FAQ

Tips for getting the most Out Of The Event


Prep your environment
  • Reduce any distractions in your physical environment (put your phone on silent, log out of Facebook, situate yourself in a quiet and comfortable space, etc).
  • Remember to take breaks! You can follow along with the break schedule we’ll be using (25 minutes on, 5 minutes off), or set your own. Feel free to take longer breaks for food, etc.
Do you have extra time before the workshop starts?
  • If so, take a look over the framework and how the content is structured.
  • Also, check out the coaches page, to see if someone’s area of interest is particularly well-matched to a question you have (like procrastination, mindfulness, relationships, etc).
Use your coaching channel
  • Each participant will create a private coaching channel on the Slack workspace, and invite all the coaches to it. (See instructions in the #general channel during the event.) All of the coaches can see it, but it’s not visible to other participants.
  • If you feel stuck, have questions, want suggestions on where to start or what to try next, or anything else—we encourage you to reach out! That’s why we’re here, because we enjoy helping folks figure things out.
  • There are many different ways to use your channel, and they’re all fine:
    • Some people end up with a couple thousand words in their channel, and some people exchange just a few messages.
    • Some people end up talking with many different coaches and getting a lot perspectives, and others might get into a great flow with one or two coaches and go deep into an issue.
  • A few tips for using your channel: you can type “@” in front of a coach’s name to draw our attention with a notification. (You can also type @channel to notify all of us at once.) We’re interacting with many participants, so this is a great way to make sure we see your question. Here’s an example:
Suggestions for structuring your time
  • If you work better with structure, stick to the schedule, watch all the presentations, and try to complete the recommended activity for each section of the toolkit.
  • If you like being highly self-directed or have particular things you want to focus on more than others, don’t be afraid to “choose your own adventure” and dive into whatever is most valuable to you.
  • Use your results from the self-assessment survey to identify the sections of the handbook that are the highest priority for you, and make sure to check those out. If you’re having trouble finding your results, search your inbox for [email protected], or redo your self-assessment.
Where to keep your exercises?

Many of the activities in this workshop include some suggestion to write things down, make diagrams of how things connect, or arrange things in tables or spreadsheets. The best formats will vary from person to person, depending on how you already organize your thoughts and information. Some example ideas:

  • Make a folder in Google Drive, and make separate Google Docs or Sheets for each exercise
  • Write all your exercises and notes in one long document (in Word, Pages, Google Docs, etc.)
  • If you think better using paper, go for it! Examples:
    • Narrow down intentions by writing them on post-its and rearranging them into categories
    • Make a paper wall chart to track something that happens in a specific location
  • Use different tools and systems for specific things. Examples:
    • Workflowy is a great way to plan out and keep track of intentions and ideas with lots of subcomponents.
  • (If you have a system that works well for you, let us know! We’d love to hear it.)
After the workshop
  • Relax—you can always come back to the material later on. We’ll keep the website available indefinitely. 😄
  • Check out the Community of Practice for an ongoing Slack workspace and online meetups.

Example Workshop flow

The workshop has 4 modules, and each module has 3 components.

  1. Choose a module to start (by default, Module 1)
  2. Read module introduction.
  3. Open a sub-module to start working with (by default sub-module 1).
  4. Choose an outcome to work towards (by default the recommended outcome for that sub-module).
  5. Choose an activity to try (by default the recommended activity for that sub-module).
  6. Do the activity, then ask yourself “have I completed the outcome?”
    If the outcome’s not complete, go back to the sub-module, choose another activity (go to Step 5).
    If the outcome is completed, go on to the next sub-module. If all sub-modules are complete, go to the next module (go to step 2).

For example, this might look like:

  1. Starting with Module 1.
  2. Read the module introduction.
  3. Start working with the first sub-module, Dreaming Big.
  4. Work towards the recommended outcome: You have a list of dreams or an articulation of a purpose, vision or values that matter deeply to you.
  5. Try the recommended activity, the Dream List
  6. Do the activity, then ask yourself “have I made a list of dreams or an articulation of a purpose, vision or values that matters deeply to me?”
    If not, go back to Dreaming Big (1.1) and choose another activity – maybe Ideal Day
    If yes, go on to Context Orientation (1.2).

Here’s an example schedule, of our standard workshop flow:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is workshop-flow.png

We also invite you to choose your own path, and use these five hours in whatever way is best! Here are some alternate workshop flows:

Common Challenges

A list of some of the most common challenges that participants of previous workshops have come across, along with our response for how to handle them:

Participant asks:

I just picked four intentions from my dream list and they all turned out to revolve around academics/career. I wonder if that’s okay? On the one hand there are definitely other areas of my life that are important to me. On the other, in the past year I’ve noticed that a lot of times when I wanted to work on something for my academics I got distracted thinking about some family issue or other responsibility.

