Join us for a new round of the 1% Experiment!

What does 1% look like in May?

This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. As always, it’s unedited so probably features some stutters and re-starts. If you like/need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it.

Hello mates, and happy weekend to you! I hope it’s treating you well?

It’s deliciously rainy and chilly here, which means the fire is cranking, the leaves are falling and our little house is shrouded in mist. I love this time of year and am chuffed to be re-entering my cosy era.

It’s the first Sunday of the new school term, which means only one thing: a brand new round of the 1% experiment!

If you’re new to The Tortoise (or if you need a reminder), here’s a quick rundown of what the experiment entails, but essentially it simply asks the question:

What might happen if I commit 1% of my day to positively changing one area of my life?

It’s about committing to small, consistent shifts over time, and having faith that those small, consistent shifts (and I do mean really small) will add up, much like compound interest builds upon itself, taking your initial investment and super-charging it.

To do this, we take an area or two of life that we’d like to grow or improve and commit to regular one-percent efforts. That might mean:

• spending 1% of your day/week on that area of life (1% of a day = 15 minutes OR 1% of a week = 1.5 hours)

• increasing a specific practice by 1% a day, growing it by tiny increments until you reach a desired level

• giving 1% extra effort in a specific area of life

If you want to join in, please do! It’s a slow, sustainable, low-stakes way of making change, and as I discovered last term, there’s always something we can do to move the needle on our goals.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to The Tortoise to get updates straight to your inbox, and if you’d also like to join our monthly accountability threads, you can sign up as a paying supporter for AU$5/month. (That’s US$3.30, £2.60, €3.)

Photo by Sergei Gussev on Unsplash

Looking back at April

Last term I focused on two areas of one-percent, the first being joy (because it’s my word of the year) and the second being healing (for obvious reasons) and both taught me a lot.

I can genuinely say I gave 1% to each of them every day. Sometimes it was fifteen minutes well spent, other times it was applying the tiniest bit of extra effort. Going for a walk versus taking a deep breath. Watching a great movie versus looking at a favourite photo from a holiday.

My biggest lesson though?

That I’m never going to be able to quantify if or how these one-percents help me. There’s no Sliding Doors multiverse where in one world I dance to my favourite songs while cooking dinner and in another I don’t. (Though it would be cool to see what, if any, impact it had.) There’s no way to know if any of it made any material difference.

And that’s okay. We never really know what impact our choices have. Not in the doing of them anyway.

Maybe the better way to see their impact is to imagine not having done them instead.

If I looked back over a day and took away the good music, the cuddle, the laughs, the toes in the grass, the gentle stretches and extra cup of herbal tea, did it feel like something was missing?

Always.

I think it’s easy to take these tiny actions for granted. If I learnt anything this past term, it’s to work on appreciating the one-percents, not just doing them.

I know I’ve already used this photo but it’s relevant, I promise! It was taken on one of the most pleasurable days of my life, while visiting Bangor ME in 2018l

So what about the next round of the experiment?

Again, I’m going with two areas of focus: health and pleasure.

They’re both related to last term, but I’m hoping different enough to help me narrow my focus and come up with some more concrete ways of practising. I’m not sure if that will help or hinder but it’s fun to experiment.

First, health

I spent much of last term healing (as opposed to recovering), and I’m so glad of it. And while it’s definitely related, the way I plan to focus on my health feels quite different.

“Focus on my health” used to be code for losing weight (thanks a lot, diet culture), but now it simply means I want to feel stronger, increase my energy, find some more of that hard-to-quantify sense of vitality I get glimpses of now and then.

I’ve still got some pretty significant things going on health-wise, but that’s not going to change any time soon, so this term I want to focus on how I can serve my body and mind well, without slipping into unrealistic expectations or shoulding all over myself.

I’ve got a Grab and Go list like last term, with a wide range of one-percents that vary from fifteen-minute tasks to infinitesimal shifts on the days that’s all I’ve got capacity for:

• Take a five-minute break from work and do some cat-cows on the floor of my office

• Short body-weight workout (like, do it in my pyjamas or comfy clothes kind of short)

• Dance/yoga video

• 15 minutes on the rowing machine

• Take Joey for a walk

• Do squats while hanging laundry

• Dead bugs and bird dogs while watching TV

• Five deep belly breaths

• Put down the phone and do ten shoulder rolls

• Drink more water

• Add an extra serve of veg to my lunch

• Go to bed earlier

(If you’d like to download your own Grab and Go list and 1% experiment tracker, I’ve attached them at the bottom of the post.)

Second, pleasure!

I’m really excited about this one. Pleasure is a close relative to joy and has been on my mind a lot lately (Ben and I are recording a plodcast ep on the topic next week, so if you have questions or ideas, let me know in the comments).

The definition of pleasure is simple enough: “feelings of satisfaction, enjoyment or happiness” but it somehow feels more…primal than any of those words. I’m looking forward to exploring it, and have already spent some time thinking about small, pleasurable actions I can include in my day as part of the experiment:

• Walk barefoot in the mud

• Read a deliciously good fantasy book

• Share a long, lingering kiss

• Sink into a tiny pleasure, like a steaming cup of coffee next to the fire, and inhabit it completely

• Give pleasure to someone else — a massage, a fresh-baked cake, a flower in a glass jar

• Explore frugal hedonism as per Annie Raser-Rowland’s book

• Give someone a twenty-second hug

• Prepare and eat something delicious, and take five distraction-free minutes to enjoy the hell out of it

• Explore one of my senses, seeing how it can bring pleasure

There is something distinctly toe-curling about the idea of pleasure, all kinds, not just sexual, and not a small amount of guilt attached to the idea too. After all, we so often say that something is our guilty pleasure, when really, it’s just pleasure. I’m looking forward to unpacking some of that too.

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So tell me, are you playing along with this round of the experiment? Let us know what you plan to explore — whether it’s a continuation of the last round, or you’re focusing on something new. Also feel free to share anything you learnt from the last term.

If you’d like to download a copy of the Grab and Go list and 1% Experiment Tracker, you can do so here. The first is for those of you focusing on one area of life, the second is for those of us exploring two.

1% Experiment Printable Two

78.4KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

1% Experiment Printable One

73.7KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

And if you have trouble accessing the downloads above, you can find them here (one area) and here (two areas).

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That’s it from my rainy, chilly corner of the world for today.

For paying supporters, I’ll start an accountability chat shortly, so feel free to pop in and tell us how you’re going with your experiment.

I’ll be back in everyone’s inbox on Thursday with a post about the rebellion of embracing a fallow season.

Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend and take good care,
Brooke xx