The Follow Through Protocol / Research note
I wanted to understand why I kept avoiding things, so I spent years researching it. This page shows the sources behind the Follow Through Protocol, how I used those ideas, and where the evidence stops.
—How to read this page
Evidence
What published research actually found.
What it might explain
What the finding might tell us about following through.
How the Follow Through Protocol uses it
The feature we built using that idea.
A study can support tracking progress. We still need evidence about whether the Follow Through Protocol’s version helps people.
01 / Research area
6 published sources
Source 01
Piers Steel · 2007 · Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94
This review combines research on procrastination and finds links with several factors, including how unpleasant a task feels, how far away its payoff is, belief in being able to do it, and distractibility. The same visible delay can therefore have more than one plausible explanation.
Source 02
Thomas L. Webb & Paschal Sheeran · 2006 · Psychological Bulletin, 132(2), 249–268
Across experiments, interventions that strengthened intentions produced smaller changes in behavior. People could become more committed to an action without a matching increase in actually doing it. That difference is what psychologists mean by the intention–behavior gap.
Source 03
Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl · 2013 · Social and Personality Psychology Compass
This theoretical review explains how postponing an unpleasant task can improve mood immediately while leaving the consequences for the future. The short-term relief can help explain avoidance even when someone values the eventual result.
Source 04
Kennon M. Sheldon & Andrew J. Elliot · 1999 · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482–497
Across three longitudinal data sets, goals consistent with personal interests and values were associated with more sustained effort and greater attainment. Attaining those goals was also associated with greater well-being through need satisfaction.
Source 05
Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci · 2000 · Contemporary Educational Psychology
This review distinguishes doing an activity because it is enjoyable from doing it for a separate outcome. It also distinguishes reasons a person genuinely endorses from acting mainly under pressure. An unpleasant task can still serve something the person values.
Source 06
Julian Lim and David F. Dinges · 2010 · Psychological Bulletin
This meta-analysis examines how short-term total sleep deprivation affects cognitive performance. It found impairments across several domains, with the size and form of the effect differing by task.
A task may be avoided because it feels unpleasant, seems unlikely to succeed, or loses to an immediate alternative. The obstacle needs to be considered before choosing the response.
Deciding that an action matters leaves practical questions about when, how, and under what circumstances it will happen.
Avoiding a task can remove an unpleasant feeling for the moment. That relief can make avoiding it appealing again.
Checking whether a target connects with a personally chosen value may help identify a goal worth continuing.
A task can feel more personally chosen when you understand and endorse what it serves, even if the task itself remains dull or difficult.
Inadequate sleep can impair attention and other abilities a demanding task requires. The same planned action may therefore be harder to carry out under different sleep conditions.
The Follow Through Protocol groups possible obstacles so it can suggest what to try. Those groups are working guesses that can change. They aren’t permanent personality types or a clinical classification.
The Follow Through Protocol uses 11 overlapping groups of possible obstacles. Your answers and records help choose which explanation and strategy to consider; they do not identify a proven cause.
The Follow Through Protocol records a scheduled attempt separately from its start and outcome. Making a plan does not mark the work complete.
The emotional-resistance lessons explain this possible loop and invite a safe, manageable attempt at the task.
Supports revisiting the member’s own reason for a target. Necessary obligations can remain worthwhile even when the task itself is unpleasant.
The meaning lessons ask you to connect the next action to a reason you actually believe.
The capacity lessons explain why time, attention, health, and skills belong in a realistic plan.
Research can show that procrastination has different causes. That doesn’t validate the exact groups the Follow Through Protocol uses.
This source does not validate the Protocol or its framework of underlying areas.
The evidence supports a general gap between intending and doing, not the Protocol’s specific interface.
This is an explanatory review, not a trial of the Follow Through Protocol or proof that emotional avoidance explains your particular delay.
