My best friend just told me about a guy who lived an entire year only eating potatoes. He wasn’t an Irish peasant in the 1800s. He’s a modern-day Australian who was sick and tired of being overweight and unhealthy. So, he only ate potatoes for one year, had regular appointments with his doctor to check vitals, and lost 114lbs. He vlogged (video blogged on YouTube) every day. He soon gained a number of followers and The Today Show recently did a piece about him.
Enter the time of extreme experiments. You may have heard of some of these:
- Guy decides to only eat McDonalds for 30 days – creates a documentary
- Guy decides to run 100 marathons in 100 days for 100 charities – Tweets (305k followers) and updates Facebook throughout the process
- Guy (Tim Ferriss) calls himself the human guinea pig and does an array of athletic, intellectual, and performance enhancement experiments – has one of the most successful blog and podcast ever
People may have been doing this kind of thing for ages past, but this is the first time they can connect to people during the experiment and immediately share the results. They can also connect to others doing similar experiments.
The crazier the experiment, the better. The more dangerous, the better.
I’ve labeled each year going back to 2011. Here are my predictions from years past:
- 2016: The Year of Digitization
- 2015: The Year of Succinctness
- 2014: The Year of Analytics Management
- 2013: The Year of Consolidation
- 2012: The Year of Alignment
- 2011: The Year of the Video
Do you have any examples of extreme experiments you’ve conducted or are planning to conduct this year?
