I have seen people online conducting experiments on themselves, eg. Raptitude, WheezyWaiter, Ava. This could be anything ranging from diet, exercise, internet reduction, activities like meditation or dancing, sleep cycles.
I like the idea of using social media or other online presence for accountability. Also, you need to think about some tangible metrics to measure before and after to make the experiment a valid experiment. Other factors of your life have to be kept more or less the same to provide a bedrock for your scientific inquiry (oh shut the fuck up!). So launching…
Experiment 1 - No aimless youtube or reading online (kindle, tv allowed)
I spend startling amounts of time watching the randomest youtube videos (exhibits 1, 2, 3) and reading the most inane stuff of absolutely no use or entertainment value (comments on reddit and hacker news, lists of recommended books- but not the books themselves).
Terms: so no youtube videos or reading online unless it is related to something specific like cooking or writing. I will do this for a week starting immediately.
Measuring: My screen time for the last week was 17h phone + 46h laptop (wtf that is 9h/day of almost only leisure). I expect this to fall significantly. And hopefully more alertness and more boredom, leading to less brain fog.
Join me
If you have been wanting to try something new, or just change something in your life, it’ll be great if you can join me. Decide on what you want to do and for how long, and write it down for good measure. If you want accountability, you can share in the comments, reply to this email, message me, tell your partner or friend, whatever works :)
I shall report the results in a week. Happy experimenting!