Longitudinal model evidence, not a randomized test of the Follow Through Protocol, its questionnaire, or its goal-revision exercise. It does not establish that every unwanted task should be abandoned.
This is a theoretical review drawing on several lines of research. It does not show that writing a reason guarantees action or that the Follow Through Protocol improves motivation.
The studies focus on short-term total sleep deprivation. They do not quantify your personal capacity, establish the effect of every form of tiredness, or validate the app’s capacity category.
02 / Research area
1 published source
Source 01
Angela Byars-Winston et al. · 2017 · Journal of Counseling Psychology
A meta-analysis of 28 reports (61 samples, 8,965 participants) comparing Bandura’s four proposed sources of self-efficacy. Past performance accomplishments were the dominant predictor. Once those were accounted for, watching others succeed, encouragement, and emotional arousal predicted self-efficacy only weakly.
If confidence is built mostly from your own completed attempts, then small actions you actually finish may do more for belief in the next attempt than encouragement or reassurance.
You can compare how hard you expected an attempt to be with how it actually felt, and look back at completed attempts. We haven’t established that using the Follow Through Protocol improves confidence or self-efficacy.
Supports smaller-version fallbacks and the record of completed attempts, so members build their own evidence of starting instead of relying on motivational messages.
Related studies can inform the design. Showing that the Follow Through Protocol itself helps requires studying the Follow Through Protocol.
Samples came mostly from academic and career domains, many in STEM, and the data are correlational. This does not show that the Protocol’s records raise self-efficacy.
03 / Research area
2 published sources
Source 01
Peter M. Gollwitzer & Paschal Sheeran · 2025 · Annual Review of Psychology, 76, 303–328
This review examines if-then plans: connecting a specific situation to a response, such as “After breakfast, I’ll open the draft.” It considers effects on thinking, feelings, and behavior, alongside conditions that influence whether the plans help.
Source 02
G. Wang, Y. Wang & X. Gai · 2021 · Meta-analysis
This meta-analysis examines mental contrasting with implementation intentions. People consider a desired result, identify an obstacle in the present, and plan how to respond if that obstacle appears. The combined studies found a benefit for goal attainment on average, with results varying across studies.
Preparing the link can make the situation easier to notice and the chosen response easier to remember. That leaves fewer decisions to make at the start.
Considering the obstacle alongside the desired result gives planning a problem to address. An if-then response specifies what to do when that problem appears.
Your plan connects a time or event to a first step: “After coffee, I’ll open the proposal.”
Your plan connects a time or event with a first action and a response to an expected obstacle. A backup provides another option when the original opportunity changes.
During setup, you name an expected obstacle and save a response. This adapts part of the planning approach; it is not the same intervention as every procedure included in the review.
Planning research doesn’t guarantee that the Follow Through Protocol’s version produces the same results.
Planning research does not establish a magical countdown window or guarantee action.
This evidence does not justify claiming that visualization or a single planning technique guarantees follow-through.
04 / Research area
1 published source
Source 01
Angela L. Duckworth et al. · 2016 · Perspectives on Psychological Science
Research on self-control strategies emphasizes the value of changing situations upstream rather than relying only on effortful inhibition after temptation is present.
Removing friction and competing cues before the action point can change the decision environment.
You can get your tools ready and move one distraction before the attempt. Then record whether that setup helped you begin.
Supports setting things up before the moment to act, like removing a distraction ahead of time, instead of relying on willpower once the moment arrives.
Changing the setup may help. It won’t solve every obstacle, and the Follow Through Protocol doesn’t claim to reset your dopamine.
The source supports a general type of strategy, not the effectiveness of the Protocol’s specific setup steps.
05 / Research area
1 published source
Source 01
Benjamin Harkin et al. · 2016 · Psychological Bulletin
This review combined 138 experiments on monitoring goal progress. On average, interventions that increased monitoring also improved goal attainment. Effects were stronger in some conditions, including when results were recorded or reported.
