The Science of Life Design: Using the Scientific Method for Personal Growth
the science of life design
I call my coaching philosophy The Science of Life Design. It’s not about human design. It’s not even really about design thinking. It’s about using the framework of the scientific method in your personal growth + in your goals as a strategy for more effective goal achievement.
Lemme show ya what I mean….
A personal growth spin on the scientific method. I call it “the science of life design”.
How we can tweak The Scientific Method for personal growth
The scientific method is made up of, essentially, 6 steps - make an observation, ask a question, do background research, generate a hypothesis, test it, and analyze + interpret your results to draw conclusions….
What I’m going to do in this section is really break down this process step by step into not only how it works from the scientific perpsective, but how we can tweak that slightly for our own personal + professional growth…
step 1 - Make an Observation...
Step 1 of any scientific process is to make an observation. In this part of the process, a scientist looks at a particularly field of research an says: “Okay we know this information, but what do we know about this?” Sometimes we know a lot, but we’re missing a minute piece of information. Sometimes we know hardly anything and we have a lot of holes to fill…
The point when we approach this from the scientific perspective is that we’re looking for the gaps and the holes in the process. We’re looking for the things we don’t know. That’s the big “observation” that’s happening here…
When it comes to personal growth, it’s not super different. We’re filling the wholes still, but, in this case, we’re filling the holes about ourselves. It involves making personal observations and a lot of them. You can make those personal observations in a number of ways. You can make them through journaling and learning about the common themes that are coming up in your journaling, but you can also learn them by doing something I call a “life evaluation”, where you’re assessing your life on a broad level and looking for the parts of your life that are falling behind.
This is something I show you how to use in my “Take Back Your Life” toolkit here, and it’s a game-changer of a tool! I use it on a quarterly basis to check in with myself and to show me where to set my goals, and it’s so powerful to have that guidance!
Another common place that I find people need to make observations about themselves is to look into their values. Sometimes the observation that they’re making is that their goals, their careers, and the ways that they’re spending their time just never feel right! Often, that’s a sign that you’re not living according to your values, and, despite what we might think, this is something that can be rectified. I’ve created a super inexpensive mini-course to help you get clear on your values so that you’re no longer feeling out-of-alignment…
So, to summarize…
Observation in SCIENCE: Identifying problems, trends, etc. in a given field
Observation in PERSONAL GROWTH: Identify the problems and places where you're dissatisfied in your life. Pick an area to focus on!
How to make better observations about yourself?
Do a life evaluation, which you can learn more about in my free Take Back Your Life toolkit
Assess your values, which you can tackle in my Take Back Your Values mini-course here >>
step 2 - Ask a Question...
In the scientific method, once you make an observation, you use that observation to show you which question you need to ask to fill that whole. When I was in graduate school, we were asking questions about a certain quorum sensing system in Streptococcus pneumoniae. There were things we didn’t know about some of it’s main systems. We didn’t know how it turned on in space. We didn’t know when it turned on throughout these processes, only that it did. So, these were the “how” questions that we asked + the questions that we created experiments around…
It works the same way in your personal growth. Once you know things about yourself, you can ask questions that will guide your “experiments” about how to answer these questions.
The only big difference here is that your scientific questions can be really anything. How questions, what questions, when questions, why questions and where questions…
In personal growth, I find that the questions are a lot different! Often the questions are “how” questions about how to go about achieving the goals that you’ve set for yourself in your "observation” stage. That’s really the big difference here, I find, when it comes to the “ask a question” step for personal growth.
So to summarize…
Asking a question in SCIENCE:Asking a question about something that you observed: How, What, When, Who, Why or Where?
Asking a question in your PERSONAL GROWTH:Asking a question around how you will achieve whatever goal you've decided to focus on
There's a sub part of this process where you may be questioning which goal is the right goal for you to set or focus on based on your observation. That takes a deeper level of digging into your vision + your values. Your scores also help here.
step 3 - do background research…
This is the part of the scientific method that I still am obsessed with and the biggest part of my scientific training that I haven’t been able to shake. Because I may be a scientist by training, but I am a researcher by nature. Doing research + learning is something that I absolutely love to do!
So, needless to say this is one of my favorite steps of the The Science of Life Design…
In science, this process is all about starting to piece together your plan for how to answer your question. Sciene is all about not reinventing the wheel because, honestly, that would just take too damn long. Instead of starting from scratch in putting together your plan, savvy scientists use other research—online websites, lectures and published articles—to help them answer their question. This background research is crucial to making sure that they’re answering the question in the best, most thorough, and most repeatable way possible.
