The idea is you wear a purple bracelet on your wrist. Everytime I complain I need to change the bracelet to the other wrist. And the goal will be wearing the wrist on the same wrist for 21 days. So being complain-free for 21 days.

Why 21 days?

21 days is the amount of days needed to change a habit. That is why. 21 days sounds easy, but this means 21 days without complaining. It takes usually between 4-10 months to be 21 days complaint free! So this will be a nice challenge.

I consider myself as a fairly positive person, which means that I hope to be complaint-free within 7 months. That is my personal goal.

What is a complaint?

I want to define the word complaint perfectly before I start this challenge. Luckily, Tim Ferriss already did. He says: ‘A complaint is: “Describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem.” Of course, the last couple of words normally aren’t in the definition of a complaint, but now it is.

Because I don’t try to stop complaining over here. I try to change my mindset. I want to stop thinking in impossibilities and start thinking in solutions and in possibilities. That is why I want to get rid of complaints. That is why I am wearing this bracelet.

So an example: “Alex is always late, what a douchebag.” This would be a complaint, which means switching wrists. But “Alex is always late, I’m going to ask him if he could be on time more” wouldn’t be a complaint and the bracelet can remain on the same wrist.

I am now (when writing this) a week in and the bracelet hasn’t been on one arm for more than a day. Yes this is pretty hard. Doesn’t matter, a challenge isn’t a challenge without being hard. A nice experiment.

Get them yourself!

Are you interested in this experiment as well? Head over to AComplaintFreeWorld.org and order a set of bracelets for yourself! 10$ for 10 bracelets, pretty nice right? This includes shipping and everything. Or even get the book: A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted. I am giving away one set of bracelets to another experimenteer! See the video below for more details.

Logging

BrainVault.net is of course all about logging experiments and sharing it with other people who likes self-experimenting. So I will be logging in every once in a while to give an update on how I am doing. I will send out an article next week and then every week or so another article on how I am doing. But I can understand you won’t be interested in the same article every week for 7 months, so I will change the frequency of posts when I am a little bit more in the experiment! Anyway, I will try to do this with videos and text always, starting today!

Stop complaining for 21 days video

For my next Brain Vault experiment my goal will be to achieve visible six pack abdominals.  Anyone who has ever tried to achieve this knows that it is no easy task.  Visible abdominals usually require 9-12% bodyfat at the most, so coming down from 18% or so is not going to be easy.  But I will journal the experience and keep you informed with everything I do, and if I do achieve visible abs you’ll know exactly what it takes.  The time period for this experiment will be 60 days.

My plan is as follows (this will probably change throughout the course of the experiment):  I will keep a strict diet, probably consisting of 2000 calories or less.  I will count every calorie, and I will record them all on Fitday.com, which hopefully I’ll be able to make public for you to see.  I will also record every workout, so that you can see the kind of fitness it takes.  I will record every set, and every rep weight.  I’ll record the amount of sleep I get, and the times.  I will also record all of my vitamins and supplements.  I won’t be doing anything drastic to achieve my goal, so in recreating this experiment you will not have to worry about anything being dangerous.  The only thing you might change is that I will probably supplement caffeine, but that’s only because it has great metabolic effects and I don’t like coffee or soda.

So hopefully by the end I’ll look somewhat like the picture above (yeah right…).  I’ve done quite a few crazy experiments in my day(vegetarian for 6 months, biphasic sleep for 1 month, 3 day juice diet etc.), but I think this one may be the most difficult, so that’s why I’m doing it.  Whether I succeed or fail you’ll get a good idea of the amount of dedication that it takes to acheive a visible six pack, and you’ll know whether or not this is something worth trying to obtain.

Wish me luck, it’s going to be a long 8 weeks.

Introduction: For my first lifehack experiment I thought I’d try something that is controversial as far as research shows.  Many researchers disagree on whether polyphasic sleep is effective, or for that matter even safe.  But I’m the kind of guy that is willing to try anything in order to further my effectiveness and enhance my lifestyle.  Thus the idea for my biphasic experiment.

I first came across polyphasic sleep from Steve Pavlina and LifeHack.org.  It seemed like a really cool idea, but my schedule didn’t seem to coincide well with the restrictions of the polyphasic lifestyle.  I still love the idea, but at this phase in my life I think it would be too difficult to perfect and make effective.

Biphasic sleep on the other hand seems a little easier, schedule-wise, and I think it is something that I could stick to.  I still have a couple of efffects that I can foresee happening, but overall I think it will be a great experience.

The Plan: The main reason I have for breaking up my sleep pattern is to sleep less and still be highly conscious throughout the day.  With those two things in mind I’ve designed a simple plan, which allows for more sleep when needed, but generally limits sleep to 4.5 hours per day, leaving me with 19.5 hours per day awake.  Since the average person sleeps between 7-8 hours per day, this will save me an average of 3 hours per day, which equates to an extra 91.25 hours per month, 1095 hours per year, or a full 45 extra days per year.

The purpose is to have more time to devote to waking life.  I realize that most of my world is asleep between 11 pm and 6 am, which means that I’ll have plenty of time to read more, learn more, and do more.  Plus I’ll still have all of my day to interact with the world, so I won’t feel a zombie, separate from society.  I’ll just be super productive!

Chart:

This is my plan for right now.  The exact time that each part of the cycle starts is still in the works, but the general idea is that my main block of sleep will be 3 hours long (2 full 90 minute sleep cycles) followed by a long 13 hour stretch of being awake.  After the 13 hour awake session I will take a shorter 1.5 hour (1 90 minute sleep cycle) nap which will be followed by 6.5 hours of awake.  This plan totals 24 hours.

Of course there will always be times when we need more sleep.  I can’t imagine that if I play sports for 3-4 hours on a given day that I will still be able to maintain without a little extra sleep right?  Well the plan is that if I feel the need for more sleep I will add an extra 90 minute sleep cycle to my large sleep session, making it 4.5 hours instead of 3.  This will still only total 6 hours, which is still at least 1.5 hours less than average, and will allow me to maintain for the day until the next day comes, when I can revert  back to my normal schedule.

I imagine the transition from a monophasic lifestyle to biphasic won’t be a smooth one.  Still I am excited about the experience, and if all goes well I will have added much time to my waking life, which equates to more great experiences.  I plan on documenting the first 15 days daily, and then I’ll probably switch to keeping a record every 2 days until the first 30 days of the experiment ends.  On the 31 day I will decide if the biphasic lifestyle is one that I want to continue or I will revert back to the traditional and widely accepted monophasic lifestyle.

Day 1 will be May 30.  Stay Tuned!