Comparing what you intended with what happened can reveal a mismatch that calls for an adjustment. A record gives you details to use instead of relying entirely on your impression of the week.
Your record includes plans, starts, outcomes, reported obstacles, start delays, and returns after misses. Those help you review what you entered.
My Record and Weekly Review collect the attempts and feedback you enter. The reviews use those observations to help you consider one practical adjustment.
Research on progress tracking helped inform this design. We still need to evaluate whether these specific screens and measures help.
A monitoring meta-analysis does not prove the Protocol’s tracking works; the Protocol has to earn its own evidence.
06 / Research area
2 published sources
Source 01
Wendy Wood & Dennis Rünger · 2016 · Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 289–314
A broad review of habit processes emphasizing repeated behavior and context cues rather than a universal fixed number of days.
Source 02
Phillippa Lally, Cornelia H. M. van Jaarsveld, Henry W. W. Potts, and Jane Wardle · 2010 · European Journal of Social Psychology
Participants chose a simple daily behavior and repeated it in the same context for 12 weeks. Automaticity developed at different rates. Missing one opportunity did not materially affect habit formation in this study.
Stable cues and contexts can make repeated responses easier to retrieve over time.
Repeating an action in a recurring situation can build an association, making the situation a more useful prompt for the action.
You can use a familiar time, event, and place, with a backup for disrupted days. Your record keeps the attempts that happened and those that didn’t.
Supports keeping the same first action, cue, and place where practical, with a backup cue for days when the usual one doesn’t happen.
The repetition lessons distinguish a familiar start from effortless performance of an entire complex task.
There’s no promise of a habit in 14 days, permanent consistency, or effortless work.
The review does not support a universal 21-day or 14-day habit claim.
This was a study of self-reported, simple daily behaviors. It does not establish one habit-formation deadline, guarantee automaticity, or show that every interruption is harmless.
07 / Research area
1 published source
Source 01
Juliana G. Breines & Serena Chen · 2012 · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Four experiments compared a self-compassion condition with self-esteem and control conditions. After reflecting on a weakness, failure, or wrongdoing, people in the self-compassion condition reported more motivation to improve and more belief that the weakness could change. In one experiment they spent more time studying for a test after an initial failure.
Harsh self-criticism after a miss may push people toward avoidance, while a response that is accepting but still responsible may keep them engaged with fixing the problem.
Recovery keeps the miss in your record. You can choose what got in the way, optionally review it, and plan the next attempt. A return is recorded when you actually start again.
Shapes the tone of Recovery: the miss stays on the record as a fact, nothing resets, and the next step is one specific change rather than self-blame.
The Follow Through Protocol’s Recovery flow hasn’t been clinically validated.
Short lab experiments, mostly with college students, measuring motivation and short-term behavior. They do not test recovery from procrastination over weeks, or the Protocol’s Recovery flow itself.
08 / Research area
2 published sources
Source 01
Jake Linardon & Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz · 2020 · Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
A review of 70 randomized trials of smartphone interventions for mental-health problems. Average study attrition was about 24% at short-term follow-up and about 36% at longer-term follow-up, and app use consistently declined over the course of the trials.
Source 02
Alexandra Werntz et al. · 2023 · Journal of Medical Internet Research
A systematic review of meta-analyses comparing digital mental-health interventions delivered with human support against the same kind of interventions without it, across different outcomes, populations, and types of supporters. The authors note wide differences in how the interventions and the support were described across the included analyses.
Dropping off is the normal pattern for digital tools, so a product that only works with heavy daily use will fail most of the people who try it.
Some human contact may help people keep using a digital tool, but which kind of support helps, and how much, is not settled.
The Follow Through Protocol offers prompts while you plan, when you start, after the attempt, and after a miss.
Informs keeping each check-in to a few taps, making it easy to come back after a gap, and treating re-engagement as part of the design rather than as a user failure.
