The Study · open now
He said it.
Nobody published
the numbers.
In 1914 a man named John L. Alexander was teaching in youth camps that a life has four sides — physical, mental, social and religious. In 1931 William Danforth's book made the idea famous: he drew it as a square, and argued that no one side should be built at the expense of the others. The foundation Danforth co-founded credits Alexander, not him. People have repeated the idea for a hundred and twelve years.
Plenty of people have measured something like it since. What nobody has ever published is the thing the idea actually claims: how far apart a typical person's four sides really are. There is no answer to how lopsided is normal.
We kept the shape and made it secular: Body, Mind, Soul, Social, where Soul means meaning, values and inner life and asks nothing about belief.
70 seconds · captions available
What we're actually doing
We built the measurement. 150 questions across those four sides, and two numbers at the end: Box Size — how much you've built overall — and Squareness — how even the four sides are. You can be big and badly out of true. Most people who take this are.
Here is the part most assessments will not tell you. Our scoring bands were designed, not derived. The lines between Solid, Serviceable, Underbuilt and Out of true were set by judgement, because the distribution needed to set them properly has never been published — not by Danforth, and not by any of the instruments that have measured something adjacent since.
So we're collecting it. That's the study, and that's what you'd be joining.
The offer, stated plainly
Free until fifty people finish.
This is not a countdown timer. It is a real event with a real number: while we are gathering the calibration sample, the full assessment is free. When the study closes, it becomes a paid product.
You get your own results either way — your four sides drawn to scale, your shortest side named, and a plan weighted toward it.
And everyone who takes part gets the free ebook — Is Your Box Square? The Short Version. It is the framework distilled: the four sides, the two numbers, what a short side actually costs you, and what to do about the shortest one. Written from this research, which your answers are part of.
Take the full assessment — free →About 24 minutes · your results are yours · no card, ever
Please take the full version
There are shorter depths on the site, and for a casual visitor they are fine. They are no use to the study. The short versions ask three or six questions per facet; the item-by-item analysis needs all ten to tell a working question from a broken one. A half-length response cannot be topped up afterwards — the data simply is not there.
So if you are here to help: the full 150. It is the whole ask, and it is the only part of this that has a deadline.
What happens to your answers
- They are pooled and never tied to your name. The analysis looks at the questions and the spread of scores across everyone — never at who you are.
- They are used to find the questions that are not working — the ones nobody understands, the ones everybody answers identically, the reverse-worded ones that may be behaving backwards — so we can fix or remove them. And they give the first look anyone has had at how far apart a person's four sides typically fall.
- Fifty is not enough to set the score bands, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Proper norms need samples in the hundreds to thousands. Fifty is a thorough inspection of the instrument and a first distribution; the bands stay labelled as designed until a much larger sample exists.
- You can have them deleted at any time. Ask and they are gone.
- We will publish what we find — including the parts that do not flatter the instrument.
The full detail is in the privacy policy, which says the same thing in more words.
Answer honestly, not aspirationally
This is the one thing that can quietly ruin a study like this. A flattering answer does not just distort your own result — it makes the scale slightly worse for everyone who comes after you. Nobody is reading your answers individually. There is no advantage to a good score.
Just want the ebook?
You don't have to take anything. Leave an email and we'll send you Is Your Box Square? The Short Version — free, no strings — plus what the study finds when it closes, including the parts that don't flatter the instrument.
The 24 minutes is still the more useful thing, because you get your own four sides drawn to scale rather than a description of somebody else's. But the ebook is yours either way.
We'll never sell or share it. Unsubscribe in one click, any time. Privacy
Be one of the fifty.
He said it. Nobody published the numbers. Help us publish them.
Start the full assessment →