The Crazy Shit that Works
This article was originally published on the Change Tribune.
Becoming Great at Anything
I’ve spent that last 5 years running behavior change experiments in my life. I’m constantly seeking methods to become the best version of myself, and asking how to be efficient about that pursuit. It pays to ask: How does one become great at something?
Malcolm Gladwell examined extreme performance in his book Outliers and found the key: put in 10,000 hours of work. He’s was half right. But whether a pursuit has rigid rules (chess, tennis, law) or flexible/non-existent rules (business, music) matters [1]. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is indeed required to become world-class at a pursuit with rigid rules.
But when the rules are flexible, there are often creative, out-of-the-box solutions that can catapult us toward mastery.
This is why young entrepreneurs with no business experience created Facebook, Tumblr, Virgin, and Dropbox, while we can’t name a championship tennis player who catapulted from couch to fame in a few years.
Personal Change Has No Rules
There are no rules in personal change, but there are subtle, pernicious boundaries that hem us in. In this series, we will step outside the box and speak openly about techniques that aren’t often mentioned in polite society. What follows isn’t for everyone. Much is illegal (psychedelic drugs), non-normative (cold showers), or just seems crazy (stop having orgasms). But they work, and they are backed by our current understanding of human physiology and psychology.
As you work towards becoming your best self, what implicit rule-book are you playing by? Is it serving you?
A few years ago, I asked Dave Asprey for advice on moving beyond the ‘basics’ (nutrition, exercise, sleep).
He mentioned a laundry list of techniques, among them tantric sex, lucid dreaming, meditation, and Bulletproof Coffee. To say I was incredulous would be an understatement. My point-blank to question Dave: ‘If all of this works, why aren’t most people aware of it?’
His reply sticks with me more vividly today than any individual technique. Paraphrasing Dave: When society decides that something isn’t possible, it takes extraordinary proof to overcome this bias. It become de-facto impossible.
Having beliefs that contradict those in your community is dangerous. Influence-makers in modern society are naturally risk-averse and avoid holding and transmitting beliefs that could land them in hot water.
So the first (and second, and third) piece of contradictory data is immediately rejected. It takes an avalanche of data to break through confirmation bias [2]. Witness the path marijuana has taken over the last ten years for a modern example of this phenomenon.
Your health and happiness are too important to wait for the world to catch up. Read on to learn how to run smart experiments to find ‘crazy’ techniques that work.
Exploring the Crazy Stuff:
Have an Open Mind
When we hear an outlandish claim or counter-intuitive proposition, our immediate reaction is incredulity. There is good reason for this. Most things that seem crazy ARE crazy. If we didn’t have our defences up, we’d fall prey to all manners of scams and cons. So when we hear about ‘one weird trick’, we run for the hills.
Here’s the rub though. There is sometime a baby in that bathwater. Popular culture doesn’t have a great track record. After all, alcohol was once as a prescription medication [3], ‘female hysteria’ was regularly diagnosed [4], and regular exercise didn’t begin to emerge as a movement until the 1950s [5].
So the first step, and perhaps the most difficult, is to have an open mind when presented with ‘crazy’ ideas. Instead of immediately rejecting them, trust that you’ll be able to dispassionately, rationally, and scientifically evaluate their merits.
Explore the Research
Your first stop when evaluating a crazy idea should be Pubmed, the large-scale database maintained by the US National Institute of Health. Unless you are a trained scientist, it can be useful to get a quick read on the criterion you can use to evaluate a research study.
Although it’s impossible to understand every topic with the knowledge of an expert, it’s often easy to get a broad sense of what the research says about a topic.
What Could Go Very Right, or Very Wrong?
If a crazy idea passes the research sniff test, take a look at what could go right, and what could go wrong. Look for potentially huge wins, and watch out for catastrophic losses, rather than focusing on the small stuff.
Let’s explore with a few potential techniques [6]:
If you are interested in geeking out, gwern has the cost/benefit analysis of personal experimentation down to a science.
Run Experiments
If you’ve decided an experiment is worth running, it’s worth running right. We’ve written a guide to help you run better change experiments.
Crazy Shit That Actually Works: The Cold Shower
The humble morning shower.
What could be crazy about the humble morning shower? Read on for why it may make sense to shower cold, infrequently, and (mostly) without soap or shampoo.
