Guides for deeper understanding

Jason’s guide to the limits of common behavior-change methods, personality differences, and choosing behaviors and environments that fit.

An introduction to behavioral design, with behavior selection before product design and an overview of methods and tools.

A reference list of personal values, with questions and a worksheet for comparing what matters to you.

A chapter-by-chapter account of James Clear’s advice, with a free printable Atomic Habits cheat sheet.

Are personality tests accurate? Learn how to judge a test’s validity and reliability for your purpose and decide whether its results can help answer your question.

Choose research methods for the question you need to answer. Compare observation, surveys, interviews, experiments and longitudinal designs, then write a concrete research-design brief.

Compare twelve behavior-change theories, design frameworks, and technique taxonomies. Choose for the task at hand while keeping classification, prediction, and evidence of effectiveness separate.

Start with an outcome and select a behavior that fits the people and setting. Then investigate barriers, form a testable proposal, and evaluate the result.

Work through intervention development, feasibility, and evaluation using a missed-appointment example. Check the barrier before choosing a response, and distinguish a workable intervention from an effective one.

Conduct a structured product review with a sequence and checklist. Separate observations from assumptions, prioritize further tests, and understand what a critique cannot establish.

The evidence standard behind this site’s test explanations: identify the instrument and use, distinguish research from provider claims, explain scores, and disclose commercial interests.

Compare 13 behavioral economics and related books. See what each helps explain, the evidence behind its claims, and its practical limits.

Examine studies of retirement saving, vaccination, exercise and government nudge programs. Learn what changed, how large the effects were and what the results mean in practice.

Which personality test should you take? Compare 14 online tests: what each measures, which results are free, what the scores mean, and what happens to your answers.

Learn to read personality test results with an example report covering raw scores, percentiles, comparison groups, labels, and practical decisions.

Teach students how to read personality test results with an invented report, percentile exercises, discussion questions, and an answer key.

A guide for leaders choosing how to run an organizational change. It compares Lewin, Kotter, ADKAR, Bridges, the change curve and McKinsey 7-S on their claims and evidence, traces the 70% failure statistic, and works through a claims-office merger with a change diagnosis worksheet.

A practical guide to designing employee incentives: choosing what to reward, anticipating gaming and displaced work, deciding between individual and team rewards, and piloting with stopping rules.

A worked guide to testing whether human review of AI output earns its cost. Compare human alone, AI alone and both together, then count the errors reviewers catch and the ones they create.

A practical guide for team leads introducing AI into a workflow. Rate candidate tasks for usefulness, error risk and checking cost, then pilot on completed work rather than logins.

A worked guide to structured job interviews: tie questions to real tasks, score answers against behavioral anchors, and see what interviews can establish compared with past work and references.

A step-by-step sludge audit of a hypothetical rent relief program, from finding the rules to filing an appeal, with a burden worksheet and a plan for testing one change.