Our response:

One of the keys to ‘Choosing and Selecting’ is being able to develop a set of intentions which reflect your preferences for depth (how deep into a particular area of your life do you want to invest?) and breadth (to what extent do you want to be investing in many different parts of yourself?). At different points in your life you might focus more on depth or on breadth. Sometimes it can be useful to focus on depth to make headway in an area that is underdeveloped or hard to gain momentum in. If you are going to focus on depth you might ask yourself how to ensure that you minimize any negative long term consequences to the other areas of your life (for example, informing friends that for the next 3 months you are going to be working intensely and will have less time to spend together, and that that isn’t a reflection of how much you care about them).

If you want to focus on some amount of breadth, we recommend asking yourself whether the areas you want to attend to can be represented by an intention. This helps to remove the conflict between “intentions” and “other things I care about”, and instead enables you to have a flexible set of different kinds of intentions that you can proactively choose how to balance. Also, if you keep thinking about other things, this set-up helps you to either a) more consistently choose to put less time and energy into them, or b) explicitly incorporate them into your intentions and begin attending to them.

The main issue I experience, apart from procrastination, is having too many intentions and consequently feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work I have. This also leads to procrastinating with some intentions and working on the most entertaining ones.

Our response

For most people we recommend to have between 3 and 7 focused areas of intention, and to consider prioritizing them. This might force you to cut out things you previously spent time on which can be painful, but ultimately your time and energy is limited and you are better off focusing on what you can reasonably accomplish than spreading your effort too thinly.

Participant Says

I am still very involved in the university lab where I obtained my undergraduate degree. I use the lab as a coworking space, spend time with people in the community, and help out on a number of projects when they ask for help. I get value from it… but if I am being really honest, it doesn’t make the cut for my top intentions. What do I do about this?

Our response

You have a limited amount of time and energy and want to put it towards the most valuable things you can. If you are clear that this commitment isn’t your priority, it can be really helpful to ask yourself what the underlying values are that you are getting from the commitment, and what other ways you might be able to obtain those.

You can also intentionally set aside some time to bring a closing to the role of this commitment and grieve anything present in the letting go. It may be meaningful for you to send a message to anyone you know this stepping back will impact, with clarity on what you need at this point in your process.

Participant says:

Any thoughts on how to make intentions that are, in my mind, subjective more concrete? I’d like to increase my focus, but I’m not sure how I can tell if I’m progressing besides looking at how I feel. Even fuzzier, I’d like to improve the quality of my social and intimate relationships—and that’s not at all a concrete focus. I can point to what I feel is missing, but not to exactly what I want or how to get there.

Our response

Even if an intention feels very fuzzy or subjective, it’s usually possible to find qualitative indicators or quantitative correlates that should appear alongside it. Sometimes it helps to close your eyes and try to vividly imagine the intention being fulfilled, and ask yourself what that would look like, feel like, and what specifically would be different from the current state.  If you are having a hard time, you can also ask yourself “what would the opposite of the fulfillment of this intention look like?” and then work backwards.

When thinking about the actions you could take towards a subjective intention, a really strong approach is to try to focus on those actions that a) you have a lot of control over, and b) are very likely to be positively correlated with your intention. One of the most common examples is focusing on cultivating skills or other resources relevant to your intention.

Participant says

Sometimes an intention is just so big (for example, earning a PhD) that it doesn’t feel actionable. Instead it can be easier to set other intentions that build towards that one. For instance, “decide on an area of study and university where I’ll try to apply to a postgraduate education”

Our response

As this participant notes, sometimes the best approach for really big intentions is to break them down into sub-intentions (or even hierarchies of intentions and sub-intentions with multiple layers). You can then define individual components and choose steps for each, which can be much more manageable than doing so for the entire thing.

Participant says

My problem is I know what I want in a career (to work on challenging, interesting problems that have a profound impact on the world), but I can see myself doing that through many different avenues. My understanding is that choosing a specific manifestation of this and working towards it is more actionable and effective, but my fear is that by defining it I’ll limit myself to a subpar path of the broader intention.  

Our response

There are a couple of approaches you can take here. One is to set a period of time (anywhere from a couple of days to a year) where you are going to define your intention more specifically and move towards it, and at the end step back to consider your broader desire, what you have learned about it, and whether you want to continue or adjust. You can think of this as an experimental approach with a focus on learning, and you can even couple it with one or several “plan b” options that you will try, if the first instance doesn’t go the way you want.

