Schedule of a typical workshop below. Click HERE for an overview of our retreats.
Ordering shown is typical rather than actual. To allow each session to have only 6 participants, each session is held at multiple times during the day. (Session groups are frequently remixed; everyone gets a chance to meet everyone else.)
| 7:00 pm | Meet-And-Greet Unwind, settle in, and start getting to know the instructors and your fellow participants through casual conversation and games. |
| 9:00 pm |
Unconference Workshop participants have a lot to teach each other (and us!). Attendees volunteer to present 10-minute talks on favorite subjects – past talks have included tools to track brain performance, experience in activism, and ways to expand your productive work time to >70 hours a week. Speed along the getting-to-know-you process and spark interesting conversations and collaborations during free time and meals. |
| 8:00 am | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am | Opening Session What does it mean to be rational? Popular culture shows us a Spock-like figure – a narrow powerhouse, unable to deal with nuance or emotion. At CFAR, we train thinkers who work well across many domains, as ready to use quick and dirty heuristics as careful, deliberate reasoning. Since the opening session is the only time an instructor will speak for more than five straight minutes, it’s also when we cover the logistics for the weekend: introducing the instructors, how to get the most out of classes and conversations, and the betting game that runs during the workshop. |
| 10:20 am | Your Inner Simulator You can trust your reflexes to dodge a thrown ball, but when else is your intuition likely to be reliable? How can you frame problems in the language and images you brain is most prepared to parse? You might use “pre-hindsight” as you imagine a message from the future saying a project has failed, and watching as your brain instinctively fills in “It didn’t work because…” |
| 11:40 am | Trigger-Action Planning If you could make only one change to your planning habits, what would you expect would have the largest effect? Use System 1’s native language of “trigger-action” plans to get changes more easily into your automatic habits. |
| 12:40 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm |
Building Bayesian Habits Probability theory shows us how to best update our picture of everyday reality in response to evidence. So how can you remember how to do that in everyday life? Learn the habits and heuristics to apply Bayesian reasoning to everything from qualitative data (“I had a good feeling about that interview”) to information that seems too small-scale for statistics (“My friend liked this book, should I read it?”). |
| 3:40 pm |
Turbocharging Training You’re probably wondering how to budget time to practice and internalize all these wonderful new techniques. Gain new skills much faster by understanding how you learn and find some highly effective ways of expanding your competencies. |
| 5:00 pm |
Goal Factoring Do you ever find yourself saying, “Unfortunately, I have to… X?” Goal factoring teaches you to systematically break down everything obvious and non-obvious you’re accomplishing, and ask about ways you could achieve those factors separately and more effectively – a new perspective on everything from reading habits to email etiquette to outings with friends. |
| 7:00 pm | Dinner |
| 8:00 am | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am | Model Yourself Reference class forecasting is, simply put, using the past to predict the future. In this class, we’ll explore how to choose a good reference class to predict the outcome of decisions big and small: Should I go to graduate school? How long will it take me to move? Can I stick to this diet? We’ll also use reference classes to generate promising solutions to problems that have you feeling stuck. |
| 10:20 am | Aversion Factoring and Calibration We daily shy away from risks and opportunities that aren’t really harmful. What are some possibly-valuable things you’ve “never gotten around” to trying? Would it really be that painful to try them? Order new foods, break your commute routine, speak to an intimidating coworker, and learn not to take ‘never’ for an answer. |
| 11:40 am | Comfort Zone Expansion (CoZE) It’s often the case that trying new things feels uncomfortable: we’re stepping out of the familiar and into situations where we probably aren’t very skilled. A key part to expanding our competencies is learning how to be okay with necessary discomfort. In this class you’ll practice making a kind of internal shift that can help calibrate your sense of difficulty to match the task at hand. |
| 12:40 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm |
Value of Information Quantify the expected value of new information and revamp your guesses about the relative importance of evidence you can gather and predictions you can test. Learn to try the easy and affordable experiments that ‘probably won’t work’ and search for $20 expenditures that might return $2,000 of value. Finding a way to save 10 minutes on one leg of your commute buys you five extra days per year, and that’s worth a minute to consider carefully or half an hour to test. |
| 3:20 pm |
Againstness Tensing up can help win a physical fight, but it won’t win a debate or make a good life decision. Learn to notice and control your body’s instinctive fight-or-flight response; in stressful situations, remain calm and open to new information. Use your understanding of your body to be able to redirect an unhelpful knee-jerk reaction. |
| 4:50 pm |
CoZE Training Design In preparation for the CoZE outing, you’ll want to have a range of personal challenges ready and in mind so that they’re the right balance between challenging and doable for you. You’ll get to use this time to work with instructors and other attendees to detail your plan for the evening. |
5:20 pm | Dinner |
| 6:20 pm |
CoZE Outing Put what you learned in the CoZE class into practice. We’ll go out to a large public place to give you a chance to overcome your reticence and spend time approaching and entertaining strangers in ways both silly and sincere. Surprises and entertainment guaranteed! (Honestly, this activity is always popular afterward.) |
| 8:00 am | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am | Systemization By the end of the workshop, you probably will have a lot of ideas in mind for habits to install, practices to begin, and/or material to review. This is likely to consume a fair amount of attention in the weeks following the workshop. In this class, we’ll focus on developing and refining systems for getting the most out of the workshop without overdoing it or spending a lot of ongoing attention. |
| 10:30 am | Propagating Urges 1 Sometimes we can feel a strong desire to accomplish a long-term goal but find ourselves uninspired while working on the steps for achieving those goals. Understanding the reasons why can help shift this, and can simultaneously shift your picture of what humans are. |
| 12:00 pm |
Propagating Urges 2 Here is where we put the theory from “Propagating Urges 1″ into hands-on practice. When System 1 and System 2 disagree about which actions are useful, the result is often action that you “have to” do, but that feel pointless, boring, aversive, or unmotivating. We’ll practice shifting this. |
| 1:30 pm | Lunch |
| 2:40 pm |
Offline Habit Training Do you want to remember to plug in your cellphone each time you get home for work, or stop yourself from interrupting others? Learn how to use visualization, associations, and practice to break destructive habits and create bene
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is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible
for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.
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