Never Stop Experimenting

The other day I tweeted out a post titled “How to Write a Twelve Minute Blog Post.” As a result a brief twitter exchange occurred between the author, Becky Robinson, and me.

During the exchange she asked me what I thought about the post and if I thought it would work as a consistent thing.

My response was that it probably wouldn’t work for me, but for others it probably would work well. At the time I was thinking along a different track, but later in the day I began to re-think my original answer to her. I realized that I completely wrote off the idea for me as un-workable, but I hadn’t even tried to write a twelve minute post — ever. So how did I know it wouldn’t work for me?

Oops. Writing off an idea because I “think” it won’t work isn’t a good way to live. Doing that could cause me to miss out on all sorts of opportunities. So I decided to experiment and I’m using this post as my “guinea pig”. I’m already into it by 5 minutes.

Of course this got me to thinking about experimentation and it’s benefits. So here are a few thoughts.

1. Experimentation is the only way to verify the truth or falsehood of an assertion or belief.

   Living by your assumptions is a real mistake. When you live by an assumption you limit your power, your insight and your dreams. You don’t live by knowledge, you live by guesses. Guessing your way through life is a great way to create disaster and chaos. (10 minutes)

2. Experimentation keeps life interesting.

   One of the biggest problems those of us in modern society suffer from is boredom. We have built a huge “entertainment industry” because we are so bored with ordinary life. By experimenting with our ideas, we entertain ourselves without having to rely on external stimulus. To me this is a much better way to live. (11minutes, 30 seconds)

3. Experimenttation is the best way to understand and expand your limits.

   Do you want to find what your true limits are? Do you want to learn how to break through them? The quickest, most efficient way to do that is through experimentation. By testing and pushing your personal limits, you expand and grow as a human being. You make your life better by taking action even if your experiment fails, because you will always learn something in the process. (15 minutes)

So right now I’ve learned that a 12 minute post isn’t quite doable for me, because I experimented and failed. But I do know that a post doesn’t have to take me two hours to write. I can write one in about 20 minutes. That’s a piece of information that I can rely on. I now know my limits and can work to broaden them.

Who knows? I might even be able to improve and get my blogging time down to 12 minutes some day in the future. I won’t know that until I experiment some more. (19 minutes)

What have you assumed about yourself that you haven’t questioned and experimented with? How would you experiment with that idea to see if it’s true or not? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Photo credit: flickr user jurvetson