Another approach is to leave the intention at a more abstract level (even abstract intentions can be defined!) and then try to elicit actions that, while specific, may serve multiple instantiations of possibilities. One of the earlier examples of this is around building skills or resources that will reliably improve your chances of your intention becoming fulfilled.

Remember – it’s likely that as you learn more about your desire and direction (and about yourself) you will naturally be able to define it more specifically. If nothing else, just keep coming back to it every several months to see if you have more clarity than before.

Participant says

I find it difficult to prevent myself from spending time on things other than my primary intentions. I have a tendency to get sucked into tinkering, especially of the variety “OMG Evernote did some stupid thing in their privacy policy, spend the next 2 hours writing a script to migrate my notes somewhere else”.

Our response

It might be useful for you to have some kind of capture system (See Dream Catcher exercise) where you can take note of these impulses, write them down and come back to them later.

You might also find it useful to define periods of time where you allow yourself to do this kind of tinkering and other times where you use a structure like the Pomodoro technique to practice task-oriented focus.

Participant says:

My main problem right now is that I’ve procrastinated for about a year on my most important intention (health related) by continually putting off my next steps (going in to get some exams done). It’s not even that challenging, but for some reason I keep losing focus or getting distracted by other things, and then finding myself overwhelmed with tasks for other intentions I have.

Our response

You may find creating an accountability system will help you. Finding a friend and asking to share the process with them, requesting check ins, can be very supportive.

It may also be that you’d benefit from assessing what specifically makes it hard to act, in this case. It may also be that a part of you is objecting to the action you’re trying to take, in order to care for something else, or because of an underlying fear. Once we understand more about the sense that it makes for us to avoid doign something, giving ourselves a little more space, to not need to be logical, we can begin to regain a sense of agency in the process.

From deep understanding, it may become obvious how we can move forward.

Participant says

One of the things I struggle with most is feeling stressed out by all the actions I feel I should be taking towards all my intentions and cares, which can actually causes me not to work on them. It’s a vicious cycle. How can I structure my intentions so they it doesn’t feel like a bunch of to-dos are piling up?

Our response

  • The simplest answer is that you might need to go back to Choosing and Prioritizing to cut down on the number of intentions that you are actively tending to.
  • Alternatively, try defining a small number (1-3) of top priorities each day and do those things first.
  • Proactively set expectations around time commitments that are somewhat more relaxed than what you are currently working towards.
  • You might also have success re-framing the things you want to do, so that you feel in right relationship with them.
  • You may also want to look at the story you’re holding of yourself, around why you feel you should be doing so much. There’s a place of self-exploration and reflection that can illuminate new paths you might take forward.

Participant says:

I know I should be doing regular reflection, but I have a very hard time making myself do it consistently

Our response

One way you can look at this, is to step into a practice of using some supportive systems to build some structure and a follow-through plan on the structure. You could attach it to another part of your day/week/month (for example, reflecting as soon as you wake up or whenever you put the waste bins outside). If you need help remembering, set a recurring reminder on your phone.

You may find it valuable to do your reflection at the same time, whether that is on a daily / weekly / monthly basis. That way you will learn to expect to do it, and your schedule will be cleared for it.

Another way to look at this is that part of you may have a valid reason for not doing a regular reflection. Investigating why can bring a lot of new insights. Perhaps part of you thinks it’s unneeded, or doesn’t value it as much as other things.
As you’re reading this, you can do an in the moment reflection on what’s in the way of you stepping into reflection on a regular basis.

Participant says

I have a goal to increase my influence on social media platforms, which is a hard thing to assess. I’m having a difficult time determining whether I am making progress on a daily basis, any thoughts?

Our response

Check out the section on preparation which has lots of advice on how to define your goals, even complex ones, so they are easier to track. In particular you might define both lead and lag measures (lag measures are the outcome you want to cause, lead measures are the inputs you have more direct control over).

Another option is that there are many scenarios where the gut check of asking yourself “was this enough?” at the end of the day or week, can be a great heuristic (kind of like a shortcut) for knowing whether you are making progress or need to make some change.

Participant says

I have a large number of habits I am trying to stick to every day and am having a hard time tracking them all in an efficient way.

Our response

Check out the Lights Spreadsheet  (template and description) which is designed specifically with this in mind

Technical Difficulties

If you’re having technical difficulties during the event, please let us know! You can use the #_technical channel, your coaching channel, or (if you’re having an issue with Slack) the Zoom call chat.