What if "inner work" optimized for results?

What if clients and practitioners doing “inner work” optimized for long-term results — rather than entertainment, community, obligation, and other goals? For example, curing burnout, durably dropping all coping behaviors, entering long-term relationships, etc.

What would we see?

— Clients would research who has gotten the results they want, then copy the plan. They’d wonder, “Who like me used to have a problem like this and completely resolved it? What did they do?” Then they’d copy the plan. They’d try to work with practitioners who’ve gotten the desired results for people like them, then do all of the assignments.

— Practitioners would highlight success stories showing lasting results. Eg, “He was single for years due to anxiety; today, they’re celebrating their one-year anniversary” or “He used to lose 4–5 hours per day to coping behaviors. Then he got bored of them and stopped. It’s been six months since the last session.”

— Clients would avoid practitioners and approaches that are disconnected from lasting results. They’d stay away from practitioners with feedback loops that optimize for temporary breakthroughs and spiritual bypassing. They’d notice when an approach hasn’t helped their friends and update accordingly.

— Practitioners would follow up. Coaches and retreats would check in months and years later to see how clients’ lives changed. Did clients get into happy relationships? Lose interest in coping behaviors? Recover from burnout? … Or did they experience temporary breakthroughs that faded in weeks? Practitioners would track outcomes to improve outcomes.

— Clients would prefer to pay for results rather than experiences. A client who was optimizing for results would both commit to a practice and voluntarily set bounties/give unsolicited performance bonuses.

— Practitioners would attempt to align their financial incentives with results. For example, they might experiment with bounties, equity, or performance bonuses on top of regular rates.

What actually happens:

— Clients choose practitioners and approaches without checking results. Do you know what lasting results your practitioners have gotten? … Some clients even prefer to work exclusively with practitioners who have negative track records — themselves.

— Practitioners highlight testimonials showing experiences. About 2 of over 200 testimonials from three of the most well-known traditional “inner work” practitioners in my network described observable life changes — the rest described how activities felt in the moment. ~15 other practitioners’ testimonials showed the same. See: Most “inner work” looks like entertainment for details.

— Clients engage with practitioners and content that are disconnected from lasting results. They choose retreats, workshops, self-help books, and substacks by what seems fun, what fits their personal aesthetics, and what their friends find entertaining — not by lasting life changes. Some take relationship advice from people who do not have happy relationships. Some talk more about “breakthroughs”, Terminology With Capital Letters, and jhanas than Results.

— Practitioners never follow up. A retreat that called itself ‘life-changing’ and ‘data-driven’ doesn’t track data on how alums’ lives changed. When an alum offered to do the follow-ups for them, they declined. Dozens of coaches had never considered following up until I asked them.

— Clients pay for experiences rather than results. I’ve watched decamillionaire friends choose cheap practitioners without wondering “What results can I expect?”, “How fast?”, or “Wait, why are they so cheap?”

— Practitioners charge for experiences — sessions and retreats — not lasting life improvement. The times I’ve discussed bounties with traditional inner work practitioners, they’ve either reacted with surprise — they’d never considered aligning incentives with results — or anger — they feel taking responsibility for results is morally perverse. A few have since experimented with pay-for-results structures, but none had before.

For many people doing inner work, getting better in two months versus ten years isn’t the point — it’s the friends they make along the way.

If you were optimizing for results, would your behavior look different?

—@chrislakin | Writing | Now

Thanks to Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson for discussion.