The Three-Part Process of Becoming
It takes more than quality information to change the heart
This is a foundational post for Building Eternal, one I’ll likely reference often. Because before we talk about productivity systems, mimetic desire, or eternal ROI, we need to establish what we’re actually doing here: paying attention to how we become.
The Question Behind Every Question
Every tactical question hides a deeper one:
“What’s the best morning routine?” → Who do I become through my mornings?
“How do I scale my business?” → What kind of person does scaling make me?
“Should I use this app?” → How will this tool form my attention and desires?
We’re not just doing things. We’re becoming someone.
The question is: are we awake to it?
Three Words That Change Everything
Let me give you a framework: three words that map how humans actually change:
INFORMATION → The Inputs
What comes at you. The books, feeds, conversations, environments, tools, and systems that enter your life. The raw material of becoming.
TRANSFORMATION → The Process
The slow sculpture. How information moves through you, shapes you, marks you. The daily alchemical process by which inputs become identity.
FORMATION → The Becoming
Who you are becoming. Your loves, desires, habits, character. The person taking shape through all your transformations.
Most people think: Information → Action → Results.
But it’s actually: Information → Transformation → Formation → Then Action → Results.
We act from who we are. And who we are is always under construction.
Where This Framework Comes From
The concept of formation isn’t new. It’s ancient wisdom that we’ve mostly forgotten in our age of quick fixes and life hacks.
Early Christian mystics understood that spiritual growth wasn’t about knowing more (information) but about being slowly shaped by practices, community, and grace. The Desert Fathers spoke of askesis - training, like an athlete, but for the soul.
Monastic traditions built entire ways of life around formation. St. Benedict’s Rule wasn’t a productivity system, it was a formation engine. Every prayer, every meal, every period of work was designed to slowly form monks into people who could see God.
Modern theologians like Dallas Willard brought this back into focus, arguing that discipleship is primarily about who we’re becoming, not what we’re believing. James K.A. Smith’s work on “liturgies” shows how our daily practices, sacred or secular, are forming our loves and desires.
Even secular philosophy gets this. Aristotle’s concept of habitus (that “we become what we repeatedly do”). Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of practice. MacIntyre’s virtue ethics. They all point to the same truth:
You are not a static self choosing different tools. You are a dynamic being, always in formation.
Why Modern Life Fights Formation
Here’s the problem: everything in our current world is designed for information consumption, not formation cultivation.
Apps optimize for engagement, not character
Productivity systems measure output, not personhood
Social media rewards performance, not depth
Even churches often focus on teaching (information) over practices (formation)
We’ve built a world that shapes us accidentally, reactively, anxiously — while telling us we’re in control.
We’re not.
The Building Eternal Thesis
What if we paid attention?
What if we asked of every system, habit, tool, and practice:
What information is this bringing into my life?
How is it transforming me - my attention, desires, fears?
Who am I being formed to become?
And then the crucial fourth question:
4. Is that who I want to be in eternity?
Because here’s the thing: you’re being formed anyway. Every notification, every productivity hack, every business model… they’re all forming you into a particular kind of person.
The only question is whether you’ll be formed accidentally or intentionally.
Practical Formation (Yes, Really)
This isn’t abstract. Here’s how it plays out:
Your morning routine isn’t just about energy - it’s forming you into someone who either starts reactive (check phone) or receptive (prayer/silence).
Your metrics aren’t neutral - tracking revenue forms different desires than tracking relationships or peace.
Your information diet - what you read, watch, scroll - is literally rewiring your brain’s default modes. You’re being catechized by your feeds.
Your tools - every app is a formation engine. Notion forms certain types of thinking. Twitter forms certain types of expression. LinkedIn forms certain types of identity.
Even this blog post is forming you - either into someone who thinks more deeply about becoming, or someone who files this under “interesting but not actionable” and moves on unchanged.
The Invitation
So here’s what Building Eternal is really about:
Living with formation awareness. Recognizing that you’re always becoming. Choosing your inputs carefully. Designing your transformations intentionally. Becoming someone who can hold both success and soul.
This isn’t another optimization framework. It’s older and stranger than that.
It’s the recognition that you are not a machine to be optimized but a soul being formed.
And every choice, from your morning coffee ritual to your KPI dashboard, is part of that formation.
The question isn’t whether you’ll be formed.
The question is: into what?
And: do you have the courage to pay attention?
Next week: We’ll look at “The Hidden Formation of Productivity Culture” — what kind of person our optimization obsession is actually creating.
P.S. A Formation Experiment
Want to see this in action? Try this for one week:
Before using any tool or starting any practice, ask: “What kind of person might this form me into?”
At the end of each day, ask: “Who did I become a little more like today?”
That’s it. Just notice. Formation begins with attention.
And attention, it turns out, is the beginning of transformation.