Topic: experiment!

[Image by ほにゃらら]

I was going to hold off until I got Infinite Money wrapped up completely, but I figured I would post a Sugar Detox update in the mean time!

It’s been two weeks. Overall, it’s been easier than I thought. The first day was the hardest because I couldn’t get my mind off of the experiment (it was like trying to no think about polar bears). After that it has been considerably easier, and it hasn’t been that hard to stick to my rules. However, I did have a few slip ups, which I’ll note below. But first, let’s go over the parts that had to do with why I originally started the experiment. After that I’ll talk about some other things I’ve been observing and thinking about.

Experiment Objectives

Cravings

Sugar cravings haven’t been too bad. If I see some kind of sweet dessert in front of me, I feel a pull to eat it, but it’s not that hard to resist. Other than that, I haven’t been getting many pangs for sweet things randomly during the day. Before the experiment, the main time when the sugar cravings would get the better of me was when I was getting the bus come from school, which meant that I was fairly hungry and tired. Since classes have been over, I haven’t gotten the chance to experience that yet, so I think that will be the true test.

Before, since I had not concretely decided to NOT eat sweets, I would debate with myself over whether or not I should stop and get something, and I think that made it harder. I think that since I’ve already decided, it will be easier to avoid relapsing.

An interesting thing was that I tried medjool dates at Terry’s house, since they are technically within my rules (a natural whole food) even though their sugar content is really high. While eating them, I felt that pull to “must… have… more” that I tend to experience when eating candy. And I actually got cravings for them the next day. And then I asked my mom to buy some and I ate like half of the small container (~8 dates) the same day. And I probably would have eaten more if my family didn’t eat the other half. :) I don’t get cravings/must-have-mores for the other types of fruit I eat, so it’s probably just because the sugar content in them is so high. Even though they are within my rules, it might be a good idea to steer clear of them for a bit though because my main goal with this whole experiment was to reduce cravings for things. But I’ll definitely keep them in mind for a treat in the future because they are definitely an improvement on Skittles (they actually have minerals, fiber, etc).

Health/Energy/Mood

I haven’t really been keeping track of this explicitly, since I was kind of hoping that any differences would be pronounced enough to be noticeable. No dice. My mood and energy levels have been fairly stable I think, but I can’t tell how much of that is due to the experiment. One way I might be able to test this is to keep track of how I feel when I reintroduce sugar, and see if I feel any crazier.

Weight/Measurements

Everything is the same (or within the realm of normal fluctuation).

In summary, I’m not seeing too much in terms of results yet, but again, it’s hard to tell exactly how/if things are effecting me, and I can’t just see whether my risk of cancer has increased or decreased. At least I’ve proved to myself that I can go a significant amount of time without dessert if I feel like it! I’m hoping that my desire to eat sweet things will continue to decrease as the experiment goes on.

***

My Experience So Far

[Source]

Slip Ups

Non-dessert foods with more than 4% (4g per 100g) sugar in them. When I originally outlined this experiment, I said I was going to try to limit these foods, but I haven’t really been. I have been checking labels more often out of curiousity, and it turns out sugar is in a lot of foods and sauces. Go figure. I decided that I’m pretty much going to ignore this rule for now, and keep it on file for if I want to make refinements to my diet later.

Orange Juice. There was that one time where I bought orange juice at QE park because they were sold out of water. I didn’t think sticking to my arbitrary rule was worth possibly getting dehydrated, so I decided to be flexible. I don’t think this was really a big deal. I actually think I would have enjoyed water more if they had it available there.

Cookie. Okay… this is my major ‘oops’. Uh, basically, a couple days ago there was a cookie on the counter and before I knew it, it was in my mouth and it was only when I was halfway finished it that I remembered “OH YEAH I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO EAT SWEETS!” Well, damn. I’m not entirely sure what happened with that. It wasn’t like I agonised over whether or not to end the experiment and eat da cookie, it was more like a temporary memory lapse. I think what made me even realise it was how shockingly sweet the cookie was. “Hey, what the heck, this tastes a lot sweeter than I remember it. … Sweet? Oh f-”. However, I’m going to keep going with the experiment. I don’t think this one incident means that I “failed”, it’s not like I expected that breaking an addiction would happen without incident. ;) And I still want to reach the goals I set out at the beginning, so I think it’s definitely better to keep going rather than give up.

Taste Changes

Holy crow, chocolate soy milk is really sweet. It might taste sweeter to me because my tastebuds are adjusting, or it might just be because I’m focused on the sweetness when I drink it. Probably a bit of column A, a bit of column B. I’m considering buying some NesQuick chocolate syrup to I can balance the milk-to-sugar ratio myself.

Habit Changes

Now that I’ve gone through several days, I can see that there are three main habit changes involved in this experiment.

1. Replacing sweet junk food snacks with other snacks. This one has not been so hard. I’ve been eating pretzels and a lot of fruit. Whereas before I might have grabbed an icecream sandwich as a snack, now I grab a banana. It’s okay. When you think about it, bananas have a kind of cheescakey texture. Or maybe they don’t. It’s been a while since I’ve had ‘real’ cheesecake. :)

2. Water instead of Orange Juice. My default drink at home is usually orange juice, and when eating out it’s usually sweetened ice tea. At the beginning it was kind of weird to have water with my meals, but I’m starting to get used to it. I’m finally starting to reach for the water by default.

3. Breakfast. This one continues to get me. I’m used to having something sweet at breakfast (like toast with maple syrup, or oatmeal with maple syrup… mmmm), and I still feel like I want to. I would really like to have a bowl of my favourite cereal. Instead, I’ve been having fruit, garlic toast, toast with veggie bacon, the occasional spinach smoothie, and a couple times I have had my usual oatmeal but with a bit of stevia powder instead of maple syrup. The stevia does sweeten it and it makes the dish more palatable, but it’s not quite the same. Maybe it’s just something to get used to. It might be a couple more weeks before these become my default breakfasts that I go for automatically.

Before when I ate cheese, it used to be the whole reason why I liked pasta/burgers/etc and when I first stopped having it, it was kind of like “what’s the point of eating this then?”, but now I love pasta and burgers without the cheese and it doesn’t even occur to me to add it when I make them. I can honestly say that I don’t feel like I’m missing out at all now. It took a few months, but apparently I can get used to anything. I’m hoping it will be the same way with breakfast.

***

Other Observations

Overall Diet Improvement + (Lack of) Effects Thereof

Since I’ve eliminated sweets as a possibility, I’ve more than doubled my fruit intake, and I’ve more than doubled my water intake. For perhaps the first time in my life, I would classify nearly ALL of the food I’m eating as ‘healthy’ (with the exception of some pretzels, and perhaps certain deep fried/high sodium restaurant foods). Wow. How interesting.

Of course, there are still plenty of improvements I could make depending on what ideal of nutrition you subscribe to (raw, paleo, low GI, whatever), but according to conventional standards, I suspect anyone would tell me that my diet is impeccable (unless they can’t get past the idea that I don’t eat meat, dairy, eggs).

It’s just slightly discouraging that I don’t see clear evidence of any positive effects from this. It might be that the positive effects are long term and if I keep it up I’ll be healthier than your average 50 year old, but I would have liked to see more obvious benefits in the present. I have a few theories on why they seem absent.

