How to Use Workbooks

As someone who struggles with using self-paced workbooks, I spent some time overthinking why I struggle with workbooks when I will happily sit and do logic puzzles for hours. It turns out workbooks themselves are quite complicated for me for a variety of reasons and I ended up creating a definition (my favorite thing!) and a bill of rights for using workbooks.

Like the workbooks themselves, these resources may or may not resonate for you.

I start with the definition to give myself a framing for “why” I might use a workbook and what the limitations of that workbook will be. I feel we are conditioned as children to assume workbooks are infallible, always have correct answers, and that punishment for failure lies ahead.

I continue with the bill of writes to give myself psychological scaffolding to approach workbooks in a responsible and right-sized manner. As someone who loves a good psychological theory workbook, safety and cognitive guardrails become even more important. Individuals using ideologically-oriented workbooks should consider content with the same seriousness to ensure your personal values remain aligned.

Definition of “Workbook”

A workbook is a combination of knowledge plus guided exercises designed to help an individual independently enact a step change in their life. It is a framework that can help some people based on the knowledge design and alignment with the individual’s situation and needs:

A workbook seeks to provide an expanded set of options for a specific problem.
Each exercise may be helpful, neutral, or harmful based on the design of the exercise AND my emotional and physical state at the time.
A workbook will not resonate with everyone; it may be an excellent workbook for one person and terrible advice for another.
A workbook is temporary, meant to represent answers at this time, not in perpetuity.
A workbook is fallible, limited, and (most importantly) opinion even if the content is based on data and scientific studies; it is not gospel.

Workbook Bill of Writes

I will protect my psychological and physical safety:

The efficacy of a workbook is limited by my ability to properly interpret and manage the experience of doing workbook exercises; it is my responsibility to protect myself when performing self-work and to cease the exercises and contact supports/experts if I am in over my head.
I will be careful when choosing to start a workbook; even the best workbook at the wrong time can be damaging.
I will monitor a workbook’s content, rationale, and exercises for alignment to my personal values and the way I want to show up in the world.
I take my privacy seriously; I reserve the right to destroy my workbook at any time, complete exercises in ways that are not recorded, answer cryptically, or use other means of performing exercises that are temporary and not archivable.
I may do workbook exercises with a trusted person to provide psychological safety or supports.

I will have reasonable expectations of myself:

A workbook is not a contract; I can discontinue a workbook at any time for any reason.
I don’t have to complete everything in the workbook; I don’t have to read every word on every page or read everything in order (commonly known as the no completionism clause).
I can stop or skip content when stress arises.
I will resist putting unnecessary time limits or creating artificially stressful environments around workbook contents.

I will adapt workbooks and exercises to my needs:

I can rewrite questions, prompts and content so that they make sense for me.
I don’t need to have the right answer or even the fully complete answer.
I don’t need to be “correct” the first time; I can partially fill out an exercise, revisit or redo an exercise, or cross out the entire thing as needed.
I will breeze past content for which I already have a working solution in my life.
I will disregard content that doesn’t apply to me (and not waste time arguing or rationalizing with myself about this content) (the NOPE clause).
I may use any form of communication to complete exercises, including, but not limited to: writing, drawing, speaking, singing, gestures, conversations, or sounds (regardless of my ability to communicate in written words).

I won’t take a workbook too seriously:

Far too often, workbooks were used during classes with punitive measures around focus and intensity of work completed in books; I will not hold myself to unnecessary stillness, silence, or gravity in the name of doing a workbook “right”.
I reserve the right to us humor during self-improvement: I may give nonsense or overly poetic answers, draw cartoons and monsters, decorate my workbooks with stickers, stamps, collages and googly eyes, speak my answers aloud in poorly rendered accents, and use profanity and made up words at will.