#202: If You Can’t Fix Your Problems, Try Running a Micro-Experiment

June 10, 2020—It’s hard to tell what things impact your life when your mind is in ten places at once. Experimenting daily can help you figure yourself out.

I first learned about the scientific method in middle school…then promptly forgot all about it for the next fifteen years of my life. When I read The 4-Hour Workweek last year, though, I became intrigued by Tim Ferriss’s habit of running experiments on his own life.

When I say “experiments,” I’m not talking about buying $20,000 of laboratory equipment and walking around like one of those government scientists in Stranger Things. I just mean observing problems and testing them in a semi-structured fashion.

For example, the skin around my nose gets red and irritated all the time—but I’ve never been able to figure out why.

Three days ago, I decided to run a little experiment.

The blotches seemed to be the worst right after I took a shower, so I hypothesized that commercial soap was irritating my skin. First, I tried goat soap for a week—which had no effect. Next, I hypothesized that soap, in general, was causing the irritation…

Sure enough, after just three days of not using soap, my skin is MUCH clearer…