The Year of Monthly Experiments
I’m sure this only applies to me, but if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t universally kept my New Year’s Resolutions. In late December, most people I know take time to reflect on the highs and lows of the last 12 months and then set a meaningful, life-changing goal or two and simply flip the switch on 1/1. New leaf officially turned over.
This, of course, is absolute horseshit. Compliance rates for New Year’s resolutions are painfully low and I, for one, am sick of coming up short year after year after year.
That’s why my plan for 2019 is to run 12 month-long experiments that are purposefully too intense to adopt as permanent resolutions. My theory is that I won’t feel bad about not maintaining these for the whole year because they are designed to only last one month each.
My goals for the project are two-fold:
Primary goal: Get better at planning and implementing experiments in lifestyle design. Continue to teach myself that people can do anything for 30 days and are way more capable and resilient than they think.
Secondary goal: Identify several new behaviors that increase my quality of life and adopt them moving forward, although likely in a less intense fashion than prescribed in the experiments.
Before sharing the list of experiments, I’d like to extend an invitation to you to join me in any/all that seem interesting. If your reaction to one in particular is “There is NO WAY I could/would do that for an entire month”, I strongly encourage you to commit to it immediately. Or even better, come up with your own list of month long changes to try.
2019 Monthly Experiments
January: No social media, no news. Log-out of all social media sites and delete them from your phone. Do not check news websites, watch the nightly news (if that is still a thing people do), or read the newspaper. I don’t think social media is the root of all evil but everyone should probably take the time to remember what their life is like without it. Whether you tend to consume media that is more left or right of center, it almost certainly creates a baseline level of anxiety in your life and my plan is to take an extended break to start the year.
February: Try all the foods you haven’t tried. Obviously, this has its limits but if there are normal-ish foods that for whatever reason you’ve never had, eat them this month. I’m a notoriously picky eater and there is an embarrassingly long list of foods that I’ve literally never had (including fan favorites like tomatoes, salmon, ranch, and potato salad). I made a master list of 45 foods/dishes and will try all of them across the month of February. Foods will be rated on a 1-10 scale.
March: No complaining. I first heard about the 21 Day No Complaining Challenge (https://www.willbowen.com/complaintfree/) on Tim Ferriss’s podcast. The core principle is that your word choice determines your thought choice, which then determines your emotions and actions. The goal is to go the entire month without “describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem.” Spoiler alert: You won’t be able to make it one day, so you need some sort of trigger to remind yourself each time you violate the rule e.g. a rubber band that you move from one wrist to the other.
April: Don’t eat anything with added sugar. Rather than terrify myself by reading one of the countless books about how eating sugar is worse for you than main-lining crystal meth, I prefer to focus on the myriad health benefits to be gained from reducing one’s sugar intake. This would probably be only a moderate challenge for many people, but my sweet tooth can deadlift three times its body-weight for reps. I am absolutely dreading this month.
May: High intensity interval training 3x/week. For years, my fitness routine has been exclusively lifting weights. Although you certainly can get an aerobic work-out from a hard lifting session, particularly one with a high rep range, it clearly isn’t the best way to improve your cardiovascular fitness. However, there is ample research that suggests you don’t need to spend 45-60 minutes sucking air to build a world-class motor, but rather a series of short full-exertion sets followed by brief rest periods can be just as effective. Three times per week, I will do 8 sets of 200m sprints on a rower with 60 seconds rest between each set.
June: Check email only twice/day, use no technology outside of work. Like no added sugar in April, this could be a breeze for you or reading it could give you heart palpitations. If you’re tempted by the “I get so many emails at work, I would fall way behind if I only checked twice/day” crutch, rest assured that some of the most productive people on the planet use this method to dramatically reduce their daily distractions and swear that the resultant extended periods of focus significantly increase their overall productivity. If you have a large TV habit, go cold turkey for the month.
July: Do all household grocery shopping and laundry. In our family, my wife does 100% of the grocery shopping and laundry, bless her. This mountain of work will fall squarely on my shoulders in mid-summer 2019. At a minimum, I expect it will reinforce the daily gratitude I feel for the countless hours she spends on these critical tasks.
August: Volunteer 2-4 hours/week. Volunteering is one of the most tried and true means of improving your subjective well-being. Or so I’ve heard. Similar to trying new foods, I’ve spent a shameful amount of time consciously giving back. We plan to make this a family activity as much as possible.
September: Run outside for 30 minutes each morning. This combines two routines that many people swear by: early morning exercise and spending time outside every day. The downside, of course, is that running is the most miserable experience a human being can endure, except for running while receiving a root canal.
October: Read nothing new, synthesize and reflect on what I’ve learned. The downside of my voracious appetite for books is that I often spent large chunks of time simply summarizing others’ thoughts without incorporating the lessons learned into my daily life in any meaningful way. If you aren’t a big reader, pick two books (at least one non-fiction) to start and finish this month. I’m happy to share recommendations.
November: Yoga 3x/week. After 13 years of martial arts training, I was like Stretch Armstrong and could easily kick a foot above my head. 15 years of desk jobs later, I can’t bend over and touch my toes. Yoga is a tremendous way to improve flexibility and mobility as well as build strength. In November, I will attend a weekly yoga class with my wife and she will lead us in an in-home yoga flow twice/week on top of that.
December: Ramp up meditation: 20 minutes/session, twice/day. For the last 3 years, I’ve meditated for 10 minutes nearly every morning. It has been incredibly beneficial and the main thing it has taught me is that my brain will occasionally create weird thoughts and emotions for no particular reason, so I shouldn’t be overly attached to unhelpful versions of either. A shockingly high percentage of world-class performers in many different areas have a daily meditation practice and the most common optimal dose seems to be a 20-minute session immediately after waking and another 20 minutes in the afternoon.
Monthly Recaps: