The Human Kernel: A Control Systems Model for Business/Work Performance

I’m developing a model grounded in control theory/cybernetics to optimize my business performance — context: I’m working 70hr/week on a high-output startup. Specifically, attributes like Health, Mindfulness, nAch/Ambition, Patience, Discipline and Grit are commonly recognized as a [non-exhaustive] list of “pillars to success” - these are the ones I’m seeking to maximize.

Most performance tracking is either purely biometric (HRV, sleep) or purely task-based. I’m interested in the Interplay among my attributes - i.e. how they act as multipliers for one another and my core metric of interest: My amount of high-quality output (admittedly subjective, but I’m working on refining it :slight_smile: )

The Logic: By maximizing these internal attributes, one maximizes every driver of success within their direct control. While you can’t control “Stochastic Shocks,” (e.g. market crashes or hospitalization) you can ensure your “Human Kernel” is at 100% capacity to capture luck when it strikes.

Garbage-in-garbage-out consideration: Assigning values to control theory variables like “rate of decay” and “recovery constant” in the domain of psychology can admittedly get very fuzzy, but by using a “Gray Box” approach—back-testing subjective scores against “ground-truth” output—the system self-corrects. Even with self-reporting bias (specifically, me grading my own performance), modeling these attributes provides higher-fidelity insights than unmodeled intuition.

I have two questions for this group:

  1. Why isn’t this more common? Performance psychology regimens for business & work are still dominated by isolated prescriptions for optimizing attribute or attribute (e.g. grit, discipline, etc.). Why don’t we see more rigorous/scientific models in the field of self-improvement? I know “quick fix” solutions will always dominate this market, but surely there’s some demo that’d be interested in this approach if it worked - are modeling these attributes unlikely to help somebody significantly move the needle towards business success?

  2. Has anyone else here attempted to quantify psychological attributes? I’d be interested in learning what challenges you faced!