Coaching practices for Is This Working

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Is This Working, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I’ve got my go-to ways of coping that feel justified and even comforting in the moment, but when I’m honest nothing is actually getting better
• I’ve tried this dreaming-and-planning thing in bits and pieces in my head and it never takes
• My work only pays off way down the line
• I keep seeing this listening therapy talked about online and I half want to just throw on some filtered music at home
• My feedback conversations end with the person nodding and saying "yeah, makes sense, got it"

Practices that may help

1. Ask the workability question
   Ask "is what I am doing working?" — not "is it right?" but whether it is moving you toward the life you want.
   Emotional Agility, Made Practical
2. The Feedback Sandwich: Why It Doesn’t Work and What to Do Instead
   The feedback sandwich (positive–negative–positive) is the dominant model for giving feedback in workplaces, but research and practitioner experience suggest it routinely fails: recipients either remember only the positive parts or dismiss the negative as softened insincerity. The practices below cover why it fails mechanistically and what specific alternatives are better supported.
3. Run the full WOOP sequence — not just parts of it
   WOOP works as a sequence; running only the wish and outcome steps (pure positive visualization) is not WOOP and may be counterproductive.
   Mental Contrasting and WOOP
4. Build in immediate feedback
   Set up the task so you can tell instantly whether you are on track.
   Flow Triggers, Made Practical
5. Understand what the SSP actually involves
   The SSP is a supervised, clinician-delivered audio intervention — not a playlist you run at home.
   The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP): What It Is and What the Evidence Shows
6. Close feedback by checking understanding, not agreement
   Ask "What did you take from that?" rather than "Do you agree?"
   The Feedback Sandwich: Why It Doesn’t Work and What to Do Instead
7. Build in immediate feedback
   Arrange to see right away whether each action is working.
   Flow: Engineering the State of Total Absorption
8. Measure how you feel, not just the scale
   Judge fasting by energy, focus, sleep, and your relationship with food — not weight alone.
   Intermittent Fasting, Honestly Explained
9. The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP): What It Is and What the Evidence Shows
   The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), developed by Stephen Porges, is a clinical audio intervention designed to retune the middle ear’s filtering of human vocal frequencies and, through that, activate the social engagement system and reduce autonomic dysregulation. It is delivered through headphones with acoustically filtered music, typically in five to ten sessions of 30–60 minutes, under the supervision of a trained clinician. Early-stage clinical trials and case-series reports are promising, particularly for autism spectrum and trauma populations, but the evidence base is small and not yet sufficient for firm efficacy conclusions. The polyvagal theory underlying its rationale is scientifically contested.
10. The Pomodoro Technique, Made Practical
    Francesco Cirillo’s method breaks work into fixed 25-minute focus sprints separated by short breaks, with a deliberate protocol for handling interruptions. The core levers — a single timed task, a hard stop, and structured rest — are grounded in attention and motivation research, though the specific 25/5 split is a heuristic rather than a clinically optimal dose.

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