Cold Showers
In 2013, I decided to try cold showers. Aside from an occasional indulgence, I’ve never gone back. Cold exposure has a number of physical benefits, including fat loss [7], exercise recovery [8], and bolstering the immune system [9]. But these physical effects aren’t the reason I continue.
Mood and Energy
Cold showers stress our bodies gently, and in doing so provoke an adaptive response (called hormesis). Todd Becker describes the hormetic process in great detail on his blog Getting Stronger.
This process has particularly strong impacts on our mood. Cold water exposure has long been used as a treatment for depression, and modern researchers are beginning to take this ancient form of therapy seriously [10].
Why does this work?
“wet and cold causes our surface vessels to vasoconstrict (tighten up) making blood move from the surface of your body to the core, as a means to conserve heat. Not only does it conserve heat, it also reflexively bathes the brain and vital organs in fresh blood. This movement will bring nutrition, oxygen and also help gently detoxify the area.” [11]
What this equates to in practice: An immediate mood lift, sometimes bordering on giddiness, following a few minutes in a cold shower.
Aversion Therapy
My first run-in with cold showers was during winter in Steamboat Colorado. These were *very* cold showers! To psych myself up for the plunge I cranked the tune Audacity and sang along:
“Audacity, that’s the term of the day
Pertaining to the way a kind of person behaves
A description, hmmm, how would you word it
Maybe it’s guts or just being assertive
You can spot ‘em in any walk of life
From the prophet type to your boss or wife
And maybe they’re vain or plain narcissistic
But equipped with enough heart to risk it
Coming across a bit bold or arrogant
But when they leave we wanna know where they went” [12]
This ritual highlights the most important reason that I continue to take cold showers. They serve as a form of aversion therapy, helping me build a general tolerance for being uncomfortable.
Pushing forward to achieve your goals, regardless of how uncomfortable that is in the present moment, is a valuable skill. Cold showers train this capacity. By forcing yourself to remain under the stream for a few minutes, you create a visceral understanding that being uncomfortable isn’t typically harmful.
Infrequent, No ‘Poo
The daily shower that feels so crucial to our morning ritual is actually a recent phenomenon. Clearly, our ancestors evolved without their benefit. The cleanliness craze that led us to shower daily only developed over the last 70 years [13].
Folks are beginning to re-think this approach, often in light of our emerging understanding of the complex relationship we have with bacteria. Beneficial bacteria live on our skin, and it may not be a wonderful idea to scourge the with hot, chlorinated water and harsh soaps and shampoos every day. From this understanding was born the ‘No poo’ movement, short for ‘no shampoo.’
I decided to experiment with my shower routine. I stopped using shampoo or conditioning, opting to just run (cold) water through my hair. Soap was reserved for the nether regions, instead of being slathered everywhere. And I stopped thinking of showering as a daily necessity, and began to shower as-needed and when convenient.
The result? Less acne, ‘full’ hair, less dry skin, and more time in my day. And in case you are wondering, I obsessively asked my girlfriend if she noticed unseemly odors, oily hair, or other negatives as a result. She noticed nothing but the subtle improvements to my skin and hair.
This may be an experiment worth running in your life.
The Cambridge startup Mother Dirt is taking a more direct approach to restoring our natural balance: Instead of asking us to roll around in the dirt (that’s where the beneficial bacteria live), they produce AO+ Mist, a daily use spray chock-full of beneficial bacterial.
“What if restoring and maintaining beneficial bacteria is key to healthy skin? What if we change the way we treat our skin, and in doing so embrace it as the living ecosystem it is?“ [14]
Very early results in acne, rosacea, and eczema are intriguing.
Follow along for more crazy shit that works.
I hope you found this model for looking at ‘crazy’ personal change ideas entertaining and useful. In the coming weeks, I’ll be publishing similar discussions about meditation, ecstasy, micro-dosing LSD, porn elimination, orgasm minimization, and more. Subscribe to follow this series.
Have your own ‘crazy’ method that actually works? I’d love to hear about it. Send us an email.
Authored By Ben Rubin
Ben Rubin is Co-Founder and CEO of Change Collective. His change path has taken him through diverse topics: Vipassana meditation, Paleo, Crossfit, GTD, and many more. He previously co-founded Zeo — a pioneer in quantified self that helped people sleep. When kicking back you’ll find Ben skiing or hiking with his Berner, Lyra.