In personal growth, well, this is the step that is conventionally thought of as “personal growth”. The purpose here is the same: to find the best way to answer your question. But since our questions above are focused on the best process for achieving a goal, that’s exactly what our personal growth is focused on here - process. What have others done before to acheive the goal that you’re trying to achieve?
If your question is around health, you’d read books around health, aiming to determine how others have gotten healthy before. You want to gather as many possible processes as you can so that you can make the best decision for you…
If your question is around starting a business, you’d read books around starting a business to determine as many possible ideas, philosophies, and methodologies for starting a business as possible.
The idea anytime you’re doing background research is to learn as much as you can. What have others done? What worked and what didn’t work? How long did it take to achieve the goal or to get to the end result? What observations (ie. data) was collected along the process of achieving the goal? All of this is useful for you when you’re designing your “experiment” (ie. your process for how you’re going to achieve your goal)…
So, to summarize…
Background research in SCIENCE:Research the best ways to achieve your questions based on what's been done before! Involves reading a lot of journals + speaking to others in the same field…
Background research in PERSONAL GROWTH:Researching the best way to achieve your goal. Usually involves reading books, looking for online resources, or listening to podcasts that discuss how others have done it before…
step 4 - generate a hypothesis…
This is actually a really straightforward process for both science and for personal growth…
You see, once you’ve done your background research, your hypothesis is basically you making a statement and a claim around how you’re going to answer your question. As sciencebuddies.org states:
“A hypothesis is an educated guess about how things work. It is an attempt to answer your question with an explanation that can be tested. A good hypothesis allows you to then make a prediction:”
In a nutshell, that’s what we’re doing here. We’re attempting to answer the question from step 2 with a statement. Classically, we’re taught that this takes the form of an “If….then…” statement, especially in science.
Now, in personal growth, we don’t generally do create an if-then statement. We don’t generally set a hypothesis of: “If I follow the Couch to half marathon training plan to a tee, then I’ll be able to run the half marathon in June” OR “If I increase the difficult of my hikes each week in length and elevation, then I’ll be able to hike the 14er this summer…”
What you will notice about both of those statements above is that they’re very much a “how” for answering our question and achieving our goals. Instead of an “if…then…” statement, we create a plan and lay out a how for our goal. We say how frequently we’re going to workout OR how frequently we’re going to hike. It’s all dependent upon the goal, but it’s focused on the process.
Keep these examples in mind because we’ll be coming back to them…
So, to summarize…
Generating a Hypothesis in SCIENCE:Make a prediction that you can then test. If [I do this], then [this] will happen.
Generating a Hypothesis in PERSONAL GROWTH:It's not super different here except that your hypothesis is around your process.
step 5 - test your hypothesis & collecting data…
You’ve created a hypothesis that predicts how you will answer your question.
Now, you just have to test it. In science, this part is actually pretty damn easy. In this part of the process, you test the “if'“ statement in your hypothesis. You design an experiment that helps you answer the question, and then you do it, collecting data as you go and repeating it multiple times to ensure that your results are actually accurate.
There are a few other important parts ot creating a good, scientifically-accurate test of your hypothesis. Firstly, you have to make sure that each time you change your experiment that you only change one factor at a time and that all other aspects of the experiment are kept consistent. You also need to make sure that there are many iterations and repetitions to this testing process to ensure the results are replicable. Experiments are often tested, redesigned, and repeated, but, ultimately, it’s as straightforward and simple as that…
Experimentation + collecting data as you experiment…
In personal growth, it’s the very same thing. You created a hypothesis for how you were going to achieve your goal. Now, you’re going to “test” that hypothesis by doing the actual process that you stated in your “hypothesis” above...
For example…
The hypothesis: “If I follow the Couch to half marathon training plan to a tee, then I’ll be able to run the half marathon in June”
The experiment: Running 2-3x every week. In one of those runs, you might be increasing your distance by 1 mile each week. You’d got from 1 mile, to 2, to 3…all the way up to 13.1 miles until it’s race day. That’s your “experiment” (i.e. your process) for achieving this goal…
The hypothesis: “If I increase the difficult of my hikes each week in length and elevation, then I’ll be able to hike the 14er this summer…”
The experiment: Hike 1x a week. Your first hike might be 2-3 miles long with an elevation gain of only a couple hundred feet. Your next week’s hike might be 3-4 miles long, with an elevation game of 750 feet. Your next hike? 5-6 miles, with an elevation gain of 1000 feet, until you get to the point where you’re doing hikes that are 10-ish miles long with multiple thousands of feet in elevation gain…
So, that’s it. That’s how to test the hypothesis when it comes to personal growth - you stick with your process. But, what about collecting data?
