The Self-Experimentation Guide
I started this blog with a vague premise that there was something valuable about trying weird things, and taking a few steps off the beaten path. I didn’t have any actual justification for this at the time, so I borrowed an impressive-sounding quote from some famous sage or other: ‘All life is an experiment.’
Emerson’s non-conformity schtick was enough to get me started. But now I have a much better model for why this is important, and how to make experiments.
Over the last five years, I’ve done something like 100 lifestyle experiments great and small.
Generally these have ended well; occasionally not so well. When I say I have a ‘much better’ model of how to run experiments, that’s a relative term. I have at least managed to avoid doing really dumb shit, although this was initially as much by accident as by design.
Here’s my rough guide to self-experimentation: