Questions for Jonny

🥳 What went well?

There’s SO much that went well, but to summarise:

+ The content was incredibly rich and there seemed to be many profound and prominent shifts for many of the students. You’re doing a great thing for humanity here :)

+ There were several key voices in the Discord who facilitated and encouraged discussion really nicely. I think we should and could definitely utilise them really nicely in future cohorts!

+ I thought the Typeform’s were curated really thoughtfully and fostered great learning through reflection.

+ The Nervous System OS was genius and I think will be hugely helpful to people as they progress.

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🚀 What could we learn from/build on next time?

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Onboarding

+ In the Course Overview page: https://www.notion.so/curioushumans/Nervous-System-Mastery-b71af02ff0f443feb70ecb09bfad44ea that you sent as part of the sales promo, you outline the course curriculum. This would also be nice to feature on the Student Dashboard too to help people get a feel for what to expect—now that they’re committed and ready to start the course, rather than just learning about it as per the promo page. This would again help them get prepared for it and give a nice overview of what’s coming up.

+ Week 1 feels like it's asking a lot from people. I think the welcome email should be sent at least 2 weeks before the course officially starts. This would allow people enough time to get themselves mentally, emotionally and practically prepared to start (and prepare their nervous systems!). Then once the course starts, they can focus solely on the content, rather than getting their head around the different elements, information, platforms etc.

+ As above, the opening session feels very pertinent to framing the course and getting people psychologically ready to embark on the journey. In the absence of this, I wonder if there was more difficulty staying motivated/committed? One thing I’m wondering is whether we could automate an email to those who didn’t attend the opening session saying “sorry you couldn’t make it, the content covered is crucial in starting your course off, if you could spare 20-30 minutes please go through the content” and then share the content from here with them: https://www.notion.so/curioushumans/NSM-Curriculum-3b06ca3a8ca3468e873169d41372b199#3ca9c9b2c7464a0eb4ef1fa2eb8fcdc2

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Content

+ In terms of the overall content structure, the general feeling I had myself and from other students was that there was a LOT of content to get through and not enough time to integrate it all. From around week 4, it felt as though people were falling behind and struggling to keep up and felt more good to stick with the week 3 protocols for a little while longer. Also, there were varying levels of experience in the group, so for some it would have all been brand new information, whereas others some of it was fairly familiar. There’s so much beautiful wisdom and knowledge in your body and brain, and I think you could spread the content out over several courses, each building on the last and that this course should be super foundational. Like really strip it back and lay the bare foundations. It seemed to me that people peaked at week 3 and then fizzled from there, so I wonder if the interception and down-regulation is the sweet spot to start with? This would also lend itself to selling more courses in the future.

Or an alternative viewpoint, if not reducing the amount of content, I wonder if the course could be spread out over more weeks with ‘integration weeks’ e.g. weeks 1-3: content, week 4: integrate weeks 5-6: content week 7: NS OS?

Or a final thought, during the pre-screening/onboarding Typeform, ask questions around their current experience and depending on this, have level options to subscribe them to e.g. complete beginner with no experience, beginner with a little experience, beginner with good experience etc. (this feels like a much later iteration though!)

+ In a similar vain to the above point and to a few threads around habit forming, I wonder if it’s more sticky to introduce 1 protocol each week. The less new habits we are trying to ask people to implement, the more likely they are to stick to them (and find time to implement them). Especially the complete beginners in the room, I’d imagine asking just 10 mins of a practice every day would be a big shift. And then for the more advanced/curious, we could offer ‘bonus protocols’.

+ Something that came up and I think would be super helpful is to have separate audio and/or video demos of the protocols in its own Notion page in Appendix ‘Protocols’ for easy access (I personally downloaded the audios from Transistor and saved these to my desktop — but I could only do that because I had access to your Transistor, plus we want to keep everyone in the Notion ecosystem).

+ It might be worth hiring an illustrator to create lovely graphics. Visual aids seemed to be in high demand, and I think this would really help people to absorb + consolidate the info more easily (plus great for sharing on socials!).

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Structure

+ One prominent question in my mind now and throughout was “what’s the most important element here: are we trying to create a community—via Discord and learning pods— or is this is a self-study course with the option to take part in a conversation via Discord” — I think we could definitely give some more thought to how the Discord or otherwise could be best used and managed (perhaps a brainstorm call at some point would be goood)

+ You’ve already noted that you want to ask about learning styles prior, and I think the co-reg crews should come into this too. I’m not sure how much these were utilised, but I’m not sure the ROI on these was worth the time + effort from us and from the student. I wonder if instead of learning pods of 2-3, we run regular drop-in 'learning pods’ — where we could setup a space that people can drop into and use prompt questions to discuss. And they don’t necessarily need to be facilitated by you every time, but could be facilitated by the group themselves or a VIP student from cohort 1 — or I’d even be happy to.

+ Which leads me onto another point, can we get video testimonials from any students to share with as part of onboarding? Asking them to record the obvious questions like “what did you get from the course etc” as well as “what do you wish you’d made more time for” or “what advice would you give to a future NSM student”.

+ After each week’s Typeform, it should be good SOP to go through the responses and pick out questions to address and consolidate these. If there is a general theme across the cohort, these can be addressed via an announcement or otherwise.

+ I wonder if—as well as the follow-up call—a follow-up email is sent too, summarising the key learnings and reminding students about their OS. This would help keep momentum going and give them a chance to pick back up where habits may have dropped.

+ Nitty gritty: There are a few very specific things that I would make suggestions on that I picked up as I was going through. However, at this stage I’d imagine these won’t be useful to share, as they might become redundant as the structure changes. I’ll keep them noted for future ref.

Firstly, based on your question on Twitter today, the course now is strong enough as it is to provide lots of value to people, so I'd urge you to keep iterating and improving through cohorts rather than retreating to create the "perfect" course, not least as I'd imagine the continuing feedback will throw up paths you wouldn't find on your own.

NSM was fundamentally very useful to me, though my application has been patchy, I'm still breathing every morning and am more likely to attribute moods to bodily states. I'm sure I'll get better but I doubt there's be backsliding from this awareness.

As for ambition/scope, I'd observe that rationally the course shouldn't be overwhelming, but it was. No one in my co-regulation group really completed it properly, and that includes one person who actually teaches courses on this sort of thing. I don't know the solution, but I think even more focus on fewer topics might be a good start, and maybe putting some of the extra "and this, and this" items in an "extra resources" page.The main thing that could be improved for me personally would be the cadence.

Ideally I'd have liked to do the heavy lifting of listening and taking notes on the weekend, but the Monday-Friday nature of it left this difficult. I always felt I was a week behind and that I "should've" properly digested all the material before doing the breathing exercises for that week.

So more flexibility there would be appreciated.I note you've quite a loyalty to explaining the material in the academic terms you yourself have consumed it in.

I wonder if this is best. Obviously it works for someone who's going to want to delve into the research themselves, but for a wider audience you might be better off having fun, and literally creating a universe of vivid terms and analogies that really stick in our minds. Obviously you do that a little with the car, but I wonder what'd happen if you let your imagination run wild.

Finally, I'd just say congratulations on the putting together a great course and something of real personal value to your audience and financial potential for you. As someone who's done my fair share of walking in the wilderness, I can imagine how validating the whole experience was for you :)