• One is that my diet was already really healthy compared to normal before I started the experiment. Since I’m vegan, by default my diet has no cholesterol, lower than average fat content, higher than average vegetable content. Not that vegans are always healthier than omnivores, but I’m entertaining this as a possibility. I also already eat mostly whole grains at home. I’m already at what I would consider to be an ideal weight. So there’s that.
• Another possibility is that the positive effects have been gradual/gentle enough that I haven’t been able to notice them properly. An example of this is that before I went vegan, I used to get really painful stomach aches regularly. I thought it was normal for me. After I went vegan, they disappeared, but I didn’t notice that they disappeared until over a year later when I got a similar kind of stomach ache and remembered “Hey, I used to get these like multiple times a week!” When a bad thing goes away, sometimes it just falls off your radar. If I reintroduce sugar again, I might notice the bad effects return.
• Yet another possibility is that the sugar wasn’t affecting me as negatively as I suspected it was. I was pretty sure that considering how much sugar I was eating and how much real food I wasn’t eating, that my vitality must have been affected. It’s possible that I was overestimating the effects though.
• Or perhaps all of the sugar in the fruit I’m eating is preventing me from feeling the full effects of sugar reduction. It’s very possible.

Time might tell!

Filling the Void

I’ve done no-sugar and other diet related changes in the past. Before, when I did a diet limiting experiment, I would go shopping more, and when I conducted an experiment which involved spending less money, I would eat more to compensate (haha). But now that I’ve let go of pretty much any desire for recreational shopping (unless it’s just browsing with a friend), I’m left with… what?

I’m trying to direct the excess energy towards something constructive – creating stuff. But I’m also indulging by consuming lots of media. I’m not sure if it’s that much more than normal because I’ve always spent a large chunk of time consuming media (internet, blogs, games, anime, movies, educational materials, books, music, you name it). Media consumption might be one of my last ‘crutches’ to get control of before I can dive full force into creation. Right now, the amount of time I spend consuming versus creating is probably like 9:1, whereas I’d like it to be closer to 1:1.

[Closeup of Angelic Pretty's Miracle Candy print. Source]

Identity

I’ve also been thinking a bit about sugar in terms of identity. To me, desserts have to do with luxury and enjoyment, and also innocence (there’s a certain point in growing up when most people realize that eating them is probably not that good for them, but by not thinking about that you can pretend for a while that it doesn’t matter, and that you’re in some sort of alternate universe where things are simple and things that you like don’t harm you).

I know that in some of the fashion subcultures I follow(ed), sweets are idealized as they make their way into fabric prints, or being modeled as jewelry/decorations. In the quintessential lolita movie Kamikaze Girls, the heroine’s school lunch consists entirely of sweets.

[Source]

I get the sense that in our culture, if you don’t eat sugar, you’re either some sort of ascetic health nut or you’re trying to look good in a bikini. It’s just not a normal thing to do, especially for a young person. But I guess being vegan sXe isn’t that normal either. ;) Is it possible to be both ascetic and a hedonist? Since I’m actually doing this in order to enjoy my life more. It’s not like experiencing cravings, moodswings and that “yuck-my-mouth-feels-fuzzy-and-hurty” feeling from eating too much sugar is enjoyable.

I have a certain preconceived idea of what a “girl who eats a lot of sweets” is like: Carefree, effortlessly maintains her figure, cheerful, youthful, someone who enjoys nice things, maybe even a bit on the spoiled side. It’s easy to see how connotations like this make it easy to slot a sugar addiction into my identity since I see that “girl who eats a lot of sweets” persona as desirable overall. Maybe it’s kind of like how some people think (on some subconscious level) that smoking makes them a badass. It’s weird how your consumption habits can get wrapped up in your identity. What kind of person would you be without them?

It’s not that I think that eating sweets (or any other behaviour) is a bad thing. I just think that if you do anything without being fully aware of and okay with why you’re doing it, it can become a bad thing.

If I don’t eat cheese, who am I? If I don’t dress this way, who am I? If my best friends aren’t around, who am I? If I don’t shop, who am I? If I don’t play videogames, who am I? If I’m not with this person, who am I? If I don’t worry about money, who am I? If I don’t care about my grades so much, who am I? If I don’t eat sweets, who am I? I think I’ve been doing a lot of this lately.

***

… Well. That’s it for now. Subscribe for future updates!

Posted on August 30th, 2011
Filed under: Being Healthy, Creating, Featuring, Living (All Posts)
Topics: experiment, log, sugar

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[Image from when I counted the number of references to sugar in my room, back in April. All of these except the mint cone are gone now.]

I decided to start this experiment while my motivation was high, since I had a feeling that otherwise I would put it off again. Don’t worry, I’ll have an Infinite Money wrap-up post soon!

I’ve tried going without sugar for 30 days twice before, but both times I started eating it again soon after since I saw it as more of a thing that I wanted to try but didn’t really care if I made it a permanent habit. Lately I’ve been eating what I consider to be way too much of it, and I actually get cravings for it that cause me to go out of my way to buy a sugary snack. There’s that, and I think that it’s crowding out my capacity to eat healthy foods. People are generally surprised when I tell them that I don’t think I eat enough fruits and vegetables – I’m vegan after all, what else is there to eat?! I do eat them, but a large part of my diet consists of grain/starch foods and sugar. Probably not the best. I’ve started getting kind of grossed out by it.

So, I decided to make my next experiment a reduced sugar diet. ‘Reduced’ because I’m not cutting it out ENTIRELY (I have a few exceptions which you can read below), but it will still be a lot less than I normally eat, probably less than half of normal. I expect it to be easier for me to give up sugar than an average person, since I already have plenty of experience turning down delicious looking food for personal reasons (lvl 4 vegan discipline yeahyuh).

The other option I was considering for my next experiment was something to do with my social life (since I tend to alternate between money/health/money/health), but after I realised I wanted to focus on social things I’ve started accepting more invitations and putting a little bit more effort than usual into making plans, and so I already have several social events lined up in the near future. Because of this, I’m going to let this area of my life proceed without a formal experiment for a while!

What I hope to get out of this experiment, in order of importance:

1. One less dependency. I hate the idea of needing something, which I why I never got into smoking, social drinking, or coffee. It took me a while to get off cheese, so sugar and the Internet are probably my only remaining vices. It’s not that I will never eat sugar again, but I want to be able to enjoy it consciously rather than feeling like I’m suffering if I don’t have it regularly. This is the main reason I want to do this experiment at all.
2. Long & short term health benefits. Less killing of the pancreas/liver, lower risk of many of the major scary things like heart disease/cancer (I’m living ’til the Singularity, just you watch! ;) ), better nutrition, more stable mood, increased energy level, improved oral health. It’s not that I feel that I’m particularly UNhealthy, but I’d like to be better than average.
3. I’d probably NOT want to lose weight since my BMI is on the low side, but I took some measurements and ‘before’ pictures of my body and skin complexion to see if anything changes. Because that would be interesting indeed. I don’t expect any drastic changes though.

Timeline:
At least a month (August 14th-September 14th), but actually it’s unspecified because I want to keep it up until I don’t get cravings any more, however long that takes. I’ve heard that cravings are supposed to disappear after 3-4 months if you go cold turkey, but since I’m not eliminating it completely (at least at first) it might take me a bit longer. I have some milestones marked in my calendar, however. The first three days are supposed to be the worst, and it’s supposed to get easier after ten days. I also have the 21-day (habit forming) mark and the 30-day mark just for interest’s sake. After my cravings are gone I’ll come up with a controlled way to reintroduce sugar to make sure that I don’t get sucked back into it immediately.

