self-improvement

2018 is my year of experiments (Why? TL;DR: New Year’s resolutions are over-rated and have a high failure rate. Anyone can run an experiment for a month.) My first experiment (No news for a month) is nearly done and I’ll declare it a success. Background The round-the-clock sensational news cycle exists in large part to create wealth for the already-too-wealthy. Little of it is actionable, leaving us at the same time both outraged and impotent.

New Year’s resolution time is at hand. But not for me; at least not in a traditional sense. I was inspired by David Cain’s experiments. In short, he conducts monthly experiments in self-improvement. The idea of an experiment is appealing in ways that a resolution is not. A resolution presumes an outcome and relies only on the long application of will to see it through. An experiment on the other hand, makes only a conjecture about the outcome and can be conducted for a shorter period.