On Personal Experiments

Hey there,

You could be living a better life. And for that, you don't need to win the lottery, be blessed by God, or follow any self-proclaimed guru's lessons.

The secret is to put yourself out there, try new things, learn the lessons, incorporate them into your life, and keep doing it intentionally.

I've been running personal experiments for some time, and recently, one of them radically changed how I work and opened up many opportunities. It was so impactful I realized I had to share more about personal experiments to help others kickstart their experimentation journeys.

Humans have been experimenting since the dawn of time. That's how we learn and evolve. It's also the foundation of scientific discovery, the operating principle of successful startups, and the way children learn.

Yet, when it comes to improving their own lives, many adults shy away from this approach. This hesitation often leads to ill-informed decisions when changes are finally made. Inexperienced experimenters tend to go all-in without properly testing and iterating on their ideas.

It doesn't have to be like this.

Let’s dive in.

What are Personal Experiments?

Personal experiments are structured, time-bound tests where individuals try new behaviors or strategies to improve their lives. They involve creating a hypothesis, testing it, analyzing the results, reflecting, and integrating the learnings in your life.

It's a no-BS approach to personal growth: you don't blindly follow what others tell you to do; instead, you try things out for yourself.

Running personal experiments helps you become more self-aware, make better decisions, and improve your life by learning more about yourself and what works for you.

Here are some examples:

• Commit to completing one small project per day for 30 days, like a sketch or a short poem, to improve your creative skills.

• Add a 15-minute HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) workout to your morning routine for two weeks to boost fitness and energy.

• Log every expense and review your spending habits weekly for two months to better understand where you can cut costs and save more money.

• Work from the city you're considering moving to for a month. Better yet, rent a flat in the same neighborhood you're considering to get a feel for it.

• Build three custom ChatGPTs in 30 days to improve your knowledge of AI — the experiment I mentioned in the introduction.

• Work in a restaurant after your daily job for a couple of months before opening the restaurant you've been dreaming about or… realize you don't like the hospitality industry after all.

What do these experiments have in common? They are low-risk with the potential for high impact. You test the waters first, then double down if it works for you.

But it doesn't stop here…

The second-order effects are one of the most enriching parts of running personal experiments. When you change your regular behaviors, you uncover new possibilities you didn't think about. Doing it in public can exponentially increase the probability of that happening.

Let’s use my custom ChatGPTs experiment as an example. This experiment significantly improved my meaningful productivity and equipped me with various AI tools and processes for various purposes. It inspired new ideas to reposition my Fixed to Flow project and connected me with professionals I admire. Additionally, it sparked the idea of a new service for building GPTs for businesses and individuals, prompting me to build frameworks to conceptualize and manage GPTs—or any other AI assistant or agent. This experiment also generated business leads and led to an interview with Ness Labs, which was the trigger to reflect on the importance of being more vocal about the benefits of personal experiments.

The good news is that running experiments is pretty straightforward.

Running Personal Experiments

After running countless personal experiments, I developed a growth flywheel to keep me grounded and ensure my experiments were impactful. Its vectors are experimentation, diversity, reflection, and integration. You can check it in detail later. For now, let’s focus on actionable steps to get you started.

When choosing your first personal experiment, you can take a bottom-up or top-down approach. Both are valid and valuable, depending on your goals and preferences.

The bottom-up approach is intuitive: identify an area you want to improve, formulate a hypothesis to address it and test it through an experiment. This approach is perfect for tackling those specific, noticeable issues in your life.

In contrast, the top-down approach requires clarity about your life goals before picking experiments that help you reach them. This approach ensures that your experiments are purposeful and contribute to long-term growth.

Regardless of your chosen approach, here are some practical tips to help you get started:

• Start small to gain momentum and build your experimenter muscle.

• Draft a plan with your hypothesis, process, and timeline.

• Block time in your calendar for the experiment.

• Embrace accountability by sharing updates in public or having an accountability buddy.

• Document your journey with observations, insights, and reflections.

• Reflect, analyze, review findings, and extract key learnings.

• Integrate the learnings into your life.

I’m creating a Notion template to guide you through setting up and running personal experiments. It'll be ready for testing in a week or two. Let me know if you want to try it.

Happy experimenting!

Stay strong, Gus