In addition to writing books, recording a podcast, speaking, and writing articles about productivity, I run the occasional productivity experiment on myself, where I use myself as a human guinea pig to experiment with the ideas I’m researching.
Most of these experiments are admittedly kind of extreme—but I think this is precisely what makes them interesting and valuable. By taking ideas to their extreme, and pushing on my mental and physical limits, I can uncover lessons not found in research, while stress-testing the ideas I’m writing about. It’s one thing to write about research—it’s a whole other thing to write from experience.
I’m continually incubating new ideas for experiments to conduct, time permitting! If you have any ideas, drop me a line!
Completed productivity experiments
(In no particular order..)
Writing 200,000 words over one year: Done! Wrote 216,897 words over the course of AYOP.
Waking up at 5:30 every morning
- Article – May 22, 2013: So far, I’ve mostly failed at waking up at 5:30
- Article – January 16, 2014: Think waking up earlier will make you more productive? Think again.
- Article – February 26, 2014: The Zen of Waking Up Early: 10 ways to solidify a morning wakeup ritual
