Testing Virtuous Cycles Part 1
Journal of testing a practice that moves beyond Agile, in order to apply it in Experiment-driven Development for Ecosystems
Virtuous Cycles is designed by DurgaDas, an autodidact polymath on the autism spectrum whom I met in the Token Engineering community. He also used to train athletes. Virtuous Cycles is very much inspired by mutliple perspectives, it’s systemic, and what got me going is his framing:
How do I bring in my intentionality into goal finding and then keep this connection in scheduling.
It’s based on mindfulness.
You can listen to DurgaDas here. I can only underscore that you (or the team) needs to go through an exploratory phase, to identify intentions first: Why do I think/feel this goal is worth attaining? If you are used to this, i.e. you have done it before, hacks like “Ask Why 5 Times” might suffice. If not, especially in an Ecosystem or Token Economy, I recommend the Ecosystem Valueflows course, which will have a peer learning version, and a game-based version asap. In the meantime, you can read about some of it in Chapter 4 of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Token Engineering (subscribe to learn when it’s read-y).
Overview
DurgaDas thinks of token engineers as intellectual athletes. Hence, his method got all my sympathy points from the start ;) As opposed to all other organizing/structuring/processes I have worked with, this one is the first that starts with Neurodynamics and the “Inner Game” of a human that is performing. The background research returned so many insights, I want to follow up on. In addition, Virtuous Cycles is a mindful process that will hopefully not degenerate into a dark version of itself, in which
“you are technically doing the right thing, but since you don’t understand why, you’re not really getting the benefit.”
- 3-fold Daily (micro) Cycle is about balancing: Learning/Reflection — Work/Performance — Enjoyment/Inspiration. How about sharing these with whom you serve? Instead of journaling at the end of the day?
- 6-Week Block (macro) Cycle is about progressing towards goal without losing sight of yourself or the goal or the bigger picture in which that goals is worth attaining: Explore/Reflect/Visualize (Week 1) — New/Shock/Anaerobic (Week 2) — Stress/Stretch/TestLimit/EyeOnGoal (Week 3) — StressInContext/CapacityNotLimits/Long+aLittleDeep (Week 4) — Resilience/Long+Deep/NotUltimate (Week 5) — GoalTime/MaxEffortIntensityStress+ValumeTime (Week 6)
- 1 week (mini) Cycle is about generating emergence & minimum visible progress (compared week to week, or this week of previous macro cycle): Deep Rest (day 1) — TryNew/BreakLimit/EnjoyIntensity/FeelShock/GoAnaerobic (day 2) — CrushIt/Extend/Flow*/BefriendStress (day 3) — SlowDown/AvoidNew/BefriendMind/SlowFlexFlow*/NoStakesNoBreaks (day 4) — ActiveRest/TranslateIntoFlexFlow*/VisualizeOutcome (day 5) — NoStakes/Opening/Prep (day 6) — Stakes/Accumulation/FullDepth+FlexFlow/Goal (day 7)**
*the mini cycle is geared towards creating emergence/flow in progress. Flex Flow, I interpret, is the ability to go into flow with increasing ease, through compounding translation of daily structure into this “flex flow”.
**typically days 6 & 7 is the weekend, unstructured time, to allow emergence.
Let’s dive in! And keep in mind — I have no previous experience with applying Virtuous Cycles. This is my day 2 (TryNew/BreakLimit/EnjoyIntensity/FeelShock/GoAnaerobic). My block goal is: Ship Token Model Generation, in which among other things: we’ll establish Virtuous Cycles as an alternative to Scrum/Kanban for Experiment-driven Development and Deployment of a Token Model (people know my love of fractals :D ). So, the book chapter and appendix with cheat sheets will have refinements for applicability in TE and references to DurgaDas work and offering. “What book,” you ask?
