2011-04-20: They did WHAT?

Quick links from the past week of experiments in the World Wide Lab

The best way to learn is to experiment and fail, says Michael Dell. The idea that failure is a necessary part of success is a common idea, but that doesn't mean it's easy or accepted. I like his thought, though:

I think the best learning comes from actually doing things and experimenting, and failing quickly, and small experiments. It's certainly how our company got started. ... It's not always easy and doesn't always work, but that's how the system works.

Two other useful posts on the topic are from HBR: Failure Isn't Enough and Failing Toward Success at Google.

In Food experiments: Sharing recipes online brings new flavors, the author shares one person's journey into vegetarian cooking. Trying new recipes, and variations within them, is a tried-and-true platform for experimenting. Two cases I've come across are not having the right ingredients, and accidents, such as adding the wrong thing or cooking too long.

Experiment: Turning Blogs Into A Kindle Book covers a very clever experiment where the author "took about 100 of my blog posts, bundled them as a PDF, and submitted them to the Kindle Store." He charged $2.99 (a price break point where Amazon's take drops from 70% to 30%). I very much like the idea of using platforms like the Kindle store to do quick experiments like this. The pattern is come up with something relatively easy to test, decide what you'll test, put it up, and learn from the results. It's too early for results, but what do you think about it? Have you tried anything similar?

Cube Project Is A 97 Square Foot Psychology Experiment describes the idea behind Mike Page's Cube Project at the University of Hertfordshire. The gist:

build a compact home, no bigger than 3x3x3 metres on the inside, in which one person could live a comfortable, modern existence with a minimum impact on the environment

I like that he's studying possible behavioral changes that result. Anyone want to give it a go?

The brief story Demand-based parking fees to start in San Francisco made me wonder about the value of such experiments, when reducing the use of cars in general seems more the point. Small steps, I suppose. What would you experiment with to get people to drive less?

The author of Nuclear experiment is a failure says "The biggest and main problem is that nuclear power is still in the experimental stage." Is nuclear power an experiment? If so, what are we measuring?

In the article Study Looks at 'Forbidden Fruit' Hypothesis we learn about a University of Kentucky study that tested the "forbidden fruit hypothesis:"

"If the circumstances or situation implicitly limit a person's attention to an attractive alternative, that alternative suddenly becomes 'forbidden fruit.'"

The answers supported the forbidden fruit theory: "Those whose attention to look at the attractive picture was controlled answered that they were less satisfied in their relationships and had a more positive outlook on infidelity." How could we use this to structure our environments to dissuade (or support) this behavior?

The author of Social experiment: Know thy neighbor shares the results of his reaching out to get to know people around him. I love personal social experiments like this, and I work to try them regularly. What strikes me is that doing this could be considered a kind of experiment in the first place (I think it is). It speaks to our long-distance and thin social connections, I think. I'm curious: How well do you know your neighbors?

Finally, in the category of "Try something extreme for a year and then write a book about it," Comedy and caveats in new book 'The Great Fitness Experiment' talks about Charlotte Andersen's book, The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything. Other examples include Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. What I appreciate about these books is, beyond the fun stories, of course, is the inspiration to try something new, along with experiment ideas. Have you read the book? Any others in this category that you like?

Productivity Group Experiment: The 96 Minute Rule

If you're interested in ways to get more productive, check out Chris Crouch's new group experiment, The 96 Minute Rule. I mentined the idea of breaking your time down into chunks in The best "chunking" time block - 96 Minutes? Here's the idea, from the experiment instructions:

Since the 80/20 rule states that we typically get 80% of our results from 20% of our efforts, it is a good idea to totally focus on important tasks for at least 20% of your workday (480 minutes x 20% = 96 minutes). This experiment is designed to lend structure and create a framework for implementing this theoretical idea.

Anyone want to give it a shot?

How contagious is courtesy? An informal experiment

Like most clichés, "courtesy is contagious" had no real meaning for me until I experienced it. In this case, as I was driving I let someone enter a line in front of me, and noticed that next person behind me did the same. This made me wonder how contagious courtesy really is, so I decided to experiment with it a little.

First, I tried the opposite driving behavior - the more common zero-sum "someone else can let you in" approach where I did not let people into line. After trying this a handful of times and comparing it to the courteous case, I noticed that roughly twice as many cars passed before letting the waiting person in (the best I could judge from my rear-view mirror.) In other words, if I let someone in, then the person behind me one or two back would let in the next person in line. If I was not courteous in this way, however, it looked like ~3-4 cars back let them in. This is a poorly-controlled test, but not only did it seem to help, it made me feel better. Result: A keeper!

I've noticed a similar "follow the leader" behavior from the bicyclist perspective. Where I live in New England, we have narrow roads in the country, which makes biking both beautiful and dangerous [1]. What I observed is that when a driver gives my wide berth (actually crossing the dividing line - thank you!) then following drivers do the same. The opposite is generally true too: If someone whizzes by one foot away at 45 MPH, so do the drivers behind him. I still haven't figured out experiments to try from the bike to change this behavior. Angry waving doesn't communicate.

Another little example I noticed is while waiting in line at the library, I heard the elderly man in line before me tell the check-out person, "I appreciate all your hard work in the library." Being reminded of civilized behavior encouraged me to do the same, like scooching my chair back against the table I was working at for the next person.

