Which pathway is your plan actually on?
Ten questions about your own plan — preset answers, nothing typed, nothing stored. The verdict names your pathway, where the plan leaks, the weight of your ask, and the failure mode to watch. Ninety seconds.
The framework's own boundary: the four pathways apply only where attention is the scarce input. Answer honestly — this question can end the diagnostic.
In your category, do consumers make a real, contested choice — or do defaults, necessity and distribution decide?
Think UPI: 85% of retail digital payments, built by rails and defaults — campaigns existed; they didn't decide the outcome. If that's your category, attention design isn't your lever.
One question per pathway — answer for the plan you're actually running or writing.
Does a repeated behaviour with a felt tension already exist — one your product plausibly resolves?
Sprite × eating heat. Cadbury × Diwali gifting. The ritual must be real and the fit must not be forced.
Is the behaviour you're requesting bigger than the attention and trust actually available to you?
"Switch your bank" vs "add a safe second account." If the ask outweighs the trust, size is the problem — not reach.
Have you accumulated behaviour or data worth mirroring back — with a natural calendar slot for it?
Wrapped mirrors a year of listening every December. Big Billion Days manufactured its own October. No accumulation, no ritual.
Is a cultural moment about to concentrate your exact audience's attention?
A tournament, a festival, an award season. Renting works — CRED spiked sign-ups 6–7× — but rented attention leaves with the moment.
Whether people enact doesn't depend only on the pathway — it depends on how heavy the ask itself is. Four quick reads on what you're asking people to do.
The economic sacrifice — what does saying yes cost them?
How long does the decision bind them — and can they undo it?
Reversible trials weigh little. Contracts, switching, durables weigh a lot — resale value lightens the load.
How many steps, minutes and mental hoops between intent and done?
What does doing this say about them — status, stigma, or nothing?
When the attention arrives, is the machinery to convert it already built — landing, trial, onboarding, supply?
Captured attention that never converts is the most expensive failure in the system.