Daily Structure
DurgaDas starts with a structure to Find Daily Balance, by having these three main blocks/cylces in your day, every day (except unstructured emergence weekend days). This reminded me of “The Work Triangle” by W Timothy Gallwey, whom I encountered through Alan Kay’s talk on Learning: He, too, focuses on “The Inner Game” of the player:
From my perspective there is no “knowledge work,” especially in token engineering, it’s rather “intellectual investment.” The most valuable intellectual investment, akin to “smart money,” is creative knowledge:
“Happiness in the doing is important, for creativity to flow, for ideas bubbling up ready to be caught” — David Lynch
As someone who made her fortune telling the future, it’s clearly visible, that in volatile environments (not only in crypto), marked by automation, — the only way to outperform machines is by finding enjoyment and inspiration in our doing, our actions — our humanness as part of this complex adaptive system.
“Action in inaction and inaction in action” — Bhagavad-Gita 5.17.
Exploratory phases in Virtuous Cycles
When you start a new virtuous macro cycle (a block of 6 weeks), the exploratory phase is week 1 — it’s this: Obeserve & interact, without intention. This is akin to Exploratory Data Analysis, in order to gather data and insights in Machine Learning. Once you have a sense of the environment, got the beat, the possibilities — then you can set a sensible, intentional, goal and state your why.
The current system is super simple: “make number go up” “add to buttom line” “increase profit” (i.e. cut cost, increase revenue — at all costs). Eric Ries called those vanity metrics, but didn’t quite manage to overcome their tendency to sneak back in even in Lean Startup Method. You don’t need to explore much. A quick sprint shall give you signals of product-market-fitness, potential for growth (how big can the number get) — which the team then signs with blood, sweat, and KPIs — commits and delivers. This system doesn’t cut it anymore, at least not in my worldview of connected ecosystems. There are many others leaving this simplistic model behind.
When you start a meta/mega cyle, I guess, the exploratory phase could be one macro cycle, an entire 6 week block. I’m collecting this guess work whilst applying so I can ask more intelligible questions when we have our session with DurgaDas.
(btw. you can skip over my contextualization, in italics, it’s getting a bit long)
When I look back to the exploration phase, I needed an entire year for orienting, sense making: My intention was to make token engineering practical so that a token startup venture’s runway isn’t swallowed by paying people to figure this out, to acquire the skills I needed make it practical, and have fun while doing so — because, well, it seemed like the universe was dDoS’ing me with messages 2019/2020, in case I had forgotten why I left my profit-oriented career that was a straight line and clear steps on a roadmap for the next 30 years and certain outcome (or so the system wants me to believe; keep calm and carry on) — knowing (and ignoring at a very high mental cost) _I_ was adding to the crises on our planet while the firm is making profit, funding a comfortable life for me and my family, at the expense of others on earth.
NB: the startup way, I learnt, was just the same after you find “ a business model that is repeatable and scalable.” And for capitalizing your startup sufficiently you needed to ensure the business model is… profitable at all costs, measured in today’s dollars. I also learnt that most Venture Capital and Impact Investors are very risk averse, apparently there is also a power law distribution in the investor population, i.e. very very very few investors ask themselves “What if it works?” The vast majority ask themselves what is the Return on Invest in Dollars (even in crypto). But mostly I learnt that all of what business and finance modeling/engineering is: getting a handle on business dynamics in a scientific way. Huh, did someone holla the scientist?! On top of that, imagine The Firm is a construct of contracts, which are now executable —then all that is missing is sound decision making in complex adaptive networks (see Origin of Wealth). I had clearly found my 0mega point — and token engineering, the space to take the first step, the adjacent possible. Oh boy, what a meta cycle that was. I will process that separately — let’s get on with applying Virtuous Cylces.
Day 1 is also an introspective, exploration. The beginning of the weekly cycle, deep rest, acknowledging efforts (see above) of past cycles. I even took an entire week previously to do just that. DurgaDas’ recommendation is when you start a 6 week macro cycle to consider week 2 to be the first “on” week. It’s all about creating space for forming and formulating intentions and goals, potentially revisiting according to what emerges, insights, and progress you make.
