How You Can Benefit from the Programme
Three ways you are likely to gain value from the Circles in Time programme
Hello everyone,
We are three days away from kicking off the Circles in Time pilot programme. I’m excited! I hope you are too.
In terms of orientation, I thought it would be useful to share some of the main benefits you can expect to get out of the programme.
I’m sure there will be unintended value created but based on the programme’s purpose (intentions behind its design) and key learnings that emerged from the private pilot feedback, here are three core benefits you should have on your radar.
1. Start, stop and stick to actions
The programme should significantly improve your ability to set up situations and build mental representations which enable you to consistently perform activities that support you over the long run.
At its roots, the purpose of the programme is self-improvement through long-run behaviour change. If you’re not more likely to act in ways that align with your health or development goals, intentions and aspirations, we have failed.
In support of this objective, the insights, tools and systems provided in the programme should become more comfortable to use with time and apply to a widening range of self-control challenges through practice.
2. Learn what works for you
One of the most exciting benefits that the self-applied behavioural approach promises to provide is first-hand knowledge about what works for you. We’re quickly moving from a world of one-size-fits-all recommendations to custom-made solutions that are tailored to each of our unique idiosyncrasies, whether personal or situational. Self-applied behavioural science is very much a part of this larger trend in epistemology.
Two tools make the type of self-knowledge required for this level of tailoring possible. One is the growing capabilities of self-tracking devices that enable individuals to learn about their unique physiological and behavioural dynamics. The second is self-experimentation, which empower individuals to quickly figure out what strategies, activities and interventions are working for them, in ways that avoid the cognitive biases and mental glitches that come with leaning too heavily on manual retrospection.
3. Benefit professionally from personal practice
An indirect and no-less significant benefit is how the programme should improve your ability to apply behavioural science in the work you do professionally. Whether as a researcher or practitioner; publicly-focused or operating in the private sector; working in product development or communication design, the opportunity to gain value here doesn’t seem limited.
How? The first-person experience you will gain through narrowly prioritising a specific action, understanding the key barriers, building interventions and designing experiments will expose you to the practicalities of behavioural science in ways that are difficult to get from books, papers or deploying interventions to citizens or consumers in distant locations.
To be a great behavioural researcher or practitioner, you need to make the science a way of life. The theoretical models, design processes, elegant mnemonics, sophisticated R packages, refined methodologies and cognition codexes will only get you so far.
Dan Ariely’s self-deployed medicine injection routine, Katy Milkmen’s personal temptation bundles and Richard Thaler’s cashew constraints are all good examples of the best in the field living behavioural science, rather than just researching and practicing it professionally.
Last thing
I know I’ve been badgering, but if you haven’t chosen a workshop timeslot yet, please do so by clicking on the survey link below. It’s only four questions and shouldn’t take longer than 2 minutes. Here’s a simple GMT timezone converter if you need one.
Take care,
David