1290: [Part 2] A Helpful Guide To Lifestyle Experiments by Anthony Ongaro of Break The Twitch on Personal Growth

This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 1290, A Helpful Guide to Lifestyle Experiments, part 2, by Anthony Ongaro of BreakTheTwitch.com. And I'm Justin Mollick, the guy that reads to you every single day of the year, including weekends and holidays, to help you live a more meaningful and positive life. Today I have a continuation post from yesterday. I'd recommend listening to yesterday's episode first if you haven't already.

For now, let's get right to it as we optimize your life. A Helpful Guide to Lifestyle Experiments, part 2, by Anthony Ongaro of BreakTheTwitch.com. Tips to Stick with It. The most important factor of any lifestyle experiment is that you stay consistent with it for however long you planned, unless you experience serious negative results.

Without finishing, you can't see the results and make an informed decision about how it affected you. Depending on your experiment, the first few days are probably going to suck, especially if it's a change you're not used to or something completely different from what you've done for years. Your brain is going to Twitch and try to get you to stop doing whatever you're trying, even if it's actually better for you. Unless you're experiencing substantial discomfort, keep pushing through and know that once you get past a week, it is going to get so much easier to continue for your designated time.

1. Keep it simple. Remember, this may be the first of dozens of lifestyle experiments over the next few years of your life. This is a marathon and you don't have to run the whole thing right now, so take it slow and keep it simple.

You can ramp it up as you go. 2. Partner up. Accountability is an important aspect of any lifestyle change.

Do what you can to find someone who's willing to try the experiment with you. It helps to have someone to check in with and even better if you're both invested in each other's mutual success. 3. Track it publicly.

You don't have to start a blog, but sharing your experience through a blog, social media, or with friends and family is a great way to stick with it. Another great way to do this is hanging a piece of paper somewhere visible to track your progress. Make sure you don't just talk about it instead of doing it. I find it best to keep these sorts of experiments to yourself unless you partner up for the first week or two while you get your bearings.

It's easy to take a false first step by talking about doing something instead of actually doing it. Finally, if you don't make it all the way through, don't beat yourself up. It's just an experiment and you can always try again or try something completely different. If you want to try the same thing again, cut the difficulty in half and take it from the top.

Lifestyle Experiments I've Tried. 1. The Minimalist Game. This is where our decluttering journey began and continues to be one of the most effective decluttering methods Amy and I have tried.

Over a few months, we got rid of thousands of things from our home and created a physical space that we didn't even know we had. This was a fundamental change that opened up many other opportunities for us along the way. It's definitely worth taking a shot at it. 2.

Low carbs and no sugar. I've done this one for as little as 30 days and as long as four months, and every time I do it, the results are truly incredible. I did this as recently as December 2017 and lost about 9-10 pounds while buried in snow in Minneapolis and not working out at all. Since doing these no sugar experiments, I've substantially tapered the amount of sugar and carbs I eat on a regular basis, whether or not I'm doing a full ban or not.

In my experience, fat loss and muscle building is about 85% diet and 15% exercise. That might not be the case for everyone, but I found that when I don't eat sugar, I immediately start dropping body fat, have more consistent energy, feel better overall, have lower triglycerides and bad cholesterol, and don't feel as hungry all the time. To be clear, I'm not a nutritionist and I'm not able to make diet or exercise recommendations. This has just been my experience.

Sugar sucks. 3. No coffee. I still drink coffee because I love it.

But I've experimented with not drinking it and after several weeks of experimentation, found that I prefer drinking it to not. Many people I've spoken with have said that it causes them anxiety or other issues, but at least right now, I haven't noticed much along the negative side. I do typically only drink a cup of it or so per day and then stop drinking it for a few days to reset my body's tolerance so I don't need to increase my intake over time. This might be something for you to experiment with as well.

4. Social media detox. In short, after deleting social media from my phone and doing a digital detox, almost everything got better. After a few days, I didn't miss it at all.

But part of the nature of running a blog is also being on social media, so I still use it and continually seek a balanced approach to it. I find myself wanting to completely detox for a period of time every 90 days or so, 30 days off every 90 days on or something like that. If you've never done it, this is absolutely something to try. 5.

Daily writing. For the last year and a half or so, I've been doing a 5 times per week writing challenge with a friend of mine. It's not always perfect, but it's been a productive challenge that gets me writing more than I would otherwise. On the days that I have something to say, I'm consistently showing up for them to come out.

On the days I don't, I probably write a lot of garbage that will never see the light of day. Either way, it's perfectly fine. Get started. At this point, you have everything you need to get started with a lifestyle experiment of your own.

Last but not least, don't wait until a particular date, month, or day of the week, or any other trivial date to start your experiment. While it might make sense to start on a Monday, it's best to just do it now. Don't wait for a new month to experiment with and creating your new life. Being stuck is totally frustrating, but you can get unstuck by deploying some simple lifestyle experiments over the next few months.

It's a great way to shake things up and really make some substantial changes in your life over time. You just listened to part 2 of the post titled A Helpful Guide to Lifestyle Experiments by Anthony Ongaro of BreakTheTwitch.com. I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health, what supplements to take, hours of sleep, what my diet should focus on. Superpower finally takes the guessing out of it.

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So Anthony didn't explain exactly what the minimalist game is, so I'll share that with you. It's pretty simple. This one you do want to start on the first of the month to make it easier to remember because on day 1, on the first of the month, you get rid of one item, either donate it, sell it, trash it, or whatever. And then day 2, two items, and so on for 30 days.

It gets really tough towards the end, trying to get rid of 28 and 29 and 30 items each day, but you count one piece of paper as one item, so it really depends what you're getting rid of, but a great challenge to try. Leave it there for today. Hope you're having a great start to your week. And I'll be back tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.