Informs Founder Beta as an optional, narrowly defined form of human support rather than a required part of the product.
Research on digital support doesn’t establish that the Follow Through Protocol improves follow-through or keeps people using it. Those need their own evidence.
These were mental-health apps inside research trials, not a follow-through tool bought by the public. Real-world engagement may look different.
Focused on mental-health interventions and on summarizing other meta-analyses. It cannot say whether the Protocol’s optional founder support helps.
09 / Research area
2 published sources
Source 01
Martin S. Hagger et al. · 2016 · Perspectives on Psychological Science
Twenty-three labs (2,141 participants) ran the same preregistered ego-depletion experiment. The pooled effect was close to zero (d = 0.04), even though an earlier meta-analysis had reported a medium-sized effect.
Source 02
Marcus Credé, Michael C. Tynan & Peter D. Harms · 2017 · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
A meta-analysis of the grit research. Grit’s relationship with performance was modest, and it overlapped heavily with conscientiousness, an established personality trait. This challenged claims that grit is a distinct and especially powerful predictor of success.
Popular explanations like “willpower is a tank that runs out” can rest on weaker evidence than their popularity suggests.
A trait that becomes popular can be less new and less predictive than it sounds, which is a reason not to build follow-through around a single heroic trait like grit or discipline.
Each source includes its limitations beside the summary.
The Protocol does not tell members they failed because they ran out of willpower, and it checks mechanism claims against replication evidence before relying on them.
The Protocol does not frame follow-through as being grittier or more disciplined. It looks for specific conditions that can be changed.
Check who was studied, how results were measured, and how long people were followed. A lab result, self-reported improvement, or a link between two things may not tell you what this app will do in your life.
This tested one specific lab task. Later work still debates whether depletion appears under other conditions, so saying ego depletion has been completely disproven would also overstate it.
Mostly correlational, trait-level data. It does not address whether specific skills or strategies help people act.
10 / Research area
2 published sources
Source 01
Alexander Rozental et al. · 2018 · Frontiers in Psychology
A meta-analysis of 12 randomized trials (21 comparisons, 718 participants) testing psychological treatments for procrastination. The overall effect was small to moderate (g = 0.34) with substantial variation between studies. A small subgroup of cognitive behavioral therapy studies showed a moderate effect (g = 0.55).
Source 02
Rossella Suriano · 2026 · Research in Developmental Disabilities
A systematic review of 11 quantitative studies (2,788 participants). Across the studies, ADHD symptoms were consistently associated with more procrastination.
When procrastination becomes severe or tangled up with distress, structured treatment from a professional has the strongest direct evidence.
For some people, persistent trouble starting tasks may be connected to ADHD rather than only to habits or motivation.
The Follow Through Protocol is an educational behavior-change tool. It is not therapy, medical care, diagnosis, or treatment for ADHD, depression, anxiety, trauma, or any other condition.
The Protocol presents itself as educational self-help, not treatment, and pauses normal action prompts when someone reports a situation outside its scope.
The Protocol does not screen for, diagnose, or treat ADHD, and its FAQ and terms state that it is not a substitute for a doctor or therapist.
The Protocol cannot determine whether a person’s resistance is caused by a mental-health condition.
Few studies, mostly with students, using self-reported outcomes. The CBT subgroup rested on only a handful of trials.
Shows association only, from a small number of studies. It cannot say what causes the link or how a tool like this affects people with ADHD.
The Protocol’s own evidence
When we say a feature is informed by research, a verified source supports the idea behind it.
A study about planning or tracking doesn’t prove that the Follow Through Protocol works. We still need to collect and evaluate evidence about this product.
We don’t have a verified success rate for the Follow Through Protocol or a proven amount of improvement to show you. Using relevant research is a starting point. It isn’t a result.
Required storage keeps sign-in and checkout working. Optional usage tracking helps us see how the site is used. We don’t sell your information. Privacy