01
A cue tells you what to notice.
It brings something useful into attention without asking you to hold everything in mind at once.
WHY CUEPOINT?
The name is
part of the idea.
It is not only about knowing what matters.
It is about having it available when it matters.
A SMALL SIGNAL AT THE RIGHT MOMENT
A cue point marks when something should happen.
The term appears in places where timing matters: performance, media, theatre and other settings where a signal helps someone know when to act.
That idea became useful for us for another reason.
People often already know a great deal about how they want to perform, teach, coach, lead, help or respond. The problem is that useful knowledge is not automatically present in attention at the moment it is needed.
WHY THE WORD FITS
CuePoint contains three ideas we care about.
02
A cue point tells you when.
The same idea can be useful at one moment and completely irrelevant at another. Timing matters.
03
A cue can bring you back.
Attention moves. A cue gives you a simple way to reconnect with what you had already decided mattered.
ATTENTION IS NOT STATIC
Knowing something
does not keep it in sight.
A mistake can move attention backwards. Worry can move it forwards. A reaction from someone else can pull it outward. Emotion can narrow it. Habit can take over without much thought at all.
None of that means the person lacked knowledge or had a bad plan. It means attention moved.
NOT A MEMORY SYSTEM
The goal is not to remember more.
CuePoint is not built to fill your head with instructions.
In many situations, more information is exactly what you do not need.
The point is to decide what deserves attention, reduce it to something usable and make it easier to return to when the situation becomes busy.
THE SAME IDEA IN FIVE WORDS
What matters.
When it matters.
The first part is about selection.
What is actually worth keeping in sight here?
The second part is about timing.
Can that thinking still reach you when the situation is actually happening?
THE QUESTIONS UNDERNEATH CUEPOINT
What. When. Return.
WHAT
What matters?
Which actions, behaviours or processes are worth keeping close in this situation?
WHEN
When does it matter?
Before the situation? In the middle of it? After a mistake? Between attempts? During reflection?
RETURN
What helps you come back?
A good cue does not need to contain everything. It only needs to reconnect you with the useful idea.
WHY "POINT" MATTERS TOO
A useful idea needs a point of contact with reality.
Insight by itself can be valuable.
But CuePoint is interested in the moment where an idea becomes behaviour.
The point before action. The point where attention starts to drift. The point where you can return. The point afterwards where experience can become useful learning.
AND SOMETIMES THE CUE COMES FROM SOMEONE ELSE
Good thinking
should travel.
A useful cue does not always need to be invented by the person using it.
Someone else may already have spent years discovering what is useful in the situation you are facing. A Framework can carry some of that thinking forward — while still allowing you to adapt it to your own language and context.
GO DEEPER
The name is only one part of the thinking.
NEXT
The Thinking Behind CuePoint
Why intention and action separate, why controllability matters and why CuePoint deliberately keeps the interface simple.
Coming next
ALSO
Why Frameworks?
Why CuePoint uses structured thinking rather than asking every user to begin with an empty page.
Coming next
CUEPOINT