Welcome to the 2nd week of WhileBeing! I promise you that this post is a LOT shorter than the last one, and hopefully more skimmable.

To those of who shared your feedback, thank you! One popular piece was to split the 1st post into multiple ones, which I may do in the coming weeks, although I’ve deprioritized that for now. This due to this publication being primarily for self-reflection and documentation VS being easy to share.

You can’t oversimplify Needs (Learn)

After a month of researching in a silo and forming my own opinion, I created an in-depth post on how I view life satisfaction / wellbeing, what segment of the population I wanted to impact the most, and how I planned to start building.

The biggest test to my knowledge was acting on it (building). When I sat down and started to create a survey that would not only help me understand how people viewed wealth, but also helped me gauge where they landed in Kegan’s Theory of Development and Maslow’s Theory of Needs, I realized this was much harder than i thought.

For starters, those of you who read my 1st post might have guessed that I don’t have the strongest understanding of both theories and how they are applied. After all, I’m working off <1 month of research compared to the multiple degrees (or from a non-institutional bias, as least multiple years of research) to understand how the theories are built AND how they are applied.

But remember, it’s 2024! So while I initially got both of Kegan’s books (The Evolving Self and In Over Our Heads) and numerous articles on both Maslow & Kegan, I knew time was of the essence and turned to man’s best friend: Artificial Intelligence.

Or more simply put, I turned to the free version of Chat GPT 🙂 As a quick note, it’s wild that I didn’t have this in college, as it would have made understanding concepts 100x easier.

I started by trying to get an understanding of what types of studies Kegan used to test his Theory of Development:

I then focused on the subject interviews and the questions that Kegan asked:

An important caveat here, that I only realized after digging deeper (and a couple hours of banging my head against the wall): both Kegan and Maslow depended heavily on qualitative data, namely through Subject-Object interviews. This meant that trying to gather this data at scale, i.e. via a survey, would likely be difficult. More on why this is the case later.

I then tried to get Chat GPT to give me an example of how a subject would be scored against Kegan’s theory, based on their answers:

To be clear, I use Chat GPT / Anthropic in my day job for summarizing calls and creating overviews. I have never used it to try to unpack complex topics in a dialogue like the above.

It was at this point that I started to realize the limitations of AI (or at least, my ability to prompt it correctly). Chat GPT took Kegan’s Theory in a literal sense and used a very simplified version to give me an example of how it might be applied. Being a very astute scholar, I naturally did not pick up on this and took it at face value 🙃 

I finally prompted Chat GPT to provide me with a multiple choice question, which it begrudgingly complied with (i.e. called out that the interviews were open-ended questions, not multiple choice):

I did a similar exploration with Maslow & Chat GPT, although I found this to be somewhat simpler, as needs are typically met, unmet, or partially met, but not commonly scored against a scaling system like Kegan’s Theory.

Kegan’s Theory isn’t a ladder (Learn)

As I sparred with my inability to conduct user research at scale, my friend Aashay shared a podcast WITH Robert Kegan. In the podcast, Kegan talked about the major misconceptions that many people (myself included) had about his Theory.

The first, as you can tell from the heading, is that you shouldn’t see the Theory of Development as a ladder to climb. Stage 1 isn’t rock bottom and Stage 5 isn’t ultimate enlightenment. Every stage has its strengths and weaknesses, and every stage transcends the past stage. I.e. Stage 3 is still visible in Stage 4, but it’s the Stage 4 parameters that take precedent when making decisions, dealing with conflict, etc.

It also isn’t all-encompassing — your stage of development doesn’t factor in your orientation towards a given area. I.e. your sense of humour and what you find funny doesn’t relate to your stage of development, nor does your orientation towards spirituality, art, etc. I hope to delve into this topic more in the future, i.e. the question of how traditional ‘wisdom’ plays into a life well-lived.

I was also shocked at how Kegan compared some of the strengths and weaknesses of each stage… In short, this further emphasized how the stages are not clear cut as “lower = worst”. Here’s an example from the podcast (paraphrased):

• A rabbi used Kegan’s Theory to deconstruct his Liturgy so that he could move his congregation from simply reciting old verses to actually engaging in a dialogue with each other about the scripture

• A women in her 40s approached the rabbi and said that she found it disturbing that they had shifted away from saying the same prayers as they had before

• When pressed, the woman said that she had come to the synagogue as a little girl with her (late) parents and they all said the same prayers.

• She believed that this new way of engagement felt like a fundamental violation of an article of faith

This is an example of Stage 3 (Socialized Mind), as the woman is deferring to the views of her parents, religion, etc. over her ability to value those perspectives but form her own perspective on what she believes to be right or wrong.

Kegan spoke in depth about how this type of reaction is not uncommon, and the dangers of forcing someone who isn’t ready for self-authorship into it. He noted that the resources that may help someone challenge the system that they reside in (i.e. woman challenging a patriarchal system) can be seen as a threat to the way of life for those who identify deeply with that system.

Lastly, and most relevant to my user research, I realized that I definitely needed to conduct user interviews (qualitative) to properly assess someone against Kegan’s Theory and Maslow’s Theory, respectively. The issue that the podcast host flagged is that people can ‘fake’ being in Stage 5 by picking the answer that most aligns with that viewpoint.

Kegan compared this to the Golden Rule (“do unto others as you’d want them to do to you”) and how a 10 year-old will be able to memorize it, but if you present them with a scenario (“Jim hits you”), then they would apply it at face value (“Hit Jim back, eye for an eye”) and show that it hasn’t been internalized.

