Zergo finds what’s holding you in the state you’re in, then finds the smallest thing capable of breaking it
Not the smallest thing you’ll agree to. The smallest thing that actually moves you. Those are different optimisation problems, and the earlier version solved the wrong one — it sorted by how easy a step was to comply with, which is a reliable way to generate things that are easy and useless.
It never sees your CRM, your pipeline or a single name, and it isn’t trying to. It’s finished the moment you want to open that yourself.
The sequence
intake → reflect → deal → interrupt → verify → ask → eject
The intake is eight questions, and most of them aren’t really diagnostics — they’re interventions wearing a question mark. Is there actually a risk in it? deflates the thing by making you look straight at it. Have you done it successfully before? surfaces counter-evidence to your own case against yourself. Tell me about a time you were flying is an anchoring induction, and what you write gets kept and read back to you as an interrupt on a later day. Answering them honestly moves you before anything is prescribed.
Are you open to changing how you feel right now? is a consent gate. Say no and the session ends there without argument, because nothing downstream works on someone who isn’t up for it.
Reflect reads the barrier back with an evidence line assembled from your own answers — you’ve done it before and you’ve said there’s no risk in it at all, so this isn’t about the thing, it’s about the state you’re in. Disagree and it returns you to the feeling, not to the beginning.
The deal is deliberately tiny: time off, guilt-free, in exchange for coming back and opening the thing. Nothing more. A commitment made while you’re still flat feels enormous, which is precisely why that isn’t the moment to ask for anything real — and why signing it is gated behind a question rather than a button.
The ask comes after the flip, in the changed state, because that’s the only context in which it’s answerable. The work isn’t getting someone to say yes; it’s building the state in which saying yes is obvious. What you name there is what gets read back to you next time you open this.
When an interrupt fails
It does not offer you a harder one. More of what didn’t work won’t work — louder music doesn’t fix what music couldn’t. It switches to a different kind, and says so. After three different kinds have failed, the reading was probably wrong and it goes back and re-diagnoses rather than pushing on.
What gets remembered
One number per barrier-and-interrupt pair: did it flip you or not. After two goes it starts preferring what has worked on you for that barrier over what worked in theory. A refusal — "can’t do that one right now" — is not counted as a failure of the interrupt, because it isn’t one.
Barriers
Few, and worded the way you’d say it. You have to recognise yourself instantly.| You’d say | It says back | The contract |
|---|---|---|
| “I just can’t be arsed” | Flat and comfortable. Nothing’s actually wrong — you’ve just got no charge. | If we break flat, are you good to go and do it? |
| “I don’t fancy the knockback” | Wary. It’s not effort that’s the problem, it’s the risk of it going badly. | If it genuinely couldn’t go badly, would you go and do it? |
| “Too much on, can’t get a clean line” | Scattered. Too many half-things, none of them finished enough to start. | If there were one obvious thing and nothing else, would you go and do it? |
| “I don’t really believe in it today” | Unconvinced. You don’t rate what you’d be saying, so you’d rather not say it. | If you actually believed what you were taking out, would you go and do it? |
| “Nothing makes today the day” | Adrift. No hook, no reason, nothing that makes this morning different. | If you had one genuine reason, would you go and do it? |
Kinds
A failed interrupt is followed by a different kind, never a bigger one.| Kind | What it is | Interrupts |
|---|---|---|
| Movement | Travelling. The body going somewhere. | 2 |
| Sensory | Sound, cold, light. Cheapest change there is. | 1 |
| Physical | Direct to the body — exertion, breath, shock. | 2 |
| Environment | Being somewhere else. | 2 |
| Social | Another human voice, nothing riding on it. | 1 |
| Cognitive | Reframe, recall, write it down. | 6 |
Every interrupt
One move each, delivered as one instruction. Not a sequence of screens.| Interrupt | The ritual | Kind | Breaks | Takes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Drive personalised | Shoes on. Keys. Get in the car and put {song} on, properly loud. Drive {drive}. Five minutes, nothing to arrive at. Don’t think about work. That’s not what this is for. | Movement | flat, scattered, adrift | About five minutes |
| Cold Start | Cold water. Face, then the back of your neck, then your wrists. Don’t warm it up first. Then get properly dressed — shoes, not slippers. | Physical | flat, scattered | Two minutes |
| Ten and Out | Ten press-ups, right now, on the floor. Badly is completely fine. Then straight out the front door. Walk to the end of the road and back. Leave your phone behind. | Physical | flat, wary | Five minutes |
| The Track personalised | Headphones on. {song}. Loud enough that you can’t think over the top of it. Stand up for the whole thing and do nothing else while it plays. | Sensory | flat, adrift | One song |
| The Dead List | Bring to mind three people who’ve already told you no. They’re gone. You cannot lose them a second time. Pick one. That’s who you’re speaking to today. Whatever happens on that one, nothing is lost that you still had. | Cognitive | wary, adrift | Two minutes |
| Say the Worst | Out loud, in the room, say the worst thing they could say to you. Actually say it. Properly, not in your head. Now say what you’d reply. Notice how small it sounded once it was out in the air. | Cognitive | wary, unconvinced | One minute |
| Ring a Mate personalised | Ring {person}. Right now. No agenda, nothing to get out of it, don’t mention work. Five minutes of nothing in particular. | Social | wary, flat, adrift | Five minutes |
| Blank Sheet | Close every tab. All of them. Clear the desk — everything off it. One sheet of paper in front of you. Write down the one name that keeps coming back to you. That’s the list now. There is no other list. | Environment | scattered, adrift | Three minutes |
| Walk It Off | Out the door. No phone, no headphones. Walk for ten minutes. Don’t try to work anything out — by the time you’re back you’ll know which one it is. | Movement | scattered, flat | Ten minutes |
| Strip It | Take what you’d be offering and start removing things. The price. The commitment. The timeline. The paperwork. Keep going until you get to something you’d say yes to yourself. That’s what you’re taking out today. Not the other thing. | Cognitive | unconvinced | Five minutes |
| Ask, Don’t Sell | You’re not selling anything today. That’s off the table. Write down one question you genuinely don’t know the answer to. Something you’d actually like an operator’s opinion on. That question is the entire job now. | Cognitive | unconvinced, adrift | Three minutes |
| One Person | Think of one person you’ve actually met who’d find what you do genuinely interesting. Not a prospect. A person. That’s who you’re speaking to today. | Cognitive | adrift, scattered | Two minutes |
| Back Through the Door | Think of the last conversation that went really well. Get it properly — the room, the time of day, what you’d done in the hour before it. Now go and reproduce as much of that as you can, right now. | Cognitive | adrift, flat, wary | Three minutes |
| Out of Here | Leave. Take the laptop or don’t, doesn’t matter. Go to wherever you get coffee. Don’t open anything until you’re sitting down there. | Environment | flat, scattered, unconvinced | Fifteen minutes |
The personalised ones have blanks in them — your song, your person, your road. It asks once, inline, and keeps the answer. A generic interrupt is a worse interrupt: “that song” only does anything if it’s actually your song.