The Weekly Circle #27
Welcome to the twenty-seventh episode of The Weekly Circle! A free Circles in Time newsletter released every Sunday.
Hey everybody,
I moved into my new home this week!
This is exciting for me on several levels,, but as an applied behavioural scientist, my mind quickly jumps to how this move may affect my existing habits.
As Wendy Wood has found ~
“About 43 percent of what people do every day is repeated in the same context, usually while they are thinking about something else.”
Moving into a new house is like shaking the habitual snowglobe.
A temporary window of heightened malleability opens up, allowing for much larger shifts in my everyday routines and practices than I am typically capable of.
My intention is to take advantage of this fresh start, by putting in place new practices that support my goals, values and aspirations, while letting go of those that don’t.
CIRCLES IN TIME COMMUNITY UPDATE
♾ 53/150 Active Members | ✋ 82 Public Pledges
I’ll be sharing a first draft of the community manifesto with the all existing members next week. The note will outline the community’s purpose, and layout the values, virtues and practices that I think will make for a thriving and valuable community experience, that persists over the long run.
Share your Pledge for February
It is also the first of February tomorrow! Please share your behavioural goal for the month in the Pledges space. I’ll add some feedback and link members who have explored a similar practice in the past.
If you would like to join the community, you can sign up and get one-month free access to the platform and see if the space is a good fit for you.
SAMPLE OF ONE PODCAST
Katelyn Stenger and I explore the intersection of behavioural science and complex adaptive systems, critical transitions, polycentrism, the benefits of seeing ourselves as systems, and listening to our bodies.
🎧 Listen on Spotify here | 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts here
WORLD VIEWS
THE IDEAS I CIRCLED AROUND THIS WEEK
CHANGING BEHAVIOUR DURING A PANDEMIC
In this article, Katy Milkman and Jay Van Bavel share four lessons they learnt about behavioural change during a pandemic. These lessons include understanding the relationship between political identity and public health, how to frame vaccine communications, the influence of personal experience with Covid and the role of mega-studies.
THE PROBLEM WITH SEEING OURSELVES AS PREDICTION MACHINES
“Human beings aren’t pieces of technology, no matter how sophisticated. But by talking about ourselves as such, we acquiesce to the corporations and governments that decide to treat us this way. When the seers of predictive processing hail prediction as the brain’s defining achievement, they risk giving groundless credibility to the systems that automate that act – assigning the patina of intelligence to artificial predictors, no matter how crude or harmful or self-fulfilling their forecasts.”
USING SELF-NUDGING TO MAKE BETTER CHOICES
One paper I always recommend to participants who join my Circles in Time Essentials programmes is Ralph Hertwig and Samuli Reijula’s Self-Nudging & The Citizen Choice Architect. Thanks to Fred Dorsimont for pointing me to this (link in title above) useful summary of their great paper.
OTHER NOTEWORTHY MENTIONS:
The Downside of Disgust, on the Freakonomics Podcast
The Practices and Productivity Tools of Lux Capital founder, Josh Wolfe
Using Smart Phone Data to Track Mental Health by Digital Health Expert Simon D’Alfonso
WISE WORDS
THE QUOTES I CIRCLED AROUND THIS WEEK
“Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth.” ~ Albert Camus
“Those who seek to accomplish the immediate without consideration to the ultimate, move progressively from one crisis to another.” ~ Shane Parrish
“To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind himself.” ~ Seneca
“What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.” ~ Henry Louis Mencken
“Action creates information.” ~ Brian Armstrong
SOMETHING TO PART WITH
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” - Last week was one of those weeks for the internet.
Until next week,
Take care,
David
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