What I will NOT eat:
Candy, desserts, sweet drinks (including sweetened tea or fruit juice), natural sugars (like maple syrup), artificial sweeteners (like aspartame – except in the case of chewing gum). The reason I’m eliminating juice is that it will be an easy way to get rid of several more grams of sugar from my day and I can get more health benefits from eating whole fruit.

I’m also going to try to reduce foods that have more than 4% sugar content (like barbecue sauce, some tomato sauces, a lot of cereals), but I’m not going to be quite as strict in this area. I’m not exactly sure what to use in place of ketchup, so I might keep that (it’s not like it’s a major source of sugar for me).

What I WILL eat:
My two exceptions for sugar will be 1. chocolate soymilk, and 2. lunabars, because I think that for now the nutrition in them is worth it (my soy milk is fortified with b12, and lunabars have delicious minerals). I’m going to limit myself to one cup/one bar a day though, but if after 21 days I feel like these are sabotaging my efforts to reduce cravings, I’ll replace those out too. I’m going to continue to eat non-sweet snack foods like chips or pretzels, and I might even give baking with stevia a shot (it’s a natural, sugarless/no calorie/no side effect sweetener).

I plan to gorge myself on fresh fruit and veggies and protein and fat and water. Some people recommend eating low on the glycemic index all around and cutting out fruit, but since I think fruit is probably one of the healthiest things you could possibly eat, I’m keeping it and focusing more on eliminating the processed/refined sugar. I will probably be increasing my fat intake (ideally nuts, avocado, coconut, olive oil) to make up for the calories.

[My last coconut ice cream sandwich last night! Om nom nom nom.]

Experience so far:
Well, day 1 is over (that was yesterday). I felt really good until just after lunch when my energy level suddenly plunged and my head felt sort of weird, and then my energy slooowwly eventually creeped up again to a ‘sort of tired but not falling asleep like I was before’ level. I wouldn’t necessarily attribute that to sugar related things though because I’ve been known to get sleepy after a meal! It was kind of weird how sudden the energy drop was though. I probably noticed it more because I had been paying attention to my body.

For breakfast I had oatmeal the way I usually make it (chopped walnuts, spoonful of peanut butter, cinnamon, unsweetened almond milk) but without the maple syrup and a glass of water on the side. It was kind of weird having it unsweetened, but totally edible. For lunch I had pasta, and the canned tomatoes I used did have sugar added (and were DELICIOUS~), but it was only around 7% or so and I’m not policing non-dessert foods as much. After that I didn’t really feel satisfied so I had… carrots and lettuce and water since I wasn’t really sure what else to have besides pretzels. Throughout much of the day I’ve felt like snacking, not necessarily like eating sugar in particular, just a sort of persistent feeling of dissatisfaction/hunger. More calories required? Likely!

Around 6:30 pm I got hungry again but wasn’t sure what to make for dinner yet so I had a banana and a coconut! I like drinking the coconut water with a straw and then eating the actual coconut inside. Coconut water has a sort of sweet flavor, so that was nice, but when I bit into that banana, oh man, a tingly feeling erupted in my mouth and then spread out through my arms and legs, and before I was half done eating it I felt much more awake. I’m not even kidding. At least being a banana addict is a step up from being a candy addict.

Then I finally made a batch of burgers and had one on a bun with lettuce and ketchup (sugar, whuh-oh) and I had my glass of chocolate milk as well (a whopping 19 grams of sugar, yikes), bringing the day to a close. I felt the same kind of tingly feeling with the chocolate milk, but it wasn’t as pronounced as it was with the banana.

It’s only the first day so it might be too early to tell, but so far it’s easier than I thought, considering comments I’ve read from other people who have quit sugar (then again, they probably eliminated it almost completely, in some cases they eliminated fruit). It probably helps that last night I watched a documentary on heroin addicts so I know that whatever this experience is like it will pale in comparison to that!! Still, since I stayed home yesterday, it was difficult to get my mind off of it. If this experiment continues the way it does, it should be smooth sailing.

—

Have you ever quit or thought about quitting sugar (or any other substance or food)? What was your experience like?

Posted on August 15th, 2011
Filed under: Being Healthy, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Living (All Posts)
Topics: diet, experiment, health, life design

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It’s been a little more than a month since I made the first post about my Infinite Money experiment which began on May 22nd and ends on July 22nd. You can read more about it there, but basically I’m doing my best to live as though I have infinite money (even though, in reality, I’m okay financially but nowhere near unlimited) to see what insights I gain from it. It’s an experiment in practical philosophy, seeing how a different way of viewing the world actually affects how I live. I’m creating my own experience based ‘Life 101′ course.

This experiment is causing me to do a lot of reflection due to what in my life hasn’t changed. First I’ll talk about something major I’ve encountered called the Void, and then I’ll write about how the experiment affected other areas of my life like spending, diet, exercise, school, career and work. It starts off pretty grim, but the fact that I’m uncovering so much is reason enough to keep going with this experiment. It’s only the beginning.

This post is looooong, but I didn’t want to leave anything out. Feel free to skim and dip in where you need to. Maybe I’ll do some more focused posts on selected concepts later.

The Void

I’ve heard from a few sources (Tim Ferriss‘s The 4-Hour Workweek and Ev Bogue‘s Minimalist Business come to mind) that people who work hard all their lives and finally get to the point where they’ve “made it” – when they have enough money that they can effectively retire (or just coast for a long time) – they experience something that Ev refers to as The Void.

Right after I published that first article, I went and laid down on my bed and thought to myself, “Well, great. So I have more money than I could ever spend. What am I going to do now?” And I didn’t feel like doing anything in particular. I felt weird.

I felt what it must feel like to be an older executive who has fought his/her way to the top, achieved everything that they were supposed to achieve, and life somehow didn’t magically change. I had a room full of beautiful things, but I was alone.

I started thinking about how I’ve spent so much time getting good grades and working that my social life has suffered, and it’s understandable – why should I expect people to reach out to me if I haven’t been reaching out to them? If I haven’t been making the effort to accept what invitations I get? Even though I know from my research that having a great social life and meaningful friendships is one of the most crucial factors in happiness, I’ve been letting that part of my life go with not so great results. I mean, I have friends, but I mostly see them only at school (most of us live over an hour apart), and the tiny handful of friends I’ve retained from high school are either not around or we aren’t that close or we only bother to see each other a few times a year. And now that I’ve given myself permission to not focus on income generating activities, I’m looking at this big empty space in front of me. Almost immediately, I felt depressed.

The other thing is that when you extract yourself from the rat race after being entrenched in it your whole life (the treadmill of gradually increasing challenges of school, high school, post secondary, work, climbing the corporate ladder), you remove this thing that’s been driving such a huge percentage of your behavior.

Think about it – how many of your actions stem from making or saving money? “Must complete this homework so that I can get a good grade so I can graduate so that I can get a good job and make money.” “Must do this task for this person so that they’ll leave a good review so that I can continue to make money in the future.” “Must do what they say in case I have to rely on them for money in the future.” “Must get that chic sweater so that those people will think I’m ‘put together’ in case one of them turns out to be a potential business partner.” “Must read this book so that I can have this knowledge/gain this skill so that at some point in the future it might let me make some money.”

