Principles
What makes Effective Self-Help different?
Effective Self-Help is founded on a set of principles that we believe make our research and advice the best information available on the topics we cover.
The seven principles discussed below highlight some of the key ways in which ESH takes a fundamentally different approach to self-help, finding the best interventions available and communicating them as practically as possible.
While there are existing projects that meet some of these criteria, we are unaware of any that meet most or all. On this basis, we believe Effective Self-Help can offer something distinctive and highly valuable, slowly outcompeting lower-quality projects by providing free-to-access, reliable guidance in engaging, practical ways.
Prioritisation
Many self–help articles provide lists of actions to take to improve a certain aspect of mental health and wellbeing. However, these articles tend to lack any transparent methodology for how actions have been selected, which might be the most effective, and by what margin.
In line with one of the cornerstone findings of Effective Altruism, that some charities are more than 100x as effective as others, it seems likely to assume that some self-help interventions are more than 10x as effective as others for a given individual.
This makes the prioritisation and ranking of actions essential for directing people to the most effective improvements to their wellbeing and productivity. Considering the time constraints of many people doing high-impact work, prioritisation appears even more vital.
Research Quality
Effective Self-Help aims to produce better recommendations than are currently available through deeper reviews of the available scientific literature, a more consistent and rigorous research framework, and the use of a Bayesian approach to evidence and value.
In particular, current self-help literature often focuses on the statistical significance of study results when the focus should be directed to effect sizes. Much like hits-based giving, it is potentially far more valuable to pursue an intervention that could be very high impact but with uncertain evidence in its favour than something that we are near certain has only a small impact.
Effective Self-Help will rank interventions based on their average effect size, directing attention to how much something will help rather than just that it is of some help, and highlight the most effective interventions. To borrow from this excellent Dynomight article…
“Diet advice is often obsessed with p-values, but ignores effect sizes. If eating cranberries has a 20% chance of giving me an extra 10 years, I’m going to eat cranberries. If it’s certain to give me an extra week, maybe not. You can’t make these judgments without effect sizes.”
Though we are still experimenting with the best methods for doing so, ESH’s recommendations will also focus on the cost-effectiveness of different interventions. How much time, money, and motivation it takes to make a change has important implications for its usefulness that are important to communicate.
ESH aims to use a wider basis of evidence (with appropriate weighting) than just available scientific studies to determine what may be most effective. Given the sparse and often low-quality evidence available on many wellbeing and productivity topics, it’s essential we make use of all forms of valuable evidence available to us to form the most reliable and representative conclusions.
Presentation
A substantial proportion of popular self-help guidance is in written form, either in books or on blogs. While much of this is useful, there is a consistent lack of curation. Recommendations are often buried partway through the text and clear, actionable advice can be difficult to find.
By curating recommendations and presenting them prominently, ESH can help a much higher percentage of its readers to make changes based on the recommendations presented. Our research reports up to now provide good examples of trying to present key takeaways in this kind of quick and obvious way.
While written advice can be effective in presenting a clear argument, I think much greater benefit would come from the clear presentation of key conclusions and arguments in more engaging formats. I envisage the greatest benefit from presenting the research findings in non-text formats.
As ESH develops, we intend to expand our diversity of presentation significantly. Videos, podcasts, online courses, and interactive programmes all could plausibly make the changes we recommend more engaging to learn about, easier to understand, and therefore easier to implement. Organisations like Clearer Thinking, The School of Life, and Waking Up provide good examples of efforts to provide valuable content in more engaging formats.
Breadth
While there is a staggering range of self-help literature, there are very few projects looking to cover all aspects of useful life advice/ guidance. Effective Self-Help is currently a relatively early-stage and limited project but the long-term aim is to provide comprehensive self-help research, covering all plausibly impactful topics and interventions.
A singular location for high-quality guidance could save people substantial time, ending the need to trawl through resources and establish what is actually useful. It could also plausibly help direct people to the most effective recommendations based on their circumstances, with people finding our work through an interest in a certain topic but then discovering interventions that are also or even more useful for them.
In this light, we are looking to add a quick, screening quiz for prioritising recommendations to this site in the near future, helping people hone in on the most useful information for them more efficiently.
Practicality
As discussed above, a lot of good self-help advice is presented in a blog format. While this can be good for valuably changing the way we think about a topic, we believe the greatest benefit comes from providing people with specific actions and changes they can make.
A focus on practical action helps to reduce the percentage of readers who will finish an article and agree with its conclusions but fail to make any beneficial changes in behaviour based on its ideas.
As part of this, particular emphasis will be given to providing support for implementing new behaviours and researching how to maximise people’s success in adopting new habits. Knowing what to do to improve something is not enough; ESH must ensure that people are best supported to follow through with effective action.
Positive Mental Health
Many existing self-help projects focus primarily on people who currently suffer from poor mental health. Effective Self-Help aims to be more unique as a resource by providing support relevant to everyone, offering advice that can enhance the wellbeing and productivity of every member of society.
Effective Self-Help aims to produce small changes in wellbeing and productivity that add up to a large effect for people who may already have relatively high wellbeing and productivity. In this way, the project roughly emulates the philosophy of marginal gains in elite sport, made famous by Dave Brailsford’s work for British Cycling and Team Sky.
In particular, we believe we can produce a particularly high level of impact by enhancing the wellbeing and productivity of people conducting important work on the some of the world’s most pressing problems. Through our consultation service, we work to connect people doing high-impact work with the highest quality advice and support for specific issues limiting their current productivity.
Free Access
Current self-help resources tend to be influenced by a desire to sell a certain product, course, or book. The best advice, presented in the best way, is saved for those willing to pay for it as its producers depend on these revenue streams for their income. Even with the best of intentions, we believe this financial incentive can often compromise the quality of advice given, at least to an extent, such as when:
- A worse product is recommended because a company pays to sponsor it.
- Less time and effort is spent developing the free resources provided because the quality of paid resources has a bigger impact on the writer’s income.
- Clickbait titles and writing styles are used to increase audience growth and engagement at the expense of providing clear, high-quality advice.
- Email sign-ups are placed above helpful advice.
As a moonshot goal, the we aim to make Effective Self-Help the default location for wellbeing and productivity advice, continually updating guidance on the most effective interventions based on new research.