Most "inner work" looks like entertainment.
Imagine you’re looking for a personal trainer.
You open one trainer’s webpage and read their testimonials: “I had an experience tied for the most intense experiences of my life”; “They do it all with fun, care, and a sense of humour.” You notice that none of the testimonials mention improved body composition, fitness, or bloodwork. What would you think?
Personal training should improve your body. Inner work should improve your life. If inner work were optimized for results, what would we expect to see?
I’d expect to see success stories: people who got undeniable life changes. Like:
Founder was single for years due to romantic risk-aversion; today, they’re celebrating their one-year anniversary.
Researcher used to lose 4–5 hours per day to doomscrolling. After our program, he got bored of them all and stopped. It’s been six months; he’s used the extra time to host parties for his friends.
Executive recovered from burnout, negotiated for the first time, and started shipping again.
But this is not what we see.
Look at the testimonials
I reviewed every testimonial posted by a popular retreat, a well-known coach, and a prominent organization in my network. How many describe a specific life change — something the client durably started doing, stopped doing, does differently, or achieved?
For the popular retreat: 0 / 20
For the well-known coach: 0 / 3
For the prominent organization: 0 / 14 (homepage)
The organization also had an additional ~200 testimonials posted on another page, which I had Claude review. Finally, we found 2 of 200+ testimonials that described specific life changes: a husband confirming his wife sleeps better, and a CEO crediting the work with helping quadruple revenue.
Nearly every testimonial from every practitioner focused on fleeting emotional states (“I had an experience tied for most intense experiences of my life”), practitioner personality (“They do it all with fun, care, and a sense of humour”), and unfalsifiable claims (“The ROI is immeasurable”), but not results. Experiences appear to be the product.
This surprised me, so I checked another ~15 similar practitioners. Almost none of their testimonials described specific life changes either.
I’m sure some clients get lasting results, but isn’t it odd that these practitioners don’t get testimonials long enough after the intervention to show durable results? If lasting life improvements were the goal, wouldn’t practitioners highlight their success stories?
Check for yourself: Pick the practitioner you most recommend, and count how many testimonials describe a lasting change in what the client does, avoids, or achieves.
If the purpose of most inner work were to improve people’s lives, then why do testimonials focus on experiences? Why don’t practitioners solicit testimonials about lasting results? And why don’t clients write about them?
Seven years of Duolingo
Two people say they want to learn Chinese. One downloads Duolingo and embarks on a 1,000-day streak. The other finds a friend of a friend who got fluent in two years and copies everything they did…
I believe the purpose should be results. I’m reminded of an AI researcher I worked with in 2024 who called his prior seven years of inner work (Vipassana, Tibetan Buddhist meditation, various retreats, IFS) “LARPing working on the problem.”
When we caught up this month, he added: “It’s like entertainment. It’s like identity. It’s like wearing a costume.”
Once he gained the ability to ask people out without risk-aversion and to stop avoiding relationships, he lost interest in communities organized around talking about problems they haven’t solved. Last month he celebrated one year with a girl he loves.
Are you playing Duolingo or are you getting results?
—@chrislakin | Writing | Now
Reminds me of an old Robin Hanson post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/radical-pay-for-resultshtml
nailed it. this is much more ubiquitous than just inner work. look at how universities brand themselves too. and not just education. see how hospitals are rated.
you're gonna like my next piece