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Best Self-Development Method
What requirements should best method satisfy?
Wojciech Rembelski
October 08, 2023
In the previous post, I shared my story about Gamified Self-Development. In this article, I will take a different approach and analyze it from a more analytical perspective. I aim to break down the essential elements that the method should include in order to meet the improvement goals.
BJ Fogg Human Behavior Model
As a starting point let me take a simple Human Behavior Model formulated by BJ Fogg.
He claims that the behavior will occur if there is a sufficient level of motivation, ability, and a prompt. At its core, a self-development method must:
remind individuals to take a desired action (Prompt),
generate enough motivation for individuals to at least attempt the desired action (Motivation),
request that individuals perform a desired action within their capabilities (Ability).
Prompt - Trigger - Reminder - Conditioning
The self-development method should provide an effective reminder to take action. In most cases, this is relatively straightforward. It can be accomplished through manual methods, such as placing an object in plain sight as a reminder, or through digital means, such as notifications.
Sometimes it’s more complicated because the desired action needs to happen under some specified, external trigger event. In such cases the self-development method should somehow accelerate the process of learning so the person will start to have desired behavior under a given prompt after the smallest number of repetitions.
Motivation - Gamification - Human Focused Design
Relation of Motivation to Gamification
Gamification is about using game techniques in non-gaming contexts. By adding game techniques to a self-development method, we add sources of motivation for a player that are lacking or are too weak otherwise.
Unfortunately, the term "gamification" often carries negative connotations for many individuals, as it is often associated with trivial entertainment for children and not considered suitable for more serious matters.
Yu-kai Chou, an expert in gamification, coined a new term for gamification: Human-Focused Design, which eliminates the negative connotations associated with "nonseriousness."
Regardless of the name, incorporating gamification into self-development yields significant benefits. Why? Because it enhances the overall stability of self-development systems, safeguarding them against potential disruptions. Additionally, it greatly enhances the overall enjoyment of the experience.
Returning to the main discussion, the self-development method must generate sufficient motivation to carry out a desired action.
Core Drives
There are quite a few types of techniques that drives humans to do actions. The Octalysis Framework defines 8 Core Drives - sources of human motivation:
Epic Meaning & Calling
Development & Accomplisment
Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
Ownership & Possesion
Social Influence & Relatedness
Scarcity & Impatience
Unpredicibility & Curiosity
Loss & Avoidance
In order to generate a strong and lasting motivation the combination of the above core drives needs to be used.
Gamified Self-Development method needs to be equipped in game techniques that will drive the person to do desired actions.
Ability - Systems - Function Focused Design
Gamified Self-Development System should push do do actions that the person is able to do.
The problem is that what is difficult enough changes over time - person constantly makes a progress so the difficulty bar should be higher and higher.
System and Processes
At a fundamental and universal level, all actions that humans can perform form a system. A system comprises processes.
Example
Your lifestyle can be considered as a one huge process. It consists with many subprocesses: diet, exercises, sleep etc. Diet subprocess consists of subsubprocesses: what you eat on breakfast, how you prepare meals for dinner etc.
Improvement can happen by:
Introducing a new, desired process.
Transforming an existing process (scaling or increasing complexity).
Terminate an undesired process (or at least weakening).
A highly effective approach to self-development should assist in all three of these stages.
Launching new Processes to Life
That’s the simple part. Small-Steps Approach method is enough to introduce a new process. Just one needs to make sure that the first, initial steps are very small.
Sometimes, with some luck, introducing small perpetual action (habit) can lead to exponential results. James Clear wrote a bestseller called Atomic Habits. Why this name? Because “atomic” is a metaphore for both small and nuclear.
Why I treat this part as simple? Because there are many methods how this can be achieved, most notably - just a notebook and a pen.
Example
John wants to start exercising. He starts by doing one push-up per day.
He launched an exercising process.
Transforming existing Processes
Here we step into a much more difficult topic: into scaling and increasing the complexity of activities.
Some of the most important aspects are:
Increasing Labour (time spend on activity).
Increasing Performance.
Improving Quality.
Various types of optimization (time, money, effort etc.).
Example
John wants to move forward with his exercising process. What are some of his options? He can increase labour (increase number of repetitions). Another possibility is to increase frequency (2 push-up session per day). He can also improve quality (do push-ups more carefully, without shortenting exercise or cheating) and this is not the whole list of thinghs he can do to scale/increase complexity of the process.
The huge problem that person faces trying to scale his process is the complexity. He/she needs to address the following issues:
Decision Problem: in what direction go with a process. More work? Better work? Optimization?
Difficulty Problem: is the action too easy so the progress is slower than it could be? Or too difficult which can lead to burn-out?
Conflicts Problem: what if two desired processes conflicts with each other? Which one is more important?
Gamified Self-Development method should reduce this complexity as much as possible.
Terminate undesired Processes
An important aspect of improvement can be to break bad habits, overcome addictions, or generally modify wrong behavior in specific situations.
This can be a daunting problem, perhaps the most difficult aspect of personal growth - overcoming certain behaviors that hinder progress in specific areas or in all aspects of life. I will revisit this topic in future articles.
Conclusion
To sum up a great self-development method should contain:
Prompts to remind person to do desired actions.
Techniques known from games to boost motivation.
Manage introducing and scaling processes.
Provide a help in managing conflicts between different life’s processes.
Help in quitting undesired processes.
The question that arises is: Is it even possible to create a method/system that can encompass and handle such a multitude of requirements?
I will address this topic in a future post.