After reading Tim Ferris latest book, The Four Hour Body, I realized something very important. You see, I’ve being doing a lot of experiments lately, like the vegetarian diet experiment which I’m currently doing, but I always failed in one very important aspect, which is to keep track of specific things while doing these experiments.
How do I call an experiment a success? So far I’ve been doing this by analyzing my overall feelings, but do they really matter? I have the sensation that most results are screwed unless you can measure them. It’s not to say that they’re worthless, whatever makes you feel better, even if it’s just placebo, is welcomed. But it has to be taken with a grain of salt.
So what’s the alternative? The alternative is to keep track of something. Let’s say that you want to experiment waking up early because you feel like you could be more productive. Start by keeping track of your time now, finding a specific measurement that you care about, and then see wherever you make progress by waking up early. Of corse you still have to give it some time.
When you do this, you’ll be forced to ask yourself two questions, why, and what. You first ask yourself why you want to change. What’s the thing that you no longer tolerate in your life? After you’ve successfully answered that question, you can then proceed to answer the second question, what you can change. The difference between these two questions is that while the first one (why) is about the specific problem, the second one (what) is about the solution, or better said, a possible solution. You then proceed to test your what in order to find what works better for you.
I know this sounds like common sense to many people, but the reality is that it’s hard to measure stuff, and so we often skip that part, and then we give up because we don’t really know what’s happening. Makes sense?