I’m a bit weary of doing interviews as someone who doesn’t come from a psychology background, but I hope I can follow best practices to prove Kegan’s view right — that it is VERY hard to fake being at another level when you are recounting experiences. In contrast, I expect my survey to have lots of holes / false positives (or negatives) in that section.

Every Theory has its constraints (Think)

As I started to build the survey, I naturally looked to my partner (Brook) for feedback on my thinking. The first thing that she called out: every theory has its constraints.

The most obvious one with Kegan’s Theory is that the way that someone answers a question - especially in a multiple choice fashion - could be a tainted representation of their views.

I.e. using Chat GPT’s example, if they chose to abide by a company’s rule and forego their own values, this would be seen as Stage 3. However, if they did this to avoid getting fired or had other priorities that took their headspace / decision-making power, then maybe it wasn’t their true perspective but rather the best option at the time.

This forced me to reorganize the V1 of my survey; I couldn’t just regurgitate what Chat GPT showed me, as most people would see through this and pick the option that ‘wins’ (gets the highest stage of development).

In my V2, I tried to be a bit more concealed with this by hiding the answers in scenarios, randomized their presentation, and having multiple scenarios (around the same topic / theme) to see if someone answers consistently.

At the end of the day, I recognize that the surveys will be a better gauge of someone’s demographic data compared to their thoughts on income generation, but likely a sub-par measure of their standings re: Kegan’s Levels and Maslow’s Needs.

Self-Determination as a blocker to social impact (Think)

A thought that arose in the past week was the idea of self-determination and how it plays into the Theory of Needs and one’s ability to accomplish B-Needs and self actualization. I think that self-determination will be the biggest blocker to someone accomplishing their potential.

Put differently, people don’t want to be told what to do — they want to come to a conclusion themselves. This is why I, and I believe so many others, hate taxes.

If you told me I could donate $100 to save my neighbour or the person on the street in front of my house who asks for my help, I would do it. I’d likely tell you how I want the $100 to be used and what I think will be the best help to them, but at face value, I would opt for that decision.

The problem is that taxes is the government’s equivalent of asking you for $10,000 to fix a million different problems, but you don’t actually know how they’re being fixed, if they’re really being fixed, and what the breakdown of your money is being used for (unless you dig a LOT).

In short, in the above example, I would pay the $100 if someone asked me but I can imagine I’d have some conflict if the $100 was automatically deducted and it wasn’t clear who it was going to save. I think it’s the mandatory element that ticks people off.

Applying this to Maslow’s Needs, I can see how some parts of D-Needs are obvious when unmet and people know they need to improve (i.e. no access to food/water) but others are more shrouded and may be met with anger or denial if you suggest they are unmet (i.e. sub-par intimate relationship).

I also think that to make the jump to tackling B-Needs, you need both perspective and individual purpose, which requires someone to have the functioning to challenge their existing structure and imagine an alternative. I don’t think everyone is ready for this and I can imagine, to Kegan’s example in the podcast, how many people will be angry if it’s forced upon them.

I just want to build! (Think)

Adding this as a very short section to Think (ironically); as a founder, I love building things and adding value to my target audience. The problem is that with spaces like these, where even understanding the concepts is taking a while, let alone unpacking them in a way that’s done properly, it’s easy to get frustrated.

I’ve found that with complex social problems, it’s easy to build something the wrong way that will cause a lot more harm than good. I think we’re already seeing examples of this with tech companies at scale, where we didn’t foresee how they’d be used, i.e.:

• Illegal transactions via crypto

• Mental health crises powered by Tik Tok

• Etc.

As a typical founder, I’m a bit torn… I want to rush my user research to gain conviction around a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and start building, knowing I’ll need to iterate if it’s not a hit off the bat. However, it’s possible that I’ll need to stay in the Learn/Think mode for longer than I’m comfortable with to make sure that I’m working on the right things and tackling it in the right way.

The survey is live! (Build)

Now it’s time for everyone’s favourite section: Build! After many hours of review, I finalized my User Research survey and would appreciate if y’all can share it with whoever you think would have a valuable perspective: https://2x95wet3a6b.typeform.com/to/ElLxNLrM 

It takes about 7-15 mins to complete and anyone who responds will be entered into a raffle for a $100 Amazon gift card! A couple things to note:

• All answers will be anonymous — I’m not requiring an email or any contact information to tie to your answers. The raffle is linked at the end of the survey (as a separate survey).

• I am still planning my live interviews — I will release these questions shortly and the process to booking time. Similar to the survey, but given that it’s a more active use of someone’s time, I’ll be offering coffee gift cards for anyone who participates.

My goal is to get around 35-40 survey responses and conduct between 8-10 live interviews over the next 2 weeks. In the interim, I’m still going to be diving deeper into Kegan’s Theory and Maslow’s Needs, and some other content such as:

• John Vervaeke’s playlist on Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

• Continuing to read through Zak Stein’s Education in a Time Between Worlds

• As I wrapped up Dune (fiction), I recently started reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. While it’s definitely a ‘fun’ pursuit, I anticipate that it’ll contribute to some of my thoughts here

How you can help

• Please share any feedback on the survey and ideas you have around the interview questions

  • I will edit this post later this week to include a link to it

• Please share the survey (one-to-one) with anyone you think might have a valuable perspective to share.

  • I’m most interested in folks who are in the Middle 50% (explained here), but I’d appreciate any responses!