Volume 23 of 23
Small Things That Work, Read by Six Voices
Every one of the 10 practices in this book is read six times, by six voices who do not agree, and the disagreement is more useful than any single reading.
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Ten practices that take between one and fifteen minutes, described precisely enough to actually do.
Box breathing. The extended exhale. The body scan. Grounding through the feet. Orienting to safety. Thought noting. The energy audit. A morning threshold. Three questions at night. Learning to receive.
Each one gets the full treatment: how to set up, the steps in order, how to finish, the key points that make the difference, variations for when the standard version does not fit, and — stated plainly rather than hidden — who should not do it and why. Breath holds are not for everyone, and this book says so on the page where the breath holds are.
Small, unglamorous, repeatable. The kind that works.
Earliest surviving evidence
The intervention literature: trials, not traditions
Clinical and social psychology, internationally · English · undated
Ten small practices — expressive writing, gratitude, the body scan, behavioural activation, sleep regularity, walking, naming an emotion, a values check, a single deliberate contact, and doing one thing badly on purpose — each chosen because it has been tested and each carrying its own effect size in the text. Nothing is here because it is traditional.
1979
Jon Kabat-Zinn, MBSR at the University of Massachusetts
Removes the body scan and sitting practice from their Buddhist context and puts them in a hospital, where they can be measured.
1986
James Pennebaker
Expressive writing: four sessions of fifteen minutes about a difficult experience, with measured effects on physician visits months later. One of the most replicated small interventions in the field.
2003
Emmons and McCullough
The gratitude-list trials, and the beginning of positive-intervention research as a field.
2015
The replication crisis
Several once-standard findings in this area shrink or vanish under pre-registration. This volume reports post-replication effect sizes, not the headline numbers from the original papers.
The version you have actually met
2015 · Post-replication intervention science
The honest version of the small-practice literature: real effects, mostly small, mostly requiring repetition, and considerably less dramatic than the first round of papers suggested.
Gratitude journalling will make you significantly happier.
Effects are real, small, and largest in people who were low to begin with. Meta-analyses put them well below what the popular literature implies, and daily practice does not outperform weekly.
Davis et al., Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2016
These are ancient practices validated by modern science.
Some have contemplative ancestry and some are inventions of the research literature. Where a practice was tested in a form that differs from its traditional version, the volume says which version was tested.
Kabat-Zinn on the deliberate secularisation of MBSR
What survives the correction
All of it, with the effect sizes attached. This volume is the answer to the reasonable reader who has been through twenty-two volumes of symbols and wants to know what actually moves the needle.
What survives
All ten practices, each with its measured effect size printed in the chapter rather than in an appendix. Implementation intentions are the strongest; expressive writing and behavioural activation are close behind.
What does not
The magnitude claimed in popular versions of every one of these. Gratitude journalling works, and it works about a fifth as well as the books that sell it imply. This volume prints the post-replication numbers.
Pennebaker and Beall (1986)
Journal of Abnormal Psychology 95(3) · 46 students
Tested Four sessions of fifteen minutes writing about a difficult experience
Found Fewer health-centre visits over the following six months
Since Among the most replicated small interventions in psychology, though meta-analytic effect sizes are modest — around d = 0.15 to 0.20 — rather than the dramatic figures often quoted
Davis, Choe, Meyers et al. (2016)
Journal of Counseling Psychology 63(1)
Tested Gratitude interventions against active controls, meta-analysis
Found Small effects versus measurement-only controls and smaller still versus active controls; benefit concentrated in people low at baseline
Since This is the careful synthesis, and it is well below the popular claims
Goldberg, Tucker, Greene et al. (2018)
Clinical Psychology Review 59 · 142 randomised trials
Tested Mindfulness-based interventions across 142 randomised trials
Found Comparable to established evidence-based treatments; superior to no treatment; not superior to other active treatments
Since This is the replication-aware synthesis
Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006)
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38 · 94 studies reviewed
Tested Implementation intentions — specifying when, where and how — meta-analysis of 94 studies
Found Medium-to-large effect on goal attainment, d = 0.65
Since Yes; one of the more robust findings in behaviour change
What would change this rating
A failure of the implementation-intention literature under pre-registration would move this rung materially, since that finding carries several of the ten.