My Goal for this macro-cycle is to round up Token Model Generation (TMG) Chapter, by adding super practical worksheets, pushing to GitHub, so that people/teams who know their ecosystem very well well can actually benefit already from reading the chapter and start sorting, modeling. Get the others excited about the peer learning version and game-based version of the Ecosystem Value Flows course.
Help aspiring TEs appreciate the beauty of this field and their response-ability, a true super power, they will want to put in service to tackle the leftover problems which profit-maximization did not solve (likely created):
The plan: write up what is already applied many times, create opportunities to apply final round up sections to add practical tips and worksheets, link to available courses etc.:
Got Game ? — weekly Game Jam sessions with TMG1 badge holders, especially alumni of the last cohort. (a) Specification for the Game-based version of the course content (b) Test it with Impact Pirates (c ) write section “Got Game?” [novelty level: not much, been at this ever since]
Ecosystem Value Flows — write up of course content, refocus on incentives: intrinsic, extrinsic, internalized extrinsic; incentive mechanism design [novelty level: not much, the course had its 3rd cohort with sufficient feedback, the challenge is to boil it down! chapters are supposed to have 30–40 pages max]
Computer-aided Design — write up of cadCAD in TE context mostly, with insights from past study group; weekly synch with cohort 3 alumni for co-creation of TMG2 (see depiction below)[novelty level: somewhat if we add tokenSPICE as CAD and generalize the steps]
Experiment-driven Development — maximum novelty…especially testing Virtuous Cycles as an alternative to Kanban/Scrum, possibly need to come up with process flows that can be integrated in e.g. Miro, Asana etc. Part of co-creation of TMG2, look forward to have DurgaDas also present and exchange!
Day 2 — which is this entry :) I went all in, having identified what is the newest aspect to master in this macro cycle, I’m dedicating Tuesdays now to planning & development with Virtuous Cycles by DurgaDas. Co-creating TMG2 with fellow aspiring TEs who took TMG1, applying it with DADAkin (protectors of my creative space all along in this journey). Loads of scheduling, which typically would drain my energy to lowest levels. However, keeping intentional and connecting it to the goal, being mindful throughout this day, was a good to great experience!
Taking stock of my daily triangle: learning/insight, enjoyment/inspiration, performance/work
- Insight: Virtuous Cycles fills a huge gap: How can you be a team player in a remote team or a decentralized organization, deeply connect to others, if you are constantly hacking away at tasks (which dark agile ultimately results in), if you are losing the connection to yourself, why you were in this in the first place? It’s based on mindfulness, inner work. When we manage to describe how this process can be used at scale within a token economy project, including all participants, I am certain, the TE world will be a little better than it was before. At least where Virtuous Cycles is applied.
- Inspiration: of course! I love the new, so Tuesdays will be my Yeay Days. Also enjoyed finding connections to the course content so easily. Enjoyed my run this morning: testing the mini-cycle within 1 hr, just to see if I can wrap my head around the whole “translating structure into flex flow” (still had too many open questions yesterday).
- Performance: Well, knowledge work is what it is. Writing is both part of the process as well as the output, especially when digesting or creating new knowledge. The outcomes are wild, as last year showed me. So, I’ll keep an open mind about performance/output/outcome —as long as insights, and return on insights “add up.”
I am really glad to have found this process: We aren’t just moving mindfully beyond engineering the incentive machinery, but also re-engineering how we get things done! No more “get people to do things by rewarding them with euros, tokens, badges” — but by actually help to connect what we are doing, our goals, to our intentions and purpose.
I know, for many it is difficult to find direction in the first place, and you need to take your time to explore first. This balancing of the triangle can definitely help even in exploration phase. In keeping direction, I feel like, Virtuous Cycles, can become a very useful helper.
Alright then! Tomorrow is Crunch Day! indeed :) My intention is to write daily — but maybe I’ll push the publish button, once there’s a chunk of content. Stay tuned!
