A friend of mine (Hi Jing!) introduced me to Raptitude, a great blog centered around the idea of experimentation. David, the blogger behind it, conducts little experiments in his own life and posts his observations and conclusions. Some examples of his experiments include:
- Going 21 days without complaining
- Establishing meditation as a habit for life
- Being vegan for 30 days
- Writing 1,000 words a day
- Going 30 days without alcohol and caffeine
I found his posts to be incredibly inspiring, so I decided to try out something like this on CheerfulEgg as well.
Why?
Because, as David mentions, talk is cheap.
Cheerfulegg is all about concepts, tactics and strategies in personal finance and living a rich life. Up till now, I’ve only blogged about the ones that have worked successfully for me, and discarded the failures. I apply everything that I blog about here in my own life, because if I didn’t, my finances (and life) would fall apart.
But you shouldn’t take my word for it. It’s way more powerful to SHOW you what I’ve tried out in my own life.
So, inspired by Raptitude, I’m launching LifeTests - a new series of experiments I’ll be testing out. Along the way, I’ll be logging my experiences, thoughts, and lessons learnt. I might even post a couple of videos.
Hopefully, you’ll be able to benefit from the lessons I’ve learnt, and maybe get started in conducting your own LifeTests as well.
There are just 3 rules when it comes to LifeTests:
- Each LifeTest must have an objective related to living a rich life. I’m keeping it pretty broad here, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be about personal finance. Some aspects of living a rich life I might test are: productivity, health, networking, spending, saving, etc
- Each LifeTest must have a limited timeframe of 7-30 days
- For maximum focus, I’ll only conduct one LifeTest at any one time
A list of possible LifeTests:
- No morning coffee for 14 days
- No Facebook for 14 days
- Sleep at least 7 hours a day for 14 days
- No alcohol for 30 days
- Track everything I spend for 14 days
- Log everything I do for 7 days
- Get an IPPT Silver (a fitness test for Singaporean males) without going to the gym
- No checking email before 10am for 14 days
- Tracking the performance of “Buy” recommendations from scammy investment newsletters
- Organize a mini-rebellion
- Talk to one random person a day for 14 days
I’ll think up of more as we go along, but I’d love to hear from you.
What LifeTests would you like to see me conduct? Treat me as your human guinea pig (But keep to the rich life objective – I can already hear my friends and colleagues snickering on how they’re going to make me wear women’s underwear for a week). Leave a comment below or send me an email to tell me your ideas.
In the meantime, I’m starting off with an easy one (I hope): No morning coffee for 14 days.
