Keep entries specific, not global

One precise, specific good thing is worth more than five vague ones — train on detail, not volume.

Why it works

Global entries ("it was a good day") fail to update attentional bias because the brain cannot associate a vague label with a specific cue pattern to notice in the future. Specific entries ("my sister laughed at my joke during dinner") create a concrete template that the pattern-recognition system can match to future events, making those events more likely to be noticed and registered as positive.

How to do it

1. If you wrote a vague entry, ask: "What specific moment am I actually thinking of?"
2. Include at least one sensory or emotional detail — where you were, what was said, how it felt.
3. If you cannot get specific, the event probably was not genuinely good for you — skip it and find a different one.
4. Review entries from the past week; if they could have been written by anyone about any life, they are too vague.

Evidence

Attentional training research in CBT (particularly the Attentional Training Technique) shows that specific, concrete attention shifts have stronger effects on attentional bias than general or global ones. Applied to three good things, specificity is the mechanism, not a stylistic preference. (mechanistic)

The specificity principle is an extrapolation from attention-bias research; no study has directly compared specific vs. vague entries in the three-good-things format.

Common mistake

Thinking that writing more events compensates for vagueness — five generic entries provide less attentional training than one specific one.