Using an experimental mindset to build better habits in 2020

Executive overview

Under sustained stress, even well-established productivity habits break down. After a year of major personal upheaval, Dr. Amanda Imber found herself reverting to the exact behaviours she teaches others to avoid.

Goals create pressure and put you in a state of failure before you start. Replacing goal-setting with an experimental mindset — hypothesis, intervention, observation — removes the guilt of failure and reframes setbacks as data.

Treating personal change as a series of experiments, not resolutions, is the key to building lasting habits.

The case for experiments over goals

• Goals place you behind before you begin — you're already five pounds short, already failing
• An experimental mindset shifts focus from performance to learning
• Failed experiments aren't failures; they free you to move to the next test
• Baseline and post-experiment measures create visible progress through data
• Removing pressure also removes the vicious cycle of self-doubt after relapse

The five criteria for a valid experiment

1. Science-backed — evidence must exist for the strategy
2. Testable in 1–2 weeks — rapid feedback loops over long commitments
3. Simple to implement — low barrier reduces the friction of starting
4. Free — cost should never be a barrier to personal change
5. Novel — mainstream strategies (meditation, mindfulness) are excluded; less well-known approaches are prioritised

How the Year of Better project works

• Each week or two, a new strategy is selected and tested on the host and participating listeners
• Participants complete a short pre- and post-experiment survey to track change
• Data is aggregated anonymously to identify which strategies have the broadest impact
• Sample experiments include: creating a failure resume, deliberately practising boredom, spending a week saying yes to everything
• Sign-up and participation are free at myyearofbetter.com