Stories from Edison: Lucid Dreaming, Dropping Twitter, Sleep, and Personal Medical Experiments

(Surprises, insights, and stories from Edison, the Think, Try, Learn experimenter's workbook.)

• Productivity: In No RSS for a week, we hear about "Cascade of Changes" - be prepared for the unanticipated consequences of our actions. Example: Someone went into therapy in order to stop smoking, and ended up divorcing her husband!



• Twitter: Stop Twittering has a comment about the best use of Twitter (at least for my content) and mentions % of valuable hits in an information stream. Is 10:1 good - I think so. Who rates that high? Ben Casnocha (Twitter, Delicious). Commenter suggests I use delicious rather than Twitter (if sharing references to others).



• Health: In Try melatonin to see impact on sleep we hear about DHEA and an MD's observation "You realize you're conducting a medical experiment on your body, don't you?" Yep! Also, no report of lucid dreaming. Another sleep experiment: Improve Sleep Hygeine.



• Productivity: Have you considered turning off Gmail's inbox unread count? The setting is in Hide Unread Counts. Also, check out the new "Got the wrong Bob?" and "Don't forget Bob" feature. It's working great for me.



• Writing: Starting with The Definitive Guide To Superhero Novels I'm experimenting to write shorter, simpler, and more frequent blog posts, seven so far. A conversation arose around the experiment about why a tool change supports this. Related: I came across this book, which made the connection of tool = place: The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions.



• Reading: Someone experimented to Improve reading speed using Tim Ferris' techniques, based on Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes 235 Comments. Overall: Thumbs up, but his baseline was pretty high. (Related: How about Reading Books The GTD Way?)



• Tech: A reverse switcher, Attempt to switch back from Mac to Linux is going well, with an email efficiency bonus.



• Business: In Try an Affiliate Network Revenue Model for BringIt, the experimenter is trying an affiliate network for advertising their Bring It signup sheet program.

Finally, v1.0 of Edison is coming (a experiment, of course :-) in the next month or two. I had a lot of fun designing it with Liza (she's talented - check out explorethomascole.org), and we think it'll rock. A sample screen's to the right. Major rollout efforts when it's released!