The Weekly Circle #4
Welcome to the fourth episode of The Weekly Circle. A free Circles in Time newsletter released every Sunday.
Hey everybody,
I am thinking a lot about online community building at the moment. It is an exciting space, with so many different initiatives emerging. The question I keep coming back to, however, is this ~ How might online community spaces facilitate long term behaviour change?
In service of answering this question, I will share my learnings about community building, behaviour change and personal system design, as frequently as I can here.
Some Early Learnings from the Circles in Time Programmes
The Popularity of Different Behaviour-based Goals
One interesting data piece I am paying attention is the accumulating popularity of different behaviour-based goals in the Circles of Time programmes and workshops I am running. The sample size is still small (n=42), but with time it will be interesting to analyse the popularity dynamics of different goals. Practically speaking, having sound feedback systems tracking goal popularity also allows me, curators and creators to adjust the content sharing accordingly.
Some other interesting insights:
Close to 85% of the behaviour-based goals are set to operate at a daily frequency, during the week (i.e. excluding Saturday and Sunday).
Around 70% of the behaviour-based goals are familiar activities that the participants have tried to perform in the past. The rest were entirely new activities that participants hadn’t tried before.
It was also satisfying to see that, although everyone tripped up now and then, all the participants who completed the programme had a success rate of between 60 - 90% at the end of their one-month personal experiments.
To be clear, it is too early to make any convincing assertions. None the less the potential of the initiative is slowly and quietly revealing itself. I’ll share more insights soon.
Secure your spot for next Circles in Time Programme
There are still some seats available for the next Circles in Time Programme that kicks off on the 24th of August! If you’re interested, please sign up this week!
I also just wanted to give a BIG shoutout to everyone who has spread the word this week. I really appreciate it. Here is some of the kindness the programme has gotten:
WORLD VIEWS
Here are the ideas I’ve been circling around this week.
THE WORLD AROUND US
Navigating an Information-rich World
It is becoming very apparent to me that in our information-rich world, knowing what to ignore is a sort of superpower.
Growing up, I was surrounded by memes like “knowledge is power”, or “keep your sources close”. These ideas installed an assumption that knowledge acquisition was vital for success. I still believe knowledge is important. But.. in a world where all knowledge is accessible, that isn’t enough, especially when it’s hidden amongst a haystack of noisy, superfluous information and fake news.
The game has changed. There are new rules. So how do we navigate?
One way is to shift our attention from ‘what’ we think to ‘how’ we think. By focusing more on the mental habits, models and lenses that we use to process information, it becomes easier to discern the dogma disguised as truth, the faulty assumptions that might lead us astray, and incrementally build a more and more realistic picture of the world we currently occupy. One practical starting point here is with the mental model literature, and there is a lot of it. One safe jumping-off point is Shane Parrish’s work at Farnam Street. He is also building out a book series called The Great Mental Models that I strongly recommend.
THE WORLD BETWEEN US
Quake Books & Elephants in the Brain
Tyler Cowen has this excellent term he often uses called ‘quake books’. These are books that significantly change your outlook on life. One such book that fits into the quake category for me is Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler’s book, ‘The Elephant in the Brain’. There are so many interesting insights about human nature hidden within its pages. Not only does it show how our social nature is at the very heart of everything we do, but also why we struggle so much to recognise this in daily life. It is a fascinating exploration of the matrix that is the social world of humans.
I probably wasn’t quite ready to pull back this particular curtain when I first read it, but looking back, I’m so glad I did. It has given me clarity on issues so many seem to be confused by. Hopefully, the insights will be as helpful for you.
For those who don’t have time to read the book, Paras Chopra has done an excellent job of summarising the key ideas in a blogpost you can access here.
THE WORLD WITHIN US
Mapping your Genome
The first human genome apparently required around $2.7 Billion to map and took 15 years to complete. Today it will cost you less than $1000 and the results sent to you via email within a few weeks.
This has made me curious to learn more about the human genome, what it can tell us about ourselves, the mapping process and from a pragmatic perspective, what we can do with the results. I’m still in the early stages of my personal research project here, but for those who are interested, here are a few books I’ve come across that can help you wrap your head around this exciting space:
She Has Her Mother’s Laugh - Carl Zimmer
Blueprint - Robert Plomin
Genome - Matt Ridley
The Gene - Siddhartha Mukherjee
A Crack in Creation - Jennifer Doudna
WISE WORDS
The quotes I’ve been circling around this week
HELPFUL REFLECTIONS
"A difficult lesson to learn: Your most persistent distractions will seem justified to you." ~ James Clear
If you pay lots of attention to where boundaries are, you pay less attention to complete pictures.” ~ Robert Sapolsky
“Your worldview is your world.” ~ Naval Ravikant
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung
"Sometimes the 'shoulds' do not work because the life one is living runs crosswise to the grain of one’s soul." ~ Parker Palmer
“The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” ~ Tim Ferris
“Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.” ~ Luis Borges
“Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” ~ Thomas Merton
THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
“I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event. I just don’t know what that event will be.” ~ Nassim Taleb
“The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet” ~ William Gibson
“Despite knowing the journey and where it leads, I embrace it. And I welcome every moment.” ~ Ted Chiang
“The future influences the present just as much as the past.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
ON GETTING OUT INTO NATURE
“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” ~ John Muir
“And so I go to the woods. As I go in under the trees, dependably, almost at once, and by nothing I do, things fall into place. I enter an order that does not exist outside, in human spaces… I am less important than I thought. I rejoice in that.” ~ Wendell Berry
COMMUNITY
We had the first set of Circles in Time Members Workshops this weekend. It was such a pleasure to bring together the two cohorts that have been through the programme so far - to connect, learn from one another, and each create a new personal system to start testing.
The majority of the participants worked on habit-forming systems. I was, however, also happy to see some participants explore broader circles such as weekly review sessions and knowledge management routines. These activities aren’t frequent enough to become automatic, meaning the sorts of interventions used for habit formation are less reliable. They present a different kind of challenge and one that I look forward to supporting the members with as the work out effective systems here.
SOMETHING TO PART WITH
Take care,
David