Collecting data is still equally as important when it comes to The Science of Life Design. In fact, it’s one of the things that most of us don’t actually do when it comes to goal achievement and our personal growth. It’s super fricken important though because it better allows us to make better judgments about what’s working and what’s not along the way toward achieving a goal.
What often happens in personal growth + goal achievement when you don’t collect this “data” is that we’re making emotional decisions about a process + whether or not it works without the actual metrics + information to back it up!
But the data collection process looks a LOT different when it comes to personal growth than when it comes to science.
For example, in science, you’re keeping track of your “data”( numbers, values, measurements, graphs, etc) in a lab notebook. A fancy schmancy, gridded notebook specifically published and printed for scientists to write their data inside.
In personal growth, it’s different. The data we’re collecting are things like our habits, behaviors, emotions, etc. Sometimes these data are answers to questions. Questions like:
What's working?
What's not working?
What obstacles are coming up?
How are you feeling about the process - still excited or not enjoying it?
Do you feel like you're making progres toward your goal?
Are there any metrics that you're tracking? What's changing there?
Are there any metrics that you should add in to track?
And we don’t collect this data in a lab notebook,either. Often, we collect in more informal settings. For me? I collect “data” like this in my planner, where I’m keeping track of habits, to-do lists, goals, tasks, etc. and in my journal. My journal is where I answer some of the deeper questions because I’ve realized that sometimes “data” is in the form of thoughts, feelings, opinions, perspectives, fears, etc. For things like burnout and a process that isn’t working, sometimes we can’t collect that data through habit trackers and to-do lists…we have to get inside our own heads. Sometimes that’s the most precious data…and the most powerful.
So, to summarize…
Testing your Hypothesis in SCIENCE: Creating an experiment that fairly tests your hypothesis. Experiments are repeated, controlled and more.
Testing your Hypothesis in PERSONAL GROWTH:You create a process + a plan that you repeat, meaning that you don't just follow it for a week or two and get mad that you're “not in shape, yet”. You stick with it for longer, collecting "data" as you go!
Collecting data is the part that people miss when it comes to their goals.
PLANNERS + JOURNALS are your lab notebook here!
analyze and draw conclusions…
Last, but not least, we analyze the data from testing our experiments to see if they support our hypothesis or not.
A good chunk of the time, the data doesn’t support your hypothesis. All this says is that your predictions weren’t accurate. Oftentimes what this means is that you now have additional “background research” that you can use to go back and construct a new hypothesis. Yup - it sends you back to step 4 and the cycle repeats all over again. Sometimes, even if the hypothesis is supported, it will be retested in a different way.
WELCOME TO THE JOYS OF SCIENCE! Not hard to believe why I left, huh? Hehe.
Personal growth is similar, though. We can start by looking at the data we’ve collected in our planners and our journals.—all the habits, behaviors and tasks we’ve completed, how it felt to complete them, anything we’ve expressed or noticed through the process, etc.
But one of the big difference in personal growth is that this process almost happens more frequently. The goal doesn’t have to be achieved and the question doesn’t have to be fully answered before the data can be analyzed and conclusions drawn.
This is such an important part of the process because it allows you to tweak your hypothesis and your “experiments” as you go so that they accomodate the “data” that you’ve collected. For example, let’s look at our hypotheses from before…
The hypothesis: “If I follow the Couch to half marathon training plan to a tee, then I’ll be able to run the half marathon in June”
The results: You’ve been running 2-3x a week. You’ve been steadily increasing your mileage each week. But you’re finding yourself burned out + stiff. On your last training run, you slightly pulled your hamstring and there’s a definite concern and a possibility that if you maintain your current training regimen, you’ll injure yourself along the way.
The change? Taking a slightly less aggressive training regiment, maybe down to 2 runs a week, and incorporating stretching on a daily basis to prevent injury.
The new hypothesis becomes…”If I follow the Couch to half marathon training plan, but take out 1 of the mid-week runs and stretch each day, then I’ll be able to run my half marathon in June…”
You see how that works? We take the process we were following before, we add in the data around burn out + injuries, and we tweak our process to accomodate that new data. The process then gets refined + we keep going!
This is a process that gets repeated over and over again—learning from the data, refining and improving your hypothesis + your experimental procedure. It’s iterative! And that’s what’s so fantastic about this process for personal growth…because you can learn from the data to improve + grow!
So, to summarize…
Analyzing and drawing conclusions in SCIENCE: Once your experiment is complete, you collect your data + analyze to see if it supports your hypothesis or not.
