so sticky. A guide to the loop, without rules or shame.
Read the piece →29 Oct 20264 min read
Why You Eat When You Are Not Hungry (and What the Eating Is Doing)
Eating when you are not hungry is rarely about food. It is often a fast way to change a feeling, and noticing that is a kinder place to start than blaming yourself.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20265 min read
Late-Night Snacking and the Ten-Minute Gap
The kitchen at 10 pm is often answering a different question than hunger. A short gap helps you hear which one.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20265 min read
Eating After a Bad Day Without the Shame Spiral
The meal is rarely the problem. The shame that follows it often is, because it makes the next hard day heavier.
Read the piece →Spending and money worry
Buying to lift a mood, the scroll that ends in a basket, and looking at the number again.
4 Nov 20265 min read
Spending to Feel Better: A Plain Guide to the Loop
A purchase gives a small lift at the moment of buying. A guide to how that becomes a loop, and where to put a gap in it.
Read the piece →29 Oct 20264 min read
Why You Buy Things When You Feel Low (and the 24-Hour Gap)
A purchase can lift a low mood for a few minutes. That lift is why it repeats, and why a short wait often changes what you actually want to buy.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
Online Shopping: The Scroll That Ends in a Purchase
Browsing can feel like a break and a reward in one. Catching the loop at the opening of the app is easier than at checkout.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
Money Shame: Looking at the Number Without Spiralling
Not looking feels like safety and works like a loop. A short, calm routine for looking can make the number smaller than the dread.
Read the piece →Putting things off
Starting is the hard part, and the delay is not laziness. The loop underneath it.
4 Nov 20264 min read
Putting Things Off: A Plain Guide to Why Starting Is Hard
The delay is usually about a feeling the task brings up, not about effort. A guide to the starting loop and the smallest step in.
Read the piece →9 Oct 20265 min read
Procrastination: Why You Keep Putting the Same Things Off
Putting it off works, for about ten minutes. That is why the same task can slip for weeks without you deciding to abandon it.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
Task Paralysis vs Laziness: How to Tell the Difference
If you care and still cannot begin, it is rarely laziness. Naming what is in the way points to a smaller first step.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20263 min read
When Starting Feels Impossible: The Two-Minute Version
The cost of starting is highest at the very beginning. A two-minute version cuts that cost, and the rest often follows.
Read the piece →Overthinking and the racing mind
Circling versus solving, replaying conversations, and a loop that grows when you avoid it.
2 Nov 20264 min read
How to Reduce Overthinking: A Practical Guide to the Loop
Overthinking is a loop with a cue and a relief of its own. Catching it earlier works better than trying to think your way out.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
Rumination vs Problem-Solving: How to Tell Which One You Are Doing
Problem-solving ends in a step. Rumination ends in a worse mood. The difference is usually visible if you ask the right question.
Read the piece →9 Oct 20265 min read
Anxiety and Avoidance: Why Dodging What Scares You Makes It Bigger
Avoiding what makes you anxious feels like relief. It is, but only for a moment. Over time it teaches your brain that the fear was right.
Read the piece →Nights and sleep
A mind that gets louder after dark, the 2 a.m. spiral, and the night that keeps getting later.
9 Oct 20266 min read
Night Thinking: Why Your Mind Gets Louder After Dark
Night thinking feels urgent because the day has gone quiet and you cannot do much about any of it until morning.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
The 2 a.m. Spiral: A Ten-Minute Routine to Get Unstuck
The night version of worry is loud and convincing. A short routine gives it somewhere to go, and the daytime does the real work.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
Why You Cannot Sleep Even When You Are Tired
Sleepiness and sleep readiness are different. A tired body in a switched-on mind will not fall asleep, and the second part can be eased.
Read the piece →29 Oct 20264 min read
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination: Why You Stay Up When You Are Tired
Late-night scrolling or one more episode is often the first hour that belongs to you. Finding that hour earlier is a gentler fix than fighting bedtime.
Read the piece →9 Oct 20265 min read
How to Calm Anxiety in the Moment: Five Things to Try in the Next Five Minutes
Anxiety is your alarm system firing at full volume. You cannot talk it out of ringing, but you can turn it down, and you can learn to ride it out.
Read the piece →Low mood and getting help
Small steps when everything feels heavy, and how to tell when more support is the next step.
9 Oct 20266 min read
Coping With Depression: Small Steps That Help When Everything Feels Heavy
Depression makes ordinary tasks feel enormous. The way through is rarely willpower. It is shrinking the next step until it is small enough to take.
Read the piece →9 Oct 20265 min read
No Energy, No Motivation: How to Start When You Feel Nothing
If you are waiting to feel motivated, you may wait a long time. The way out of flat, low-energy days usually starts with a step so small it feels almost silly.
Read the piece →9 Oct 20265 min read
When to Get Help for Depression and Anxiety, and How to Ask
Asking for help is not a last resort or a sign of weakness. It is often the most effective move available, and it is usually easier than the fear of it suggests.
Read the piece →How loops work
Why a repeated behaviour keeps winning, and what it takes to break the pattern on purpose.
9 Oct 20266 min read
Addiction Is a Loop: Why the Same Pull Keeps Winning
The pull feels personal. Underneath, cigarettes, the feed, food, spending and the phone often run the same short loop: cue, relief, cost.
Read the piece →9 Oct 20266 min read
The Same Pattern, On Repeat, Until You Break It on Purpose
You rarely decide to repeat yourself. A loop that once helped keeps running until you catch it before the ending.
Read the piece →29 Oct 202613 min read
The Neuroscience and Behavioural Science of a Habit Loop
A habit is not a weakness of character. It is learning doing what learning does. Here is how cues, prediction, reward, stress and context combine to keep a loop running, and which small moves the research supports.
Read the piece →Helping someone else
When you can see the loop and they are not ready: what helps, what backfires, and looking after yourself.
2 Nov 20264 min read
Helping Someone Else With a Loop: A Partner, a Parent, a Friend
You cannot run someone else's loop for them, but you can change what surrounds it. Curiosity helps; nagging backfires.
Read the piece →How UnloopMe works
What the app does, how a read is made, what happens to your answers, and the engineering behind it.
9 Oct 20265 min read
How UnloopMe Helps You Step Out of a Loop
UnloopMe helps you see a loop early enough to choose a different next step. It is free, it needs no account, and it is not treatment.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
How a UnloopMe Read Works, Step by Step
A read is a short run of taps that ends in a plain-language description of your pattern and one next step. Here is each stage.
Read the piece →2 Nov 20264 min read
What Happens to Your Answers: A Plain-Language Privacy Guide
Most of what you tell UnloopMe never leaves your phone. This is a plain version of what does, and when. The privacy page has the full detail.
Read the piece →18 Jun 202628 min read
How UnloopMe Works Under the Hood: Sync, Intelligence, and Notifications
UnloopMe runs almost everything on your phone first, then lets a server make it smarter in the background. This guide shows how the data moves, how the app learns your patterns, how it scores its own confidence, how it models your habit loops, and how it decides exactly what to say and when to say it. Plain words, real examples, and lots of diagrams.
Read the piece →