I’d venture to say that for most people, at least 50 hours a week are spent on money-generating or money-saving related activities, and that’s a conservative estimate. When you take away the incentive of money, you take away a huge force in your life, and there is nothing obvious that rushes in to replace it. And I haven’t suddenly quit school or work, but I’m fortunate that I sort of get to experience this because right now I only have classes two days a week, and I work from home on my own time, so I have a lot of unstructured hours. I had already agreed to do work for various people, and I don’t want to be that person that says they’ll do something for you and then suddenly drops it for some vague reason. When you don’t care about making money, you still have another driving force called Integrity. You might call it Social Responsibility or even just Reputation, depending on how you look at it. And of course, some of the projects I actually want to do because they seem fun.

When you have to sweat to get things you need (or think you need), you at least have something to blame for why you’re not happy. “I’d be happy if I had more time to relax and work on my art, but I have to go to my stupid job and pick up the dry cleaning. Curse this system! But hey, it’s life, so what are you going to do, right?” You have something to distract you – something that demands your attention, that fills your time, that you see as necessary. Rage against the machine. But when you extract yourself from that system and decide “actually, no, I’m going to decide how I spend my time,” and you realize that you’re still not happy, all you have to blame is yourself. You wonder if something’s wrong with you. You wonder if this is all there is. You realize that you effectively thought that making money to survive was your purpose, and now you have no purpose. If you’re used to working hard, you probably start to feel like you’re lazy and worthless.

Having money doesn’t mean that you’re transported to a magical wonderland where nothing bad or inconvenient ever happens. You still have to pick clothes up off the floor, find things you’ve misplaced, archive spam email, wonder why your software is laggy (even if you have the best equipment available, weird things still happen), commute, trip over things, you don’t feel great all the time, your body still does all of those weird things human bodies do, you still struggle with creativity and inspiration, you still have interactions with other imperfect people, people still judge you, you still have deadlines, it still gets cloudy, it still takes time and effort to learn or accomplish things, dust still appears on your desk, you still get tempted to eat unhealthy things, you still sometimes don’t feel like exercising. This shouldn’t come as a surprise at all, but I always leave these things out when I imagine what it would be like to be rich. Even though I guess I could hire somebody to fold my socks for me, that sounds like way more hassle than it’s worth. So all of these minor annoyances of life persist. It’s kind of weird how little actually changes.

All of these things sound so trivial. “Poor me, I have so much time and money I don’t know what to do with myself.” #whitegirlproblems. But it’s real. People who win the lottery or cash out in business actually experience this. I’d imagine that people who are born into money also experience this in some form. Imagine having everything you’re supposed to have, and still feeling this pervasive sense of unease, and not having a clue what to do about it. Everyone thinks that you should be ecstatic, and can’t imagine why you’re not because they can’t relate to your perspective. Since so few people ever make it out of the rat race, there is no road map for what to do afterwards. And thus, people have no advice to give you but “cheer up”. At this point, many people throw away what they’ve gained – they waste their lottery winnings, sell their companies or sabotage their success, buy a house with a big mortgage so that they have something they have to work to pay for. They go back to the situation that’s comfortable to them.

But I can’t exactly do that if I have infinite money, now can I? Great. Just great. (Yeah, I know I’m the one subjecting myself to this, but it’s so fascinating that I don’t want to just stop here. I want to see if I can push through it and come out a stronger person.)

So I’ve done a lot of reflection about how I want to spend my time. I scrawled out this list in sharpie while lying on my bed feeling miserable and trying to figure out what to do with myself. I’ll credit Ev Bogue for many of these points since I’m sure I picked them up from his Minimalist Business ebook (particularly the evolving humanity one), but I wasn’t looking at his book while I wrote this.

What to do when you already have everything:

Technical

• Physical Activity + Training
• Master Skills
• Direct Creative Projects

Experiential

• Experience the World
• Life experiments + personal development
• Accomplish dreams, conquer fears

Social

• Socialize + Love
• Serve + Give to others
• Evolve Humanity / Change the World

I could make a whole other post explaining this list, but suffice it to say for now that I wrote out a few things I wanted to do in each category, and it did make me feel better. It’s good to know that you still have interesting and exciting things that you can work towards. I had the idea to make this into a worksheet so that it could be helpful to other people – but let’s face it, not a lot of people have this problem. Then again, maybe I should make it, since it’s a great problem to have. If society keeps moving in the direction it is, lifting more people out of poverty, creating more freedom through technology – and if we do manage to break the endless cycle of consumerism that is keeping the middle and upper classes on the treadmill – then more and more people are going to encounter the Void. Wouldn’t that be an interesting niche to work within? “Helping new rat-race escapees learn to deal with their new found freedom and get the most out of life.” Hmm.

Other Effects

Spending

Here’s the breakdown: My online banking tells me that from May 22nd to June 22nd, I’ve spent $193 (CAD). I did spend some money in cash and by paypal, I’m guessing it’s only around $30, but I’ll add $50 to be safe and say that my total spending money for the past month was $243. That’s about $60 per week. Out of that money, $136 of it was on food while out of the house (70%). I’ll also clarify that since I’m still in school, I live with my parents so I don’t buy most of my groceries, though a few times I picked up some extra things I wanted and I included those in the total. And I already paid for my school tuition earlier in the year so that doesn’t factor in – I guess I would consider this total to be my “do whatever I want” money rather than things I’ve already committed to and budgeted for.

How do I feel about this? Well, on one hand it’s kind of alarming to me compared to what I was spending before, but on the other hand, it’s not that much. Last year I was allowing myself around $30 a week of spending money, so this is just double that. It’s enlightening – and strange – to realize that even in the face of infinite money, all I really need to have my ideal lifestyle is an extra $30 a week, based on this data. That’s only like three hours at minimum wage. I don’t know if I would have ever realized this if it weren’t for this experiment. I thought it would be more.

It might have been more if I were going to school more frequently since most of my meal purchases are at school. I haven’t felt a strong urge to go on a trip or upgrade my cellphone and none of my tools have broken so I haven’t incurred any larger expenses.

If I keep spending the way I am, then by the end of the experiment I will have spent around $750, which would be approximately $375 more than I would have otherwise spent. Would you pay $375 to have infinite money for 3 months? Sounds like a great deal to me. ;) I think that the things I’ve learned so far are worth it.

In fact, I’ve actually received plenty of offers for work within the past month, including a rather large commission, and I’ve just now (literally in the middle of writing this article!!) been contacted about two more design opportunities. So in the end, I should still have more money than when I started. Yeah, I might have had more if I hadn’t done this, but it doesn’t feel like a loss. Maybe the universe wouldn’t have delivered these projects to me if I hadn’t been feeling so abundant already.

As predicted, I HAVE been spending a lot more money on food. I haven’t been buying more stuff or going shopping more often. I still feel like I have way more stuff than I use already, and I’m still wearing a limited wardrobe by choice. I’m virtually certain that the minimalist/anti-consumerist (wow, I sound so hip) tendencies I’ve developed have gone a long way toward keeping the number this low, otherwise I might have bought a lot more objects. Then again, part of the allure of shopping is wanting things that you can’t afford, so when you can have anything, you actually lose part of the reason to want things. I did get some new backpacks and a comic book though. I surprised myself by donating a few dollars to creators of awesome things I found online, such as this webcomic, Minor Acts of Heroism, which I wouldn’t normally have done.