Here's an experiment idea: For a week, actively look for examples of (un)common courtesy. Or better yet, pick a small courteous activity you can try out, do it fora a week, and stick around to see if anyone repeats. Not conclusive, but a bit of evidence, and plus it feels good. Who knows, you might start a trend!

I'm curious

• Have you seen something like this in action?
• Are you naturally courteous?
• If you experiment with this, what were your results?

References

• [1] A two-by-two, anyone? Beauty vs. danger (help me here):

  0,0: Ugly duckling
  0,1: The Stone Fish
  1,0: Disney princess
  1,1: Femme fatale    

2011-03-11: They did WHAT?

Quick links from the past week of experiments in the World Wide Lab

The Fish Pond: Vazquez's velocity increasing: I don't follow sports, but "experiment" comes up constantly in that context. In this case, pitcher Javier Vázquez is reported to have changed his form to use his lower body more. It seems to be working: "On Wednesday against the Nationals, Vazquez was clocked at 90 and 91 mph, after he was about 87 mph in his first outing." What's interesting is that experimentation is prevalent in sports (and probably has been forever), and that there are straightforward metrics for evaluating impact.

Facebook experiments with streaming movies: In "Tell me, Betty. Has your husband always been..." I mentioned Amazon's recent addition of instant video to their Prime program. Well apparently Facebook and Warner Bros. Pictures are getting into the spirit with an experiment to offer The Dark Knight for 30 Facebook credits (AKA $3). From the Think, Try, Learn perspective, this highlights how experiments can impact others. In this case, Netflix Investors Spooked By Facebook Video Experiment. Of course our personal and group experiments don't have this kind of massive impact, but they do affect those around us. Relationship experiments in particular come to mind.

Plastic-free experiment an eye-opener for Kanata family: Here's an experiment I admire, and that anyone could try. A family of four stopped buying things containing plastic. Wow! Given that nearly everything has - or is wrapped in - plastic, it's a challenge. The article mentions what we eat, what we wear, and how we wash and brush our teeth. It also shows the power of experimentation to change behavior, in this case naturally using much less plastic.

I was pleased to find recent stories on killing your TV (or at least not paying for it), such as What it's like to cut the cord and stop paying for TV and Savings Experiment: Cutting the Cord on Cable's Pricey Monthly Bill: We've not had cable for years, which I admit gives me an embarrassing and smug sense of superiority, along with the more humble satisfaction of not rewarding crappy programming by paying for it. That said, for us the experiment wasn't difficult because we haven't spent the time to find a series that we like.

In this Book review of The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us, the author mentions some fascinating experiments, such as the 1995 "sweaty T-shirt experiment":

By getting 44 men to wear T-shirts without deodorant for two nights and then having women sniff them, Wedekind discovered that "women nearly always preferred the scents of T-shirts worn by men with MHC genes different from their own - suggesting that we can determine our genetic compatibility with potential partners simply by following our noses."

What I particularly like is the comment that the best science experiment is the kind that defies your expectations. Edison experiment, anyone?

Finally, what list of experiments could fail to mention Amy Chua's provocative Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (covered in Time's Tiger Mom: Amy Chua Parenting Memoir Raises American Fears)? To me, of course, its potential for experiments leaps out. So, I was pleased to see someone trying it out: Valerie Frankel: My Tiger Mother Experiment: Using Chua's Book as a Parenting Guide. Do you have any thoughts on this one? I haven't studied it yet.

How to Bottle Up Good Feelings (Group Experiment)

When I told a friend about some recent great news (a LinkedIn invitation from a self-experimentation leader), she suggested I "bottle the feeling." This struck a chord with me because I tend to focus on the negative, i.e., when things don't feel like they are going well. So I decided to do an experiment where I do just that - capture when I feel especially good because of an event. My "bottle" in this case is my big-arse text file. All I've been doing is:

1. Notice when something good happens to me,
2. Write it down in the file, tagging it with BottleTheFeeling, and
3. Review the file when I'm feeling down.

So far I've been doing the first two, but I haven't implemented a reviewing practice. Also, I had not set up a proper Edison experiment, so I thought I'd make a group experiment and ask if you'd like to join me. You can learn more about it at bottle good feelings (Group Experiment). To join immediately:

Here's the summary, taken from the experiment:

What can we do to save up good things that happen to us when we need them on emotionally rainy days? A gratitude journal is a traditional approach, but in this experiment we try something simpler and more immediate - "bottling" the feeling for later.

This is similar to the common gratitude journal idea [1], but feels to me a little lighter to implement. It's also similar to my hack, Use Gmail's "star" to highlight your good news, but more specific.

Why don't you join me? It'll be fun!

References

• [1] Here are two useful links. First, How to Keep a Gratitude Journal | eHow.com. Second, from What is a gratitude journal?:

  [In your journal] you will write 5 things that you are grateful for that day. You can do this right before bed or in the evening sometime. These don't have to be big earth shattering revelations, as most things you are grateful for are not. These entries are what matter to you and what you are grateful for. This is a very personal venture. The only 2 rules with the gratitude journal are:

  1. Everything in it must be positive and;
  2. You can only list something you're grateful for once - no repeating entries.