Welcome to Circles in Time [Public Pilot]
A Self-applied Behavioural Science Development Programme
Welcome to the Circles in Time Public Pilot Programme
Over the past six months, I have developed a systematic framework to help individuals apply behavioural science learnings to their personal and professional lives.
The need for this framework arose from 1) an observed growing interest in behavioural science as a toolkit for self-development, 2) an increase in the amount of literature and digital tools being developed to service this need 3) no practical paths for integrating these insights and tools in a way that sync and stick effectively.
The framework leverages methods, evidence-based insights and emerging literature on self-deployed interventions, as well as core ideas from circular systems theory and digital self-tracking technologies.
To understand the practical effectiveness of the framework, a development programme was built to share the core ideas of the framework, practice implementing the relevant activities and create a community space for social learning and iteration.
Phase 1: The Private Pilot Programme [Feb & March 2020]
Size: 22 participants
Duration: 6 weeks
Structure: 2 workshops then 4 weeks of self-experimentation with light-touch weekly engagements
Touchpoints: Zoom / Notion / Substack / WhatsApp
Feedback from the private pilot was positive, hinting at the potential of the framework and the development programme that accompanied it.
Phase 2: The Public Pilot Programme [June & July 2020]
Size: 60 participants [still spots available]
Duration: 8 weeks
Structure: 4 workshops then 4 weeks of self-experimentation with light-touch weekly engagements (starting in the first week of June)
Touchpoints: Zoom / Notion / Substack / WhatsApp / Discord
Self-tracking Tools: Participants will be exposed to a set of active and passive digital self-tracking tools, relevant to their particular challenges.
Target Groups for the public pilot:
Behavioural practitioners, researchers and enthusiasts (globally)
Why them?
1 ) A likely awareness of cognitive biases (decision and judgement literature)
2) A likely appreciation for self-control challenges and the limits of willpower
3) There is additional value to be gained if one is working with behavioural science professionally (applying behavioural science to yourself, helps build better intuitions around how to solve the behavioural challenges of others)
Interested in participating? Subscribe below and I will send you more info directly.
What will you Gain from Participating in the Programme?
Learning Outcomes
You will be introduced to the emerging self-applied behavioural science landscape and where it fits in with behavioural science more broadly.
You will explore the relationships between your everyday actions and the longer-term implications on your health, wealth, growth and the environment.
You will learn about circular systems theory, as a framework for integrating self-applied behavioural science into your personal life.
You will learn about the psychology of goal setting, its limitations and how to build systems around your daily, weekly and monthly routines.
You will learn about habit formation, how habits operate neurobiologically and the situational factors required to get them up and running.
You will learn how to select behavioural challenges worth focusing on, commonly made prioritisation mistakes and measuring how they affect your health.
You will explore the different ways in which you can track yourself, the costs and benefits of various approaches and how to set these tracking systems up securely.
You will learn about the different types of self-deployed interventions, and how to effectively set them up for yourself.
You will learn about self-experimentation as a tool for understanding yourself, your responses and using experiments to find activities and effective interventions that are suitable for your unique situation and dynamics.
Practical Outputs you will Leave With:
You will have access to all the content and supporting resources engaged made available during the programme.
You will have fully mapped out a set of prioritised personal activities across six different dimensions of health.
You will have customised templates of your daily, weekly and monthly circular systems and integrating these systems into your personal and professional life.
You will have a fully designed intervention blueprint around one prioritised activity (or routine) that you intend to, start, stop, move towards or away from.
You will have access to a curated list of validated self-tracking tools, that you can use to measure different physiological, behavioural, attentional variables.
You will have set up, launched and examined one personal experiment, the template of which you can use and adapt for future self-focused experiments.
You will join a quietly growing online community of individuals who are taking self-applied behavioural science seriously.
Programme Content Outline
Part 1: Understanding the Challenge
The Potential of Self-applied Behavioural Science & Current Limitations [Week 1 Workshop]
The Consequences of Everyday Activities
Physical & Mental Health
Family & Friends
Personal & Professional Development
Finances & the Environment
The Typical Tools for Change
Information Access & Attention Allocation
Biased Beliefs, Judgements & Decisions
Knowledge & The Gap between Intention & Action
Willpower and when it Wanes
Saved by Others of the Third Kind
Government Policy, Hard & Soft
Companies, and their Business Models
The Rise of Motivational Spaces, Good & Bad
The Dark Side: Ludic Loops, Dark Patterns & Sludge
Self-Applied Behavioural Science
The Current Landscape
Where it Fails & Where it may Succeed
Satisfying all the Many Selves
Implementation Difficulties
Part 2: A Path to Self-Applied Behavioural Science
Setting up Circular Systems: An Approach to Implementation [Week 2 Workshop]
Thinking in Circular Systems
The Circular Systems around Us
The Circulars Systems between Us
The Circular Systems within Us
A World of Non-linear Circular Systems
Your Circles in Time: A Practical Guide
Slow Moving Circles in Time
Your Daily Circle & Default Settings
Goals, Systems & Habits
The Secret Powers of Goal Setting, and its Limitations
Your Futureself as a Stranger from a Foreign Land
Managing Multiple Selves with Many Goals
Syncing up your Systems & Goals
Habit Formation, Automation & Cognitive Delegation
The Pro & Cons of Time-anchored System Setting
Goal Orientation & Action Prioritisation
Primary Outcomes & Proximate Measures
Complexity, Interaction Effects & Externalities
An Introduction to the Dimensions of Health Framework
An Evidence-based Approach to System Selection
Talismans & Mimetic Desire
Track Yourself
Active & Passive Digital Self-trackers
Experience Sampling your Way through the Day
Self-reflection & Anecdata Collection
Multi-modal Data Analysis, Applied to Self
Part 3: Building a Behavioural Scaffolding
Understanding the Context & Self-Deploying Interventions [Week 3 Workshop]
Set your Scenario
Mapping the relevant Action Paths
Mapping Situational Features (Physical, Social, Psychological)
Pre-mortems & Failure Mitigation Strategies
Self-Deployed Cognitive Interventions
Overview of Cognitive Interventions
Examples of Cognitive Interventions in Practice
Boundary Conditions to Be Aware Of
Self-Deployed Situational Interventions
Overview of Situational Interventions
Examples of Situational Interventions in Practice
Boundary Conditions to Be Aware Of
Intervention Selection & Setup
Framework for Intervention Selection
Intervention Building & Setup Planning
Combining Interventions, the Pros & Cons
Part 4: Self-Experimentation
Getting Serious about Self-experimentation and How to Use It [Week 4 Workshop]
An Introduction to Self-Experimentation
The Interesting & Slightly Obscure History of Self-experimentation
Self-experimentation within the Context of Applied Behavioural Science
The Experimenter & The Doer (A Tale of Two Selves)
Expectation Issues & The Power of Placebos
Mapping the Different forms of Self-experimentation
Self-Experiment Design
What Success Looks Like, & Failure Too
Scaling Across Time
Hypothesing your Future Self
Mapping Multiple Measures
Build your First Experiment
Introduction to the Self-experimentation Template
Setting up a Four Week Experiment on Yourself
Build, Tinker & Play, Settle in, Reflect & Decide
Buddying up with a Fellow Self-experimenter
This will be followed by 4 weekly virtual group meetings to check-in on your experiments and share your experiences with others on the programme.
Upon completion of the programme, you will be added to an online community space, for ongoing engagement and social learning around the topic.
Interested in participating? Subscribe below and I will send you more info directly.