Over the past few months, as many of my readers will know, I've been interested in what causes people to change.

I've come to realize that most changes I observe in my life come from one of two sources:

Source 1 is knowledge: Knowledge changes my life when I have experience in a domain and a specific problem that arose through that experience.

For instance I went to a physical therapist a few weeks ago. My knees were hurting and I wanted to know what I could do to make them feel better. My PT communicated the secret knowledge of stretching, and my life since then has been filled with hamstring stretches and non-sore knees. This was knowledge that stimulated change.

Now, I've been to a PT many times before, and many PTs have told me that, as a runner I should regularly stretch my hamstrings. However, that knowledge did NOT change my life. In fact, I didn't even remember being told this until my most recent PT visit jogged my memory. In order for knowledge to create a change it needs to be relevant. It needs to be immediately applicable to a problem I have and can measure.

Change source 2 is thoughtful experience. Experience paired with observation and reflection can change my life, even when I have no problem to solve.

Two years ago I met someone really cool at a networking event, messaged them to meet again, but didn't get a response. A friend of mine suggested I ping them again, however to me, my new connection clearly wasn’t interested in talking. Anyway, I decided that I had to send a follow-up message— if only to prove my friend wrong.

Of course, my friend was right, my new connection replied right away, apologetic that my message slipped their mind. We met up for coffee and have been fast friends ever since.

This experience changed my life. Today, I always send follow-up messages. In fact that one successful followup changed my perspective on communication from "I don't want to bother this person" to "this person will be happy to know I'm thinking about them". This experience changed me in a way that I didn't know I wanted to change.

I think these two sources can be framed as attention resolving vs. attention generating.

In the case of my knees I had been thinking about my knees for months, giving them lots of attention. The knowledge I got from my PT changed me by resolving my attention. It gave me an answer— likely one of many right answers, and freed up my attention for other things. Today, my life is different because I think about my knees less.

In the case of not wanting to follow-up with my new friend, I had never thought that maybe I was being too conservative with my communication. Communication with friends was part of my life that had always received very little attention. This experience changed my life by focusing my attention on how I message people.

In fact, these two types of changes seem to occur cyclically.

After I realized I wanted to be more liberal with my communication I found that, even though I wanted to followup with friends, I would often forget. So I went hunting for a tool that would remind me to message people at the right time. A friend of mine suggested a tool called Dynalist and I've been using it religiously ever since.

The attention generated by my initial, thoughtful experience gave me awareness of problems that I then solved with knowledge. This knowledge resolved my attention so that it could be redirected into other areas in my life, through impactful experiences.

Attention is generated for a problem through experience and then is resolved when we seek out and receive new knowledge

However, there are often parts of my life where I feel like this cycle has stalled.

Sometimes I feel like I've been spinning my wheels on a problem, getting frustrated by the lack of a resolution. Usually this means I need to focus on finding some secret knowledge, by asking friends for help, reading or Googling.

Other times I'll feel like part of my life has gone stale, like I'm doing the same things I've always done. In these cases I need new experiences. I need to focus on trying new things in that domain. I need to challenge myself, usually alongside friends who can provide accountability and motivation.

How about you? Do you find the same patterns of change in your life? How is your experience different?

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