My startup application isn't running on Ubuntu 22.04

On my personal computer, I'm having no success getting a custom application to run upon login on Ubuntu 22.04, so I've added some toy examples to 'Additional startup programs', and none of them seems to be in effect:

• sleep 120 && date > /tmp/startup.date
• sleep 120 && date > startup.date
• sleep 120 && date > /home/me/startup.date

I expect to find a file ~/startup.date after logging in as myself, but it is absent. What's the trick to getting these to work?

(I don't want something to run on every login, as .bashrc or .profile might do.)