I don’t think I’ve been able to succeed in completely reprogramming myself in this area. When it comes to other things I might buy like digital products, service subscriptions or event tickets, I’m still less likely to go for things that cost a lot of money over things that cost less or are free. For example, when someone took the payment barrier off of joining their forum, I joined immediately, even though I’m not really an internet forum type of person. (The fact that it used to cost money made me want it!) And when I saw an online training program that looked interesting, I didn’t go for it because there was a payment barrier, even though I spend hours reading free material online. Even though I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything I really wanted, if I truly believed that I had infinite money, it shouldn’t have made a difference. The thing is, I use other reasons to justify not getting something – resource efficiency (environmental reasons) or “I don’t have time/space for it right now”. It’s hard to know exactly when I use saving money to justify resource efficiency, or resource efficiency to justify not buying something… aarrgh! Aversion to wasting money is really deeply ingrained.

If I weren’t doing this experiment, I might not have gone to the Mini Maker Faire. Even though the ticket price wasn’t that much, I would have seen it as just another reason not to go. But then I wouldn’t have gotten to see giant spiderbots and I wouldn’t have found out about Draw By Night, a free art event that looks awesome! So this experiment has given me permission to try some new experiences.

Diet

Interestingly enough, I’ve actually been eating worse. For one, I’ve been eating out more, which means more refined grains, more sugar, salt, and fat. Since I’m not worrying about money, buying food where I am is easier than preparing something to bring – I don’t have to plan it or carry it around with me. I have eaten at restaurants, but food court food is still tasty, it’s faster and sometimes I’m with people who don’t have infinite money and I don’t want to make them feel they have to spend more money to hang out with me. I’ve also been snacking on a lot more junk food, out of boredom and rebellion and trying to find something that will make me feel happy and satisfied. I haven’t gained weight, but it can’t really be good for my health in the long run. It’s not a good habit.

Exercise

One of the things you can do with your time is learn new skills and/or train your body. I’ve spontaneously taken up dancing. WTF. Read my article on Performance for more on this. I also write about the odd coincidence of shifting from material based activities (craft) to action/experience based activities (performance).

Living Quarters

I thought that I might feel more of an urge to move out, but I’m still in my room at home with my parents. So far, the annoyances of living with family (even though I love them!) seem less daunting than the prospect of packing everything up, finding an apartment and moving out on my own for the first time. So I’m here by default. Also, my room is pretty.

School

I’ve kind of been losing interest in some aspects (not all aspects!) of school. Part of this might be due to the fact that I’m around the halfway point and already getting work. I still feel committed to my team mates, and obviously I don’t want my grades to drop, but I feel less motivated to do the assignments I don’t want to do, and this whole “deadline” business is grating on me. The way I see it is that I’m going to learn and practice the things I genuinely want to learn and practice anyway, and I don’t want my career to be based on the things that I don’t enjoy doing anyway, so the school regime is starting to feel forced and artificial.

There are parts of school that I still like – I’ve really been enjoying my Philosophy of Education class (relevant!), and I wouldn’t have learned about this subject at all if I weren’t forced to take elective credits. Writing the philosophical essay for that class was fun, kind of like writing one of these blog posts, but with academic references. It gives me a reason to leave my house, see and meet other people my age, my grades are good enough that my school practically pays me to attend it. It provides some motivation to complete projects I otherwise wouldn’t complete or even attempt. I still feel like I should complete my degree because my parents expect me to, even if I don’t really see myself relying on it in the future. At least I’ll be able to claim that I’m a university graduate, for what that’s worth.

Career

Related to my thoughts on school, I’ve heard so many examples of people doing what they’re doing because they’re passionate about it and that lead them to do it so much on their own initiative that they genuinely became really good at it. They would probably do what they do for free, and the money is a bonus, and that makes people want to work with them – regardless of whether they went to school for it.

I don’t want to settle for anything less than doing exactly what I want. I’ve developed even higher standards for how I want to make money/spend my time than I had before, which is great but also kind of scary because the thought that “you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to survive” is so ingrained in our culture. I’m also wary of this thing called “entitlement” that I’ve heard used to describe our generation in a negative light. Why should I expect to be able to do what I want when so many other people suffer just to stay afloat? I’ve always held “having a career I love” as one of my top priorities and I’m clinging to the hope that I can figure this out, and using people who have found their dream careers as my beacons.

Many people think that if people didn’t have to work for money, they would just lay around all day and watch TV. Not so for me. I want to be a multipronged artist/designer/entrepreneur/maker of awesome things. I guess I would call myself a serial-project-maker. There are so many things I want to do, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to settle on just one medium – at least, I don’t foresee that in the near future. I do want to help people, be of value to society, and leave my mark. I want to make beautiful things that make people go “wow!” I want to tell stories and show people that things aren’t always what they seem, and that there is so much more to life than what they realise – than what I realise. I want to design a better world. I want to inspire others to do it themselves. I want to do work that matters. I want it to be in alignment with my values.

I don’t care about fame, I don’t care about being in galleries, I don’t care about making gobs of moolah (though that could be fun) but if people would enjoy and benefit from my stuff, and if I enjoy doing it, then that would be wonderful.

Way of working

Since I’m not worrying as much about payment, I’ve been more focused lately on optimizing how I work for the most enjoyment. As great as my work is, it’s still a cause of stress. Having others waiting on me, feeling like I owe things to people, and having to follow precise directions and feeling like sometimes people aren’t satisfied with what I give them is kind of blah. Since the money doesn’t matter, I’ve been accepting offers for jobs at whatever the person can afford, and requesting more time/freedom/leniency in return. It’s kind of nice, but I still feel like things aren’t ideal.

I’ve been wondering for a long time if the service model might not be the ideal way for me to work. Wouldn’t it be better to make things first and then sell them? That way, if people like it they like it and if they don’t, they don’t. You won’t have deadlines except for those that you impose on yourself. Kind of like how this blog works, actually.

My logic says that it would be harder to make money with the make-first-monetize-later method – but if I’m not worrying about money, it wouldn’t make sense to do it the other way, unless I felt I could contribute more value by doing custom things for people. My intuition says that the people who enjoy their work the most and don’t care too much about what other people think tend to be successful. I guess I’ll have to test that one out. Who would have thought that “just do what you want” would be do hard to grasp and implement? I’m trying, but it’s taking a while to unravel.

Perspective on Society

At times I managed to see the world from an alternate perspective – like I was part of a futuristic utopia where when I needed something, it wasn’t like I was spending money – it was like the world was a buffet of services and products where you could just pick up what you wanted, check them out with your ID (paying with credit card) to keep track of resource use, and leave. It’s a subtle difference – the experience in the store was the same, except the vague negative aura of spending your hard earned money was lifted. I felt appreciation for all of the choices of goods and services available to me. In this utopia, all you had to do in return was to live your life in whatever way you wanted, and contribute/help others however you were inspired to, using your own unique talents. And then I would blink and my mind would shift back to seeing society/economics as I normally see them (everyone for themselves, struggle). Do you think that if someone lived this way within capitalist society, would they contribute enough/help enough people that they would ultimately make enough money to support themselves?

