The Science of Deliberate Experimentation
How I explore new interests to figure out what I want from life.
Happy Thursday!
It’s been ~117 days since I arrived in Hyderabad, India, and I’m leaving today. I’ve been tying up any loose ends and preparing for my next trip, so this newsletter took longer than expected.
Leaving Hyderabad also signifies the start of my summer, the theme of which will be “deliberate experimentation”: Exploring my interests intentionally, with a plan, and with minimal fear.
Why Deliberate Experimentation?
When you use deliberate experimentation to explore your interests, you:
Reduce the fear of failure because you’re framing it as an “experiment”. There are no right or wrong outcomes in scientific experiments, only data that supports or disagrees with the hypothesis.
Reduce risk and gain clarity through your deliberate planning and research
Because of #1 and #2, you gain the confidence to take action, which is crucial for collecting the data you need about your interests.
Being deliberate (#2) is crucial. When I was in middle school, I realized that many of my peers didn’t know what they wanted to study at university, much less pursue as a career.
Their solution? Score the highest scores in all of the pre-requisite subjects so that they can pick whatever major they want at university.
“I’ll use the two years of high school to figure it out,” I heard them say.
Some of them did; good for them. A lot of them did not, because high school was very stressful for them, and they didn’t have the capacity to do anything outside of school. These peers eventually chose their majors based on superficial criteria like perceived difficulty/competitiveness or starting salary.
On the other hand, deliberate experimentation revealed which aspects of tech I liked and didn’t like, helping me make informed decisions about pursuing tech as a career in middle school.
The clarity also helped me choose my subjects and courses strategically, creating time for other pursuits like learning about high performance and applying them to my journey as a national competitor for web development.
How to deliberately experiment
1. Start with one interest to learn more about
You can explore more interests simultaneously, but limit yourself to 2 - 3 interests so that you can focus on them without neglecting your responsibilities.
2. Structure your information input
Select 1 - 3 resources as your “primary curriculum” for learning more about your interests.
These resources can include online courses, YouTube playlists, or studying a mentor’s social media posts.
3. Structure your information output
Completing a project as you learn is the fastest way to consolidate your knowledge and skills. You’d also learn what you like and don’t like about the interest.
At minimum:
Decide on a project topic
Define 1 - 3 scopes/outcomes of the project (you can add more later) and prioritize them
Work out the first two steps needed to start on one of the defined scopes
4. Tie it all together with a map
What’s a “map”? It’s an effective type of “plan of action” that helped me accelerate my Zero-to-Noob journey:
The map analogy frames my endeavors as a journey, with multiple possible paths to my desired outcome. This helped me focus on clarifying what my next two steps are, instead of worrying about the outcome I wanted to achieve.
A map has four components:
a starting point (where you are now)
an end point (where you want to be)
At least one immediate action to kickstart your journey. This can be finishing the first lesson in your curriculum, or completing Step #1 of your project.
At least one checkpoint (intermediary goals/milestones). This can be finishing the Xth scope of your project, or achieving a desired level of consistency.
Specifically for deliberate experimentation, you should also try to schedule at least 1h/day for both information input and output (i.e., at least 30 min each).
5. Take action and collect data
Data comes from everywhere.
While going through Steps #2 - #4, you might find some aspects of your plan unappealing. That feeling is a data point, indicating that you may still like your interest overall, but there are some parts of it you’d find boring.
However, it’s not a valid data point until you take action on your plan. Any feelings you experience before that are merely expectations, which are often influenced by biases and social interactions.
So, collect data about your feelings as you go through the process of planning and executing. They’ll help you figure out your likes and dislikes.
Personal Example: This newsletter
My map for this newsletter was:
Starting point: Not having a writing habit nor a way to consolidate my learnings in personal development
End point: Sustain a writing habit for at least one year by revisiting the topics I’ve learned over the past 7 - 8 years
Immediate action: I published my first newsletter on goal setting on the first Tuesday of January, regardless of the number of subscribers I had.
Checkpoints: (the newsletter is my project)
Publish 5 newsletter issues (achieved)
Publish 15 newsletter issues despite assignments and finals (achieved!)
Serve tea to at least 200 subscribers
Publish 25 newsletter issues (and 35, 45, and so on…)
Schedules:
I set aside two hours every week, before Tuesday, for writing. This week was an exception since I was preparing to travel.
I don’t really have a curriculum for information input, but I’ll be dedicating at least one hour per day over the summer to learning how to grow a newsletter.
Data I’ve collected thus far:
Writing felt difficult at first, but over time (after the 7th week), I found it easier to write my newsletter than my assignments.
I also enjoy writing this newsletter more than my assignments.
I started viewing my experiences through the lens of “How can I write about this in my newsletter?” which helped me
appreciate the good and bad aspects of the experience,
extract actionable takeaways so that I can do better next time, and
find ideas to write about
That's a great summer plan! You inspire me to try something similar too <3
This was v informative.