🚿Cold Showers
From cold showers, to contrast showers, to a lifelong habit.
Why you should run your own 30 day experiment:
— Eat that frog. Doing something hard makes other hard things easier.
— Improved recovery after the gym. Greatly reduces soreness.
— Improved hormone balance.
— Better ability to regulate body temperature.
Take each of those above with a grain of salt, they are my own opinion. Some backed by science, some not, but it is what I have experienced.
I have been taking cold showers for three years now, since the first time I decided I was going to take one every morning for 30 days. I absolutely hated it.
Take my advice and don’t do it the way I did it. Do what I do now — contrast showers.
Get in with hot water, shampoo your hair, flip to ice cold for at least a minute.
Flip back to hot water, finish showering, then go back to ice cold for at least a minute more.
Feels to me like I get the same benefits, but without it being absolutely miserable!
🍴Dieting and what works long-term
No-Carb, Vegan, Vegetarian, Keto, Paleo, you name it.
Why you should run your own 30 day experiment:
— Get a feel for what works for you. Everyone is different.
— Actually paying attention to what you eat. Not grabbing what is easiest.
— Make all your other goals easier. When I eat right, everything else falls in line.
— Eat out less. Tough to find restaurants that accommodate restrictive diets.
— Save money (see above).
— Spend more time cooking your own food (for some that may be a negative but I enjoy it).
I feel like I have tried everything out there. And gone through phases where I am not worrying about what I eat at all.
What I have discovered is that high protein and high fat work by far the best for me, and that almost any change leaves me feeling better than the usual American free-for-all.
Trying vegetarian and vegan left me feeling horrible and constantly hungry despite getting more than enough calories.
Best I can do now is try to buy animal products from real farms, where animals are treated with some amount of respect.
💪Exercise that doesn’t burn you out
Just get there, high volume, 5x5, movement, westside barbell.
Why you should run your own 30 day experiment:
— Look better.
—Feel better.
— Be better.
— The human body was made to move. To work. To be pushed. We don’t do that enough anymore.
I played sports my entire life. Even when I was playing college football I could barely squat over 300lbs. In the years following, I was nowhere near that.
Until, after a lot of experimenting, I started to follow some of the philosophies from Westside Barbell (Learn more here). I reached a PR 2 years ago of 395lbs on squats. Soooo close to a nice round 400.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been putting the time in like I should be since then and am back down to 315lbs currently.
But what I do know, is that after trying a lot of different training regimens, this one works. I was stronger in every lift when I followed a modified program of theirs for ~5 months straight. And it all started with trying out a new thing for 30 days. Now when I workout, I still follow a lot of what they preach, just with a little less weight.
💼Getting more done
Carving out time everyday to do Deep Work.
Why you should run your own 30 day experiment:
— Actually make progress on difficult tasks.
— Find the real way to learn new skills faster.
— Increase your focus and productivity.
— Handle the challenges of modern distractions with ease.
Read this book -> Deep Work by Cal Newport.
All the reasons why and how to do your own deep work are all there.
The single reason why my personal projects, reading, and writing all generally happen in the early hours of the day, and because of that, I get more done than ever before.
🍺Alcohol — what goes can ruin what comes out
How much does drinking really affect me? Find out with a strict thirty days of no booze.
Why you should run your own 30 day experiment:
— Understand how you operate without it.
— Realize how much of your time and energy it is stealing.
—Gain more time for important tasks.
— It gets much easier to drink less when you aren’t being strict.
Let me start off by admitting I still drink. But one thing I know is that when I do these 30 days of no alcohol periodically, those 30 days are happier and more productive then the periods of time I am drinking.
So what you do is learn how big of a difference it makes, and pick out 2 or 3 or 10 times out of the year you will not drink alcohol for 30 days at a time. Use those periods to make moves, get healthier, learn new skills. Then go back to partying on the weekends…if you want to.
📝Fostering a journal habit
Small notes daily, essays to future self.
Why you should run your own 30 day experiment:
— Become a better writer.
— Organize your thoughts and feelings.
— Have something to look at 5 years from now to remember where you used to be. Appreciate how far you have come since then.
—Give yourself a good laugh 6 years from now. ( I had a dream about winning $1.6 billion dollars from a slot machine and was still worried about breaking my no alcohol rule? 😆)
You can see in those images above. Part of all these 30 days experiments is writing notes to yourself, and being a little embarrassed of them, but how else will you know what worked and what didn’t?
How else do you remember your day to day from so long ago? I know I don’t!
But just those little journal entries foster a habit of thinking about what you are doing currently, how it is affecting you, and what you can do to be better. And on days when you are down, nothing picks you up better than just putting thoughts down on paper, at least that is true for me.
📈What will you experiment with over the next 30 days?
Start small. The things that work will grow over time.
Do one sit-up when you wake up tomorrow. Congratulations you just did more than most people will do that day. Now do it again the next day.
Do one push-up. Congratulations you’re in the one percent. Now do it again the next day.
Have a conversation with someone you don’t know. Congrats. You did it. Many did not. Now do it again the next day.
Don’t drink that beer (or four) after work. Congrats. You’re better off than just about everyone. Now do it again the next day.
Work on that project for thirty minutes. Pretty soon it might be two hours. Pretty soon you accomplished way more than what you thought you could. Now do it again the next day.
Wake up an hour earlier. Congratulations you just beat another couple million people. Now do it again the next day.
Write your thoughts down. Organize them. Learn more about yourself. Congrats. You are growing more than most. Now do it again the next day.
There are a million little things you can do today to make a better tomorrow.
Enjoy those little things. They make all the difference.
— Jay
Let me know what has worked for you in the past, and what you plan to experiment with in the future!
If you haven’t challenged yourself to change a habit, create a new one, or get rid of a bad one, then give it a try over the next 30 days.
Track your progress here or on your own!
Keeping records of what you tried and how it went helps you grow the most and make better decisions for your future experiments.
That is all it takes to change the way you operate for the rest of your life!