—

Anyone could try this

The amazing thing was that I got to experience all of this without actually going through the process of winning the lottery or building a fortune 500 company. I took a shortcut – I just imagined what it would be like, and committed to living like I was there, wrote off my losses and watched what happened. Technically, anybody with a certain amount of will and courage (and a small buffer of cash) could do this. Anybody could do this for a single day, or maybe a week. I’ll be interested to see what else I uncover as time goes on, and the things I retain after the experiment ends. So far, it’s proving to be an effective method for reflecting on how you want to spend your life, figuring out what it really takes to make you happy and questioning the roadblocks our society places that prevent us from doing this in the first place.

—

I’m not sure when I’ll be posting the next experiment update, so if you want to make sure you catch it, the easiest way would be to subscribe with RSS or follow me. Glad to have you!

Posted on June 29th, 2011
Filed under: Featuring, Learning, Living (All Posts), Making Money, Socializing
Topics: experiment, life design, log, money

5 Comments »

[So, this is what happens when Allison feels like her life is too easy and she's not growing fast enough. Experiment time!]

What would your life be like if you had infinite money?

No, seriously. In your day to day life, what would you do differently?

Being rich is a common fantasy for many people, but what is being rich really like? In other words, what is it that we really want when we think we want to be rich?

To me, being rich means:

• You don’t have to worry about having enough money, or where your next paycheck is going to come from.
• You can be yourself and do whatever you want. (Since you don’t need to worry about getting fired or anything. You’ve got it made already!)
• You can buy whatever you want whenever you want without thinking about the cost.
• You can spend all day doing what you want to do. Time affluence.
• You’ve solved one of the main puzzles in the game of life.
• You can focus on quality over quantity/hoarding/buying stuff just because it’s cheap.
• You don’t have to worry about planning as much in order to feel secure (if you forget to pack something on a trip, you can buy it en route).

Notice that those things don’t have to do with specific numbers or possessions, they’re more like attitudes, or ways of approaching life. Technically, it’s possible that someone could possess all of these attitudes without actually having millions in the bank. It’s about not letting negative beliefs about money affect how you live your life when, in reality, they could just be self imposed limitations.

—

My system – until now

Lately I’ve been thinking about my relationship to money and how I feel about the system I’ve been using up until now. For the past few years I’ve done a lot of accounting and tracking. I have a spreadsheet that I fill out yearly and adjust throughout the year that calculates all of my savings, what I expect to earn, what I expect to spend, and calculates how much money I would have left over for spending money. I have another spreadsheet (spreadsheets for everything YAY!) where I note down everything I spend, and I give myself a weekly “allowance” in order to pace myself so that I don’t burn through my extra cash before the end of the year.

This method has been working pretty well in terms of causing me to not spend too much money. But it does have some downsides.

It’s focused on the future rather than the present. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I can’t predict the future with a high amount of accuracy, but still I try to budget as if my predictions were accurate. My system is vulnerable to fluctuations, and large fluctuations can break it. I remember last year there was an error in my spreadsheet which lead me to think I had about $2000 more than I did, and when I fixed the error I found that I was supposed to be spending -$3.45 a week. (Yeah, negative.) Even small negative fluctuations could lead to me having to go a few weeks without spending anything in order to ‘catch up’. And then later, I would unexpectedly come into some more money (like a scholarship or a contest or a new gig), which would make the whole thing moot. In retrospect, it seems like a lot of hoops to put myself through, since all of these rules are self imposed. It’s like adding layers of mindgames on top of something that could be as simple as “I have $x. … now what?”

Overall, the system doesn’t make me feel the way I want to feel about money. Two weeks ago I wrote this in my Evernote:

How does my current method of tracking money make me feel?

• restricted/limited
• like I have to micromanage/control it
• losses hurt me
• like I HAVE to make X amount or I’ll be behind
• not expecting good things to happen later on
• like I know everything that’s going on – I have a clear picture (positive, but not true)
• makes me think about the future a lot and try to predict the future
• like I don’t have enough
• money is complicated

What do I want to feel?

• good!
• unlimited
• in the moment
• trusting the universe, everything will work out
• like I have enough
• like I can buy whatever I want, when I want
• like I have more money than I can spend
• money is simple

So I thought about it. What would be a better method that would get me those results?

A while ago, I lightened up in terms of trying to track and obsess about what I eat, and so I decided to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and just trust that it will work out. Well, I’m not dead yet. I haven’t gained weight either. (Sidenote: I’m vegan! Not sure if that’s a factor.) So it appears that trying to have strict control over my actions wasn’t really doing me any good. My body just processes what it wants to process automagically.

If letting go works with my diet, why can’t it also work with money? This thought lead me to create the framework for my current experiment.

The Experiment

Rules/Specifications

• The trial is to last 3 months. Starting date: May 22. End date: July 22. (I’m already a week into it.)
• I’m not allowed to consider cost as a factor when deciding whether or not to do something. (The most challenging part.)
• Buy everything possible with my credit card so that tracking is automated. (Obviously, I pay off my credit card every month and never carry a balance.)
• I’ll check into my online banking every 2 weeks like I normally do just to make sure nothing fishy or apocalyptic is happening.
• If I have to buy things in cash or with paypal, I’ll only record it if it’s over $50.

Predictions
I expect the amount I spend to go up a little, but not by a whole lot. I think that for day to day spending, I will just spend more on food and snacks while out of the house.

The biggest expenses I could expect to incur over the course of this experiment would be: 1) deciding to go on a random trip somewhere, 2) getting a smartphone, or 3) moving out (I currently am living with my parents while I’m in school). But I don’t know if any of these will happen.

I’ll also be curious to see exactly how much spending money I would use per month under optimal circumstances, and how difficult it will be to change my thought patterns.

I’ll be more free in my business to try and target the kind of work that I really most want to do, since I won’t have to worry about just doing what’s profitable. I’m curious to see whether my attitude towards work will shift more towards being a service to others, rather than making money for myself.

Are you crazy?! What if you permanently screw up your finances?

I’m aware that this experiment goes counter to the conventional wisdom about how you’re supposed to deal with money, but I’ve really thought about it, and I don’t think I’ll burn through my savings or go into debt by the time the 3 month period is over. Here’s why:

Having infinite money =/= spending infinite money
There are valid reasons to not buy stuff even if money is no object, like ethical reasons, quality of life reasons, personal preference, not having the space/time to use or appreciate the thing at the moment, not wanting to put effort into acquiring something, or just not feeling like you need something.

I’ve already acquired the attitude of quality over quantity, and since I’m actually trying to get RID of stuff, I’m really selective about adding new objects into my life. I still think that buying things secondhand is preferable to buying them new for environmental reasons (energy spent to make them, transport them, produce the materials). I don’t have or want a car because I don’t like driving and don’t need the added complexity in my life. I’ve never been much of a traveler (that may change in the future!), and since I quite like how my life is set up right now, I don’t feel any particular urge to go on a vacation. Most of my hobbies are free, or close to free (drawing, reading, blogging, taking photos, geocaching, Astrojax, working on my business, walking, surfing the internet).

Money is for Making
I want my primary relation to money to be about making it, not about spending it. Making money is fun. Landing gigs is fun. Completing projects that people appreciate is fun. Creating neat things that people want to buy is fun. Pushing my limits in this area is fun. (It’s kind of like playing those iPhone or Facebook games where you manage a restaurant or a hotel or what have you – work can be fun if you enjoy the process and are not too attached to the outcome.)

