Good Results So Far,
Next Round Coming Soon

As of a one or two week followup, first round beta testers were meditating more, writing regularly, and exercising more frequently. In other words, it worked for most people!

Three people didn't get the outcome they had planned on:

All in all, I'd call round one a success. I certainly learned a lot.

What's Next

So why I haven't I scheduled round two yet? As it turns out, there is a lot of research pertaining to positive fantasies and goal achievement. I'm trying to make sense of what doesn't work and what does.

I'm adding what I'm learning into the next version and may have something to share with you soon.

Learning and Feedback Loops

One thing I'm finding that makes the process more effective (which is not in the research that I've seen) is feedback loops.

For those of you who haven't done the Creative Solutions Generator yet, v0.1 was a guided process involving the following steps:

1. Come up with a specific, feasible, and desirable goal intention described as a specific behavior (e.g. meditate 15 minutes a day in the mornings).
2. Make a mental movie of yourself doing the goal behavior as if a neutral observer ("Observer position").
3. Step into the movie to see/hear/feel what it's like ("Self position").
4. Make any changes as needed and/or repeat steps 2 and 3 until satisfied and leave the movie in Observer position.

So far this is equivalent to "The New Behavior Generator" in NLP. But since things don't always go according to plan, I added some steps:

5. Think of a potential obstacle to successfully doing the new behavior.
6. Think of a potential solution to this obstacle (e.g. overcome it or prevent it from occurring).
7. Make a mental movie of yourself (from Observer position) using the solution you came up with to overcome or prevent the obstacle. Make any changes as needed.
8. Step into Self position and make a mental movie looking out of your own eyes (hearing and feeling in your own body) using the solution you came up with to overcome or prevent the obstacle. Make any changes as needed and then leave the movie in Observer position.
9. Repeat steps 5-8 until you can't think of any other obstacles. That is to say, all obstacles that you can think of, you have prepared for in advance.
10. "Future-pace" by thinking of future times in which you might encounter one of these obstacles and see yourself dealing with it successfully.
11. Generalize your ability to come up with creative solutions to obstacles by imagining yourself as the kind of person who can now successfully overcome unforeseen obstacles, possibly by using the Creative Solutions Generator (either consciously or unconsciously).

What to Do When You Fail

Failure is inevitable! That's the reason I created the Creative Solutions Generator, to figure out how to adopt a more resourceful attitude and set of behaviors when things don't go how we want them to go.

When I did CSG v0.1, it was super helpful in getting started and overcoming initial obstacles. But sometimes it worked for a couple weeks and then I'd come up against another obstacle that I didn't anticipate, or a solution no longer worked.

Even when we are well-prepared, there can be unexpected obstacles or failures along the way. With easy goals, I can automatically adjust and be resourceful in the moment in coming up with creative solutions. But with harder goals I haven't always been able to do that.

One potential solution is to keep iterating the process — each failed attempt provides new information about obstacles to goal achievement. Creatively generating solutions to obstacles that arise leads to more prepared subsequent attempts. This creates a feedback loop of learning.

Theoretically, with sufficient learning and application you will address all the obstacles and succeed at whatever you set out to do. I say "theoretically" because you might still fail! I'm a terrible motivational speaker, I know.

So it's not exactly "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again," but close. It's more like "if at first you don't succeed, figure out what caused you to fail, come up with a feasible solution, and try your solution in the next attempt." If the cost of failure is low, doing this frequently can be a good way of learning and ultimately overcoming all obstacles to goal achievement. To succeed at your goal more quickly, repeat this learning cycle at more frequent intervals. (However, if the cost of failure is high, figure out ways to reduce the potential losses and/or make sure your planning is impeccable!)

The thing is, you don't know for sure whether your solution will work or not until you try it. So it's important to adopt a growth mindset and just be willing to try something to see what happens! That way you can get real feedback and learning.

A Personal Example

I've been trying to be more focused and productive in my work by adopting the Pomodoro Technique. At first I set a goal outcome of doing this method all day and totally failed. As the research shows, just committing to a goal outcome is often not enough to guarantee effective action and achievement (which, by the way, is one reason why New Year's Resolutions fail).

I added "implementation intentions" (the what, where, and how plans for taking action) to my initial goal intention and chunked down to "8 pomodoros in a day minimum" and had some initial success (4 pomodoros in a day), but yet failed to reach my ultimate goal.

While I was tempted to give up, luckily I did not. Instead, I decided to treat my failures as evidence that either unforseen obstacles had arisen in the course of trying to reach my goal, or that my solutions were inadequate, and so came up with new plans for overcoming and preventing the obstacles.

And finally this week I met a personal productivity goal of mine that had been super elusive. I got so much work done it felt...weird. LOL

How will I do next week? I won't know until after next week! I suspect I will encounter unforseen obstacles. But by continuing to generate and implement creative solutions to obstacles, I hope to continue to learn and improve in the long-term.

CSG v0.2 Coming Soon

Obviously none of this is rocket science, but perhaps some of this is interesting or useful to you.

Coming soon I hope to lead you through a v0.2 of the Creative Solutions Generator. The next version will integrate feedback loops, which means it will require more than one session, but I hope to see an even higher success rate with hopefully some more challenging goals in the next round.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more,

~Duff

Duff McDuffee
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