What is workflow initiation cue?

Workflow initiation cue is a concept in personal epistemology: Every workflow needs a clear trigger that initiates the sequence.

Example: You have a documented workflow for processing your weekly expense receipts. The steps are clear: gather receipts, categorize each one, enter them into the spreadsheet, reconcile against your bank statement, file the originals. The workflow is well designed. The problem is that you never do it. Receipts accumulate in a coat pocket, a desk drawer, a folder on your phone. By the end of the month you are facing a four-week backlog and the task feels monumental. The workflow was never missing steps — it was missing a trigger. You add one: every Friday at 5 PM, when you close your laptop for the week, you process receipts before you stand up. The laptop closing is the cue. Within three weeks the backlog is gone and the weekly task takes eight minutes. Nothing about the workflow changed. Everything about its initiation did.

This concept is part of Phase 41 (Workflow Design) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for workflow design.