Spending money? Well, acquiring a shiny new object is cool I guess, but I’d rather the whole spending part be automated rather than spending time tracking or worrying about whether I can afford something. So if I spend less energy worrying about acquiring objects/being able to afford stuff, and more energy on having fun making money, wouldn’t that result in me actually having more funds overall? It seems plausible. We shall see!

Safety net
I’ll have some fail-safes. If I notice that I’m about to go into debt, I’ll call off the experiment, since I hate the thought of being in debt. (I’m paying for school without loans, and am currently ahead with my savings.) Also, I’ll stop myself from doing anything stupid like buying a house (though I don’t even know if I’d want that).

I’m pretty sure that in the absolute worst case scenario, like if I somehow didn’t realize that I was burning through thousands upon thousands of dollars, if I ate all of my savings I would just get a couple thousand dollars under, and I could just pay that off by working for a few months while living cheaply with my parents. Even from a blank slate, if I worked full time I could build up my savings to where they currently are within a year, max. But for the reasons mentioned above, this situation is really unlikely, especially since I don’t plan to stop making money during the experiment.

—–

Risk

I realize that some people are in situations where they would feel like they couldn’t take a risk like this (maybe they have children, or are already deep in debt, or they don’t have a family to fall back on if things get out of hand), and so I count myself fortunate that I’m able to run this experiment. Maybe what I learn could benefit somebody that wants to try this but is unable to.

It also helps that I’ve acquired the attitude of not caring so much about money, since I’ve seen how little my happiness depends on it.

See, life is a game. It’s about the experience. If you’re playing a videogame and you lose some of your points, do you become terrified? No, if you need more you just make more. You trust that just around the corner there will be opportunities to collect more. Not really big deal. And since it’s a game, making more should be fun. If it’s not fun, you’re doing something wrong. (Spending too much time grinding at your job? ;) So, can you understand how I don’t see this experiment as a big risk?

And what do I have to gain? Infinite money, for all intents and purposes. A major puzzle of life solved. I think it’s probably worth it. Even if I fail, at least I’ll learn something.

—–

Observations so far

I’m already a week into this experiment, and so far so good. I think I might be spending a bit more than usual, but not orders of magnitude more. As expected, mostly snacks.

The most difficult thing is trying to circumvent my normal thought flow of immediately considering what things cost. This is challenging since it’s such an integrated part of my thought process, my brain automatically leaps to it before I even realize I’m doing it.

For example, I was in Chapters yesterday while waiting to see a play (Hairspray! <3), and a book on a table caught my eye.

Ooh, that looks cool. What is it?
Oh, short story comics from different artists, neat.
Wow, it’s just $5.99.
Wait, I’m not supposed to consider price. Right.
Hmm. Do I want this? It’s cheap. Wait, I’m not supposed to consider price. Uhh. It does look like something I’d be interested in reading.
I know I’m trying to get rid of books, but this doesn’t look like something that would likely be at the library.
Could I go without this? Well, sure. There are probably tons of other comics at the library or online that I could read instead, and that wouldn’t involve me taking on a new possession/consuming resources. I wouldn’t have to lug this book home with me.
But I probably can’t find this exact one online. And shiny full-coloured pages. And maybe it will give me inspiration for the short comic that I want to write.
And if it turns out that it’s not worth keeping, I can just give it away. It wouldn’t be a big loss anyway since it’s cheap. I mean-

And so on. The monetary cost of the object just kept sneaking back in. I’m hoping that with time and practice this will get easier.

(FYI, I bought it!)

I might even try to develop some external thought direction tools (predefined thought flowcharts or something) to help me arrive at the correct decisions. I might have to resort to listing pros and cons and deliberately crossing out those to do with cost and then trying to make an objective decision that way.

Otherwise, my life is the same as always, since I spend very little time actually dealing with money.

While working on a graphic/web design for a client today, I actually slowed down and took my time trying to get it right, instead of rushing to get it off my plate like I was initially inclined to do. I’m not sure if that was because of this experiment, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I shifted towards caring more about the quality of my work rather than just shipping it. If I’m not doing it for money, and I’m doing it just for the sake of making something, for the sake of exercising and stretching my skills, and for the sake of helping somebody, wouldn’t I care more about quality? Why make mediocre stuff?

—

If you’re interested in following my progress in this experiment, subscribe to my RSS feed. I’ll post any revelations I have, difficulties I encounter, or unexpected happenings. I don’t have a regular schedule for updates in mind at this time.

What do you think will happen over the next 3 months? Will I crash and burn or will I wake up from the Matrix?

Posted on May 29th, 2011
Filed under: Exploring, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts), Making Money
Topics: business, experiment, life design, money

7 Comments »

[Note: This isn't my new year's resolution, just a fun experiment I decided to do! The new year's post is coming... eventually!]

From March 24 to April 20th (four weeks), I wore 14 preselected items of clothing. I also didn’t buy any new clothes during the experiment.

Inventory

3 cardigans (grey, royal blue, grey+pink)
3 hoodies (lavender, aqua, pink)
2 shirts (black, pink)
2 dresses (black, striped)
1 pair of pants
1 skirt
2 pairs of tights (black, grey)
————
Total: 14 pieces. (Fun fact: 9 of these were thrifted!)

All of these things are comfortable, they fit my body, I like the styles and colours, and I can wear them to all of the situations I encounter in my everyday life, and I can still throw together a slightly more dressed up/professional looking outfit if the need arises. All in all, these are (most of!) my favourite clothes. My base colour is black, and each piece can be matched with most of the other pieces. I can create over 50 outfit combos with these items.

I did not restrict the use of: undershirts/underwear/socks, shoes, coats, jewelry, hair accessories, bags, other accessories, sleepwear or things for lounging around the house (sweat pants/tshirts). It just so happened that I ended up wearing the same coat, boots and backpack pretty much every day.

But WHY?

Through reading about the minimalist lifestyle, I discovered several minimalist fashion challenges such as Six Items or Less (cool intro video here!) and I was intrigued. I wanted to see what it was like to spend less mental energy on the whole “getting dressed” part of my day. I still love expressing myself through fashion, but I wanted to see what happened when I spent less brain activity trying to decide what to wear and dealing with clothes that aren’t awesome. It’s all about eliminating distractions and focusing on only the best! Yes, environmental/anticonsumerist attitudes play into it, but in this case I have mainly selfish motives: a better, more concentrated wardrobe, more time, less money spent, increased happiness, self discovery, et cetera!

I love the idea of knowing each item you own and having everything serve you well. So, I decided to create my own “minimalist-lite” version of the trial, with 14 items instead of just 6. This was a safe and comfortable way for me to try out a minimal wardrobe; I just sectioned off my closet instead of actually giving everything away, so in a fashion emergency (!!) I could still access all of my clothes. I was still focusing hard on school, so I didn’t want to make it too stressful, and compared to how many clothes I own, 14 things was still a huge reduction.

[My entire wardrobe for the month!]

Before starting the challenge, I outlined my ideal outcome:

• I can get dressed quickly without having to think about it for more than 1 minute.
• I don’t have to worry about coordinating things or hunting through a large amount of stuff to find something passable.
• I can easily find something appropriate for what I’m doing that day/the weather/my mood/etc.
• Outfits are super comfortable and still show my cute, playful, whimsical style. I look and feel great in my clothes.
• Hopefully not too much handwashing needed.
• Greater appreciation for what I already have.

