Put it into action

In this course (and probably most others), maybe 10-20% of what you’ll learn will come from the content itself. The majority of the value will come from your applying the lessons in the real-world, working through the concepts with other people, and getting feedback on your ideas.

Motivational Journey Templates →

  • Remember, these are meant to make it easy for you to start breaking down motivation; they’re not the be-all and end-all. Feel free to use another tool (e.g. Figma), change or remix the layout, etc. The important thing is that you explore thinking about motivation systematically, not that you follow this exact setup.
  • You can do this with the population you’re trying to influence through you work, or even your own personal behavior. We recommend doing it with colleagues, if possible, though.
  • We’ll give in-depth feedback on our favorite template or application on this week’s Zoom call, which is an added incentive to put these ideas into action.


Work & Personal Experiments

We know it often won't be possible to launch an experiment and have data within a week. So when that’s not feasible, it can be useful to brainstorm experiments, predict which would be most effective, and game plan how you'd handle different results with your team.

  1. If we ran this experiment around motivation and got these results, what would we do?
  2. If the results were the opposite, what would we do then?


Additionally, you can do quick-and-dirty applications of these behavior change concepts in your own life around personal goals you might have. See what does and doesn’t work for you, and then think about what groups of people would respond the same vs. differently. The best behavioral scientists we know are often experimenting in their own lives, where they can get data much faster and shorten feedback cycles. ‍

Example: How can I experiment with motivating myself to do X using social/relatedness?
  • Commit to texting your phone’s total daily screen time or steps per day to a friend or family member each night for 1 week for accountability
  • Start a new physical activity with a friend or group
  • Promise to pay a colleague $20 each day you don't do a key habit
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Whatever you do, track it with a reminders app or spreadsheet and measure whether or not it works, and write a short post-mortem afterwards to deconstruct it. Feel free to use any concept from this week, or anything that relates to motivation.

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Zoom, Loom, and Slack

  • If there are any questions you have about this week’s lesson, ask them on Slack and they’ll be added to the list for Thursday’s Zoom call (or answered in the chat).
  • You can also drop us requests for feedback on any document, design, or personal/work experiment that relates to behavior change, and we'll do our best to respond with a short video. Feel free to send a Loom link yourself (~5 min or less).
  • You can request feedback that’s public or private, but we’ll prioritize public since it enables more people to learn from each others’ work.

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⭐ That's it for week 1. Happy experimenting!

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