The Weekly Circle #24
Welcome to the twenty-fourth episode of The Weekly Circle! A free Circles in Time newsletter released every Sunday.
Hey everybody,
This year, one of my intentions is to do a series of pressure tests on the Circles in Time framework—the framework being a guide for building personal, behaviourally-informed systems for solving recurring self-control challenges.
Currently, I can use the framework to set up practices, build new habits, and drop persisting ones with a reasonably high level of success. And importantly, I can so without exerting levels of stress that would put me at risk of overload, burnout, or worse.
Fortunately, many of the participants who have gone through the Circles in Time programmes have been successful too.
So it works. But the results aren’t outside of the ordinary yet.
My hunch is that there are practical paths to reaching healthy stable states where individuals are persistently performing significantly more effectively than the norm and doing so without exerting unsustainable strain.
In reaching and remaining at these stable states, individuals should come to enjoy prolonged healthspans; higher alertness and day-to-day energy levels, calmer minds, stronger relationships and greater levels of productivity, creativity, learning and focus.
I suspect that the greatest challenge will in be the deviation from existing social norms. Individuals will have to endure some discomfort, as the manner of lifestyle will likely appear as unfamiliar, weird or perhaps in even alien to some.
This very immediate, fleeting sort of discomfort is normal. We’re social creatures driven by emotions that can’t see the future. Yet, overcoming this discomfort is essential for moving to healthier stables states that provide more value over the long run.
If you can continue to fast when you feel hungry, keep running when you feel tired, write when you feel like watching Netflix, have a difficult conversation when it feels more pleasant to avoid it—then you can learn to surf the temporary burst of discomfort that comes with doing things differently to what is expected or acceptable at a particular point in time.
Like with all those other practices, things become familiar and easy a lot faster than you expect. And the more frequently you are able to successfully overcome these emotional hurdles, the more you see the fleeting, impermanent nature of the discomfort. A psychological flywheel emerges.
There are two quotes I often return to as primes for overcoming temporary discomfort. Neither of them hit the point head-on, but for some reason, their angles perforate my mind in ways that resonate. Perhaps you may find them helpful too.
“Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” ~ Jerzy Gregorek
“Act according to program and not according to mood.” ~ Henry Miller
I’ll start to share the details of my practices, personal systems and experiment protocols in a future post. In short, though, the practices will orientate around getting to significantly higher levels of physiological health (as measured by a range of biomarkers), as well as the quality and quantity of creative outputs I publish every week (aiming to produce a minimum of 30 pieces of content a week).
And of course, I must be able to do this while still improving my mental health and the quality of my relationships.
I’m looking for paths with compounding flywheels, not zero-sum trade-offs.
NEW COMMUNITY FEATURE: CHALLENGES
For the bold and curious members of the Circles in Time community, I have created a feature on the community platform called ‘Challenges’. This is where I will be sharing the practices and protocols discussed above. Every month, I will share a new challenge and the science behind why I think it is worth exploring.
Community members can access the Challenges space here.
If you are a frequent reader of The Weekly Circle and not yet part of the Circles in Time community, I would love to have you on board.
THE ESSENTIALS PROGRAMME
NEXT PROGRAMME STARTS ON 21 JAN | COST: $150 | LEARN MORE HERE
This week I launched the next round of the Circles in Time Essentials programme!
Running this course still seems to bring me as much energy and excitement as the first time I ran it.
There are probably many reasons for this, but chief among them is definitely the social aspect. In a world where so much content is static or asynchronous, there is something so refreshing and meaningful about a live cohort moving along a learning path together.
If you would like to join the next cohort, have a look at the details below.
Key Details:
WHAT IS IT?
A timezone-friendly cohort-based online programme that runs over the course of 10 days. The programme includes two live workshops, exclusive templates, articles, tutorials, video lectures and direct personalised feedback.WHEN IS IT?
21 Jan - 30 January (+ a free months access to the Circles in Time Community starting on the 1st of February)WHO IS IT FOR?
Anyone interested in learning how to build personal systems informed by behavioural science, systems thinking and self-experimentation.HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?
150$ per participants (80$ for community members and past participants who would like to do a refresher)
WORLD VIEWS
THE IDEAS I CIRCLED AROUND THIS WEEK
MISTRUTH CAN SET YOU FREE
In this essay, Jeremy Koloski explores useful fictions and the power of false belief. An especially interesting and relevant segment explores this idea within the context of willpower. The author discusses studies that show how simply believing you have infinite willpower slows the rate of depletion, enhancing self-control in the process. (Essay)EXERCISE & OUR EVOLUTIONARY PAST
Michael Shermer has a conversation with Daniel Lieberman about his new book, Exercised. Lieberman’s perspective is refreshing and his knowledge of our evolutionary heritage deep. There is a lot I am taking away from their discussion, and will likely grab a copy of Lieberman’s new book in the coming weeks. (Podcast)OPEN AI ANNOUNCES THE RELEASE OF DALL·E
Okay, so this is slightly outside of my typical scope, but because of the second and third-order effects this innovation will likely have on creators and the passion economy, I thought it would be worth sharing. Open AI has launched a neural network that creates images from natural language text captions. You describe a scene, and the software creates the image! Video and audio next? (Essay)HABITS, SOCIAL MEDIA & BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
I am a huge fan of Wendy Wood. In this interview with Austin Perlmutter, Wood dives in the neurological details for habit formation, discusses how rewards work, the power of context and taking advantage of changing circumstances. Perlmutter’s medical background and technical knowledge on the subject makes this one of the best podcast conversations I have heard with Wendy Wood so far. (Podcast)
WISE WORDS
THE QUOTES I CIRCLED AROUND THIS WEEK
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” ~ Aldous Huxley
"Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.” ~ Ingvar Kamprad
“What interests me is being able to love the world, not scorn it, not to hate it, but to look at it and myself and all human beings with love and admiration and reverence.” ~ Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
“The biggest generator of long term results is learning to do things when you don't feel like doing them. If you let excuses or emotion drive behavior, you're cheating yourself. Put aside the excuses and start doing what you need to do.” ~ Shane Parrish
SOMETHING TO PART WITH
Starting your day with a large dose of sugar is like intentionally deciding to play life on hard mode. Recognise that many breakfast products are nothing more than disguised dessert. Avoid them when you can.
Until next week,
Take care,
David
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