A few particulars on the challenge:

Laundry

I decided to do one load of laundry once a week (tossing everything in) instead of my current practice of doing two loads twice a week (separating colours and blacks). I figured that my clothes have been washed enough that I didn’t have to worry about things bleeding. Most of these things I can wear a couple of times before having to wash them, but if there is a shirt or something I want to wear twice in a week, I was prepared to handwash it. Handwashing a single item only takes about 15 minutes (minus drying time), so no biggie.

Strictness

As the experiment went on, if I found that my life would be easier or more enjoyable if I added a couple more items, or if I decided that I didn’t like wearing a particular item as much as I thought I would, I was willing to add or remove as needed. (It turned out that I didn’t need to do this, but I wonder if just having this possibility made the trial easier.)

Results and Other Findings

I achieved everything that I outlined in my ideal outcomes! The only thing was that my personal style was not quite as extravagant as usual, but overall, I think my outfits did reflect my tastes, and I still got to wear things like pink heart shaped pendants that light up from the inside, so yay. And I’m so glad that I chose to include my plaid skirt!! It’s definitely one of my favourite piece of clothing right now – it reminds me of a school uniform so it is cute and whimsical that way, but it’s still grounded in reality (it doesn’t look too out of place on the street!) and it goes with pretty much everything.

Laundry was about the same. Instead of doing two loads twice a week (separating colours and blacks), I did one load once a week (not separating anything). Everything turned out fine. In fact, I probably could have used the same set of items for nearly two weeks at a time if I wanted to stretch it, since most of them didn’t get that dirty. I didn’t have to handwash anything. Awesome!

Limiting my wardrobe to these items was NOT difficult at all, there were zero feelings of deprivation. There were a few times where I thought in passing, “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to wear my X today?” but I quickly forgot about it. A couple times I felt the urge to go shopping to destress, but it wasn’t that hard to avoid doing so. The clothes that I picked MORE than satisfied the different situations and moods I found myself in during the trial period. This was barely even a challenge, more like an easy experiment. If I wanted to really challenge myself, I would try cutting my inventory in half and doing the real “6 items or less” challenge. (What items would I pick? Probably: lavender hoodie, black tights, plaid skirt, black polkadot shirt, black pants, and blue cardigan.)

Nobody noticed that I was wearing the same things over and over (or at least, no one mentioned it). And really, I don’t blame them. With 6 outers, I practically WAS wearing something different everyday. When I think about it, I don’t even usually notice what other people are wearing, unless it’s something particularly memorable. Well, I notice it, but then I promptly forget about it. In most cases I can’t remember what people were wearing the day before, and I’m pretty sure it would take me a long time to notice if someone wore the same thing every day. I actually know a couple people who do this, and they’ve told me that it generally takes people months to notice. Go figure!

The thing you would have to balance is how interesting/remarkable/memorable you want your clothes to be versus how much you care about people knowing that you wear the same thing. If you wear jeans and a black hoodie every day, most people will be totally oblivious to it, but if you wear a hot pink zebra striped dress every day, it’s likely people are going to pick up on it. But hey, if you don’t care if people notice, then what’s the big deal? Even if you had just two outfits that you rotated, that would go a long way to people not noticing or caring. I know that I have fun wearing remarkable things, but I don’t ALWAYS want to draw attention either, which is why the wardrobe I picked for the challenge was kind of … blendy, to be on the safe side. Another thing I like is trying out different styles and looks, but the downside of this is that a lot of the things I have don’t match eachother (maybe there will be a couple things that I wear a particular item with, but that’s it).

I actually still had more than I needed: I didn’t wear the grey cardigan a single time, and I think I only wore the striped dress and pink-sleeved hoodie only once each, and I only wore the grey tights a couple times since I prefer the black ones, so I could have easily done with 10 items. The grey cardigan was mostly included in case I for some reason had to make a more formal outfit (surprise job interview?!), but now that I think about it, the blue cardigan could have worked for that too. It feels so weird that I could be perfectly satisfied with just 10 items. 10! It didn’t feel like I was missing anything at all. This makes sense, though: why would you want to NOT wear your favourite clothes?

After the challenge ended, I did put together a few outfits using some of my other clothes, just for the heck of it. And while I looked cute (if I do say so myself), it didn’t give me the jolt of happiness that I expected it would. So, while I DO feel happy when wearing a cute outfit that I really like, I don’t necessarily feel ‘better’ by wearing a cute outfit that I really like that happens to be different from the previous one. Interesting.
Second Life parallel: When I first joined SL, I changed my outfit a lot. But quite a while ago, I found a skin, hairstyle and outfit that I really love and that I think suits me, and I haven’t changed it for over a year. (No need to do laundry in virtual reality!)

Unexpected benefits: The challenge forced me to wear skirts and dresses more often than I would have otherwise. I feel great when I wear them, so now that I’m in the habit, I’m going to keep wearing them. Also, fewer random clothes laying around my room. Since I was only wearing a few items, I had the motivation to hang them up right away.

Side note: Repairs and Customization

About a week ago I noticed some small tears forming around the cuffs of my favourite hoodie, and I just this morning got around to repairing it. I love my snuggly purple sweater so much that I wouldn’t dream of getting rid of it because of a few holes! Not gonna give up THAT easily! Even though my sewing is, er, unprofessional, it’s barely noticeable and I like doing things myself, who knows why. If for some reason my stitches didn’t work out, I would bring this hoodie in and get it repaired by an actual tailor. Having things repaired is much less wasteful, and the idea of having a few items that you really like, use, and repair for a long time really appeals to me. It’s like you’re building a relationship with your belongings.

Another thing I’m curious to explore is having clothes tailored to fit (whether it’s learning how to do it myself, or having it done for me). I’m not sure why this solution never occurred to me before; I often find clothes that I like but they don’t fit 100%, and I know from experience that if something is even slightly uncomfortable I probably won’t end up wearing it, so I pass on the opportunity. The upside is that it limits the amount of things that you buy, but if you have the buying part under control, tailoring opens up much more choice. Customization will be a helpful superpower to have in my quest for the Ultimate Wardrobe. It’s an added cost, but if your wardrobe has only 10 or so high quality things and you’re not in the habit of impulse buying, it could still end up costing less than a wardrobe of 50+ mediocre things.

What next? Moving forward?

Based on my findings, it makes sense for me to move in the direction of building a super-awesome core wardrobe of maybe 8-12 high quality pieces that I love to death. Even now, I’m still wearing an outfit comprised of my challenge inventory. After all, it’s my favourite outfit! I’m going to keep this core wardrobe sectioned together so that I can easily find my favourite things, and I’m going to work on thinning out the remainder of my clothes and getting rid of things that are not awesome. However, in the mean time, if I want to wear an outfit using one or more of the things not in my core wardrobe, I will. Why not, right? This way, I have the best of both worlds: I have the efficiency and stability of my core wardrobe, but I still have the option of mixing it up a bit while I transition.

Even though I like my current core wardrobe, there is room for improvement. My black dress is not ideal, so I’ll be on the lookout for the perfect replacement! When adding or replacing things, I’m going to set really high standards for looks, quality and matchability. I’m not in a hurry to upgrade everything, but in the long run I think the results will be wonderful.

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I would encourage anyone who is curious about this to try it. It’s so easy and you will learn a lot about yourself! You have nothing to lose (except lame outfits and your shopping addiction). If you try it, link your results in the comments!

Posted on April 26th, 2011
Filed under: Exploring, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts)
Topics: experiment, fashion, minimalism

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