Why you need to experiment more {and how}

Sometimes, experiments fail.

I almost always write my blog posts (or any other writing) at the end of the day. What most people would consider the middle of the night.

Today, I thought, “I wonder what happens if I write in the morning.”

No attachment to it. Just try it.

So I did.

Six times. I’ve tried to write “this” blog post (ANY blog post) six times.

They all sucked and got deleted. Forced. Contrived. Weird sounding. Way too much editing as I was writing and second guessing what I was doing. Maybe I’m just tired enough at 1AM to not give a damn about how something comes out.

Sometimes, experiments “fail,” but really, there’s no failing because I went into this curious. “What happens if…” Playful, open to possibilities, collecting another data point.

We view things as failures when we decided ahead of time how they needed to turn out. When we had expectations for the results and were subsequently disappointed. But if we go into something detached from the outcome, feeling a bit like a scientist (or a second grader, when you learn the five steps of the scientific method), having a hypothesis but knowing full well that it may not end that way… and that being ok, we’re much more open to experiment. (What are you not experimenting on? What place would you like to get different results but keep doing the same thing over and over?)

Getting this post out, all 200ish words of it so far, has been far more like pulling teeth than usual (so why did I do it then? because I wanted to see what was possible and share the process with you, that’s all). But I know now that my middle of the night dates with WordPress are probably worth maintaining, and can easily dismiss any “I wonder if I’m screwing myself over by leaving this until the end of the day?” feelings that I can tell now I had been suppressing.

{Note: any time you start a sentence with “I wonder if…” that’s a really good place to take just enough action that you get some results and know for sure. No sense in using all your brain power to keep “wondering.”}

And now, because “playful” and “open to possibilities” and “collecting another data point” does not mean I need to subject you to painful reading, I’ll rather promise a post on detachment at some other point.