A rating that no possible finding could alter is an opinion. Every volume names the result that would move it.
Parts of this rest on published research, named where it applies. The attestation date given for this system (contemporary) rests on written for this series; each practice's own lineage is named in its chapter; it dates the system, not any claim the system makes.
Every volume states its own limits. See all 23.
The Body Reader
Notice how the holds feel—both the full pause and the empty pause. Your body might prefer one over the other. That's information.
The Strategist
This is a tool used by Navy SEALs to maintain composure under fire. The structure gives your busy mind something productive to do.
This entry carries 2 of the six voices: the knowledge base behind this volume holds no more for it.
The Body Reader
Your breath is the quickest lever you have to your nervous system. When the exhale lengthens, you're speaking directly to the part of you that knows how to rest.
The Skeptic
This isn't mystical—it's mechanical. Long exhales stimulate the vagus nerve and shift your autonomic balance. It's physiology.
This entry carries 2 of the six voices: the knowledge base behind this volume holds no more for it.
The Body Reader
Your body is always speaking. The body scan is learning its language. The more you listen, the clearer the messages become.
The Mystic
We carry so much—memories, tensions, joys—in the tissue of our being. The scan is a gentle inventory of what you're holding.
This entry carries 2 of the six voices: the knowledge base behind this volume holds no more for it.
The Body Reader
When you're scattered, the first thing to remember is that you have a body. And your body has a foundation—your feet. Start there.
The Skeptic
This isn't woo—it's redirecting attention to present-moment sensation. The nervous system responds to where attention goes.
This entry carries 2 of the six voices: the knowledge base behind this volume holds no more for it.
The Body Reader
Your nervous system is constantly scanning for threat, often below awareness. This practice makes the scan conscious and slow, which changes the signal it sends.
The Skeptic
This is based on polyvagal theory—how the vagus nerve responds to environmental cues. Slow eye movement specifically activates the "safe and social" branch.
This entry carries 2 of the six voices: the knowledge base behind this volume holds no more for it.
The Skeptic
This is just metacognition training. When you label a thought, you activate the observing brain and reduce automatic reactivity.
The Mystic
Thoughts are like clouds—always passing, never permanent. You are the sky through which they move.
This entry carries 2 of the six voices: the knowledge base behind this volume holds no more for it.
10 practices
| # | File | What was drawn from it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | practices/breathwork/box-breathing.yaml | the whole document |
| 2 | practices/breathwork/extended-exhale.yaml | the whole document |
| 3 | practices/somatic/body-scan.yaml | the whole document |
| 4 | practices/somatic/grounding-feet.yaml | the whole document |
| 5 | practices/regulation/orienting-to-safety.yaml | the whole document |
| 6 | practices/mindfulness/thought-noting.yaml | the whole document |
| 7 | practices/mindfulness/energy-audit.yaml | the whole document |
| 8 | practices/ritual/morning-threshold.yaml | the whole document |
| 9 | practices/ritual/evening-three-questions.yaml | the whole document |
| 10 | practices/boundary/receiving-practice.yaml | the whole document |
The knowledge base this volume is extracted from, file by file.
All 10 practices of the system, in 6 parts. Each one is read by the six voices of the Council in turn, then followed by space to answer for yourself.
Parts of this rest on published research, named where it applies. On the series' six-point ledger it is rated evidence-informed.
There is no defensible attestation date for this one — written for this series; each practice's own lineage is named in its chapter — so the book says so rather than inventing a lineage.
Parts of this rest on published research, named where it applies. The attestation date given for this system (contemporary) rests on written for this series; each practice's own lineage is named in its chapter; it dates the system, not any claim the system makes.
An Astrologer who reads timing, a Body Reader who asks where a thing lands in you, a Herbalist who asks what it costs, a Strategist who wants your next concrete step, a Skeptic who pushes back on all of it, and a Mystic who goes further than the other five. They appear in every chapter, in that order, and they disagree.
74 printed pages at 6 x 9 inches — roughly 1 hours and 38 minutes of reading, though most people use it a chapter at a time rather than front to back.
Yes. 6 complete readings from this volume are published free below, and every chapter title is listed on this page.