Analyzing and drawing conclusions in PERSONAL GROWTH:Again, it's not super different. The big difference I would say is the fact that it's iterative. You don't accept/reject your hypothesis, publish your findings and then move onto something else.
Analyze, draw conclusions, course correct and repeat.
Take the data you gathered and then use it to tweak your original hypothesis. then go again! It's an iterative process…
Now you might be thinking...
but is it actually as simple as that?
Short answer? No. Because we’re human and it’s not actually that easy for us to objectively evaluate ourselves.
When it comes to The Science of Life Design, the parts of this process that tend to be the hardest for us are the last two steps.Why? Because, when it comes to self-evaluation, we tend to get emotional. We get too attached to our processes + our ability to achieve them! And with attachment and emotion can come judgment—or sometimes, the fear of it! It’s only normal.
Think about the last time you were in a job evaluation—one of those biannual or quarterly reviews. Those can be difficult situations, right?! If you're validation driven or perfectionistic, getting evaluated or having someone critique you is not exactly fun + it can be a VERY hard thing to experience. Now think about if you're doing that sort of an evaluation of yourself…
In these situations, it's sometimes even harder because we can be harder on ourselves than others are. That’s why it’s even more important to step out of that headspace of judgment…
We are our own worst critics, aren’t we? We can shit talk ourselves and be really mean to ourselves. If you take that and apply it to self-evaluation situation, it can be even worse. But there’s also something about the process of self-evaluation where there’s almost an element of self- preservation. Of trying to protect ourselves because we don’t actually want to admit that we didn’t show up + do what we said we would do…
On top of that, sometimes we feel like if we don’t follow through on a commitment or a plan that we made, we start to label ourselves. If we didn’t follow-through we might say: “Oh, I’m a failure…I’m weak…I’m not disciplined…I’m not committed…”, right?! Doesn’t exactly feel good but it also is something that we do so frequently. It’s almost like if we say it first we’re armoring ourselves against other people saying these things about us. For more reason why we do this, check out this podcast episode.
So, yes, it’s sometimes hard AF to collect information about how we’re doing + the work we’re doing that is non-judgmental and accurate! But, what’s even harder? Analyzing those results objectively. Having that honest self-evaluation of what we're doing and not doing…
In science, it’s a lot easier! But even then, we get overly attached to our hypotheses, our processes and sometimes refuse to give up on them even when all the data is telling us that is exactly what we should do. Hell, that was actually my life in graduate school - we hung on too long to my thesis project when we should’ve given up on it. It’s part of why graduate school was so frustrating for me…
See…even scientists can be human!
But it's not about the process...
It's about what is going to help you achieve the goal, right?! Sometimes we forget that…
My philosophy + my Science of Life Design combine personal growth, mindfulness, self-awareness and the scientific method that I’ve outlined above with my 3 pillar coaching philosophy of clarity, confidence, and consistency. Together, these create a powerful program for personal transformation that I unequivocally believe in because I’ve lived it!
I’ve seen how it can impact lives when we are able to put on our scientist hats + our lab coats and learn about ourselves, our lives + our goals through collecting data. I’ve seen first hand what we can achieve when we iteratively learn from that data and refine over time instead of stubbornly sticking to hypotheses + processes that don’t work!
This process not only allows for great achievement, but also allows for greater ease in that achievement because we’re actually listening to all the things that our lives, bodies and brains are telling us are wrong! And that’s a powerful thing!
So…how do we do it? Two big tips that I’ve got for ya…
Systems that encourage + promote self-reflection, evaluation, and review! I created my Take Back Your Time planner because I knew how important it is to cultivate that consistent self-evaluation. This planner does just that through weekly, monthly and quarterly reviews. And they're in their not so you can shit talk yourself or take an inventory of all the ways you screwed up. That's not the point. The point is to collect that data. To put your scientist hat on, don that lab coat and learn about yourself through that non-judgmental self-reflection! Speaking of…that’s tip #2…
Cultivating non-judgment and approaching self-evaluation from an objective perspective. This is the most difficult part of this process for so many of us…learning how to be non-judgmental while we’re collecting that data, testing our methodlogy, and analyzing our results. But, it’s also the most important part. So, we’ve gotta cultivate that non-judgmental objectivity and realize that all this information we’ve gather about ourselves - it’s just data. And we can either judge and label ourselves over it or use it help course correct along the process. Because any good science + any good goal achievement is an iterative process. You’ve gotta refine + repeat! Check out this bonus video below from my Take Back Your Time planner BONUS training to help you understand a little bit more about this process!