30-Day Supertrials (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

30-Day Supertrials

[ChrisG]

Nice one. Good luck with it

[Mounds]

I was quite pleased with this article! Some things I liked...

-straight to the point
-linking to supporting articles
-the review of former material. I liked this a lot because it filled the gaps in my knowledge.

Thanks Steve!

[Marc Robertson]

My first trial was actually a 30 day supertrial. I did exactly what you said I would wear myself out with. I went from a Standard American Diet to a near 100% raw vegan diet. In short, it was very intense at first.

I didn't tell anyone that I was doing this until after my second week. Even then, I didn't tell people that I suspected would be unsupportive. One of the people I told my story to after about the third week, became a vegan and has been since this past summer.

During the trial I only bought food that fit the category, when I went to the refrigerator, I didn't have a choice. It felt easy because I had set up a barrier to breaking the diet.

Very often, the barrier resists the trial itself. If at all possible, make the barrier resistive when going against the trial. This was the key to my success. I made it difficult for myself to break the trial.

I eventually did break raw vegan consciously to gain the greater variety of a Vegan diet. I went past the 30 days by nearly a half month.

[SheldonCooper]

They seem to have no practical value. If it goes well, then why did it go well ? Was it the 13-th thing you tried or the 34-th thing? If it goes wrong, then the same is true.

It almost seem like a masochist thing to do so you could then brag about how you made sacrifices for a month and did not learn anything about it...

[Adam Elkins]

From the tone of your post that you were already well into a supertrial, Steve.

In a sense, I've recently attempted a supertrial of my own... and failed (inevitably). I'm still recovering. Last month I started studying at Southampton University. I moved out of my Dad's house and had to take care of food, laundry, study, socialising etc. all by myself. By the end of Freshers Week I was already shattered, but then I suppose Freshers Week is a thing in itself. Ah well, at least I haven't staved to death yet, so something must have stuck. I think in fact I've made more progress than I've given myself credit for.

I was all poised to set up a 30-day trial of my own, too... I shall come back to that later/tomorrow.

[Broderick]

lol...this made me go back and read some of my trials. I completed one where I did 3 changes at once ...then I tried 7 and epic fail :/

Trying them was a pretty fun push...but at the end of the day it just reinforced the fact that I needed a place of my own and to let go of some of the people holding me back.

[bigadam]

I know what you were trying to say with the following but you wrote it wonky:

It’s possible to flop a boat with 7-2 offsuit too, but the odds are against you.

Actually, the odds of flopping a boat with a 7-2 offsuit are just as likely as flopping a boat with K-Q offsuit. I think what you meant to say is that the odds of winning with 7-2 offsuit are against you even though you could get lucky and flop a boat.

I know it's minor, but I love poker so there you go...

[Andrew Brunelle]

Supertrials? That sounds very ambitious and very challenging. I agree that most people will be unable to do this unless they make it easier for themselves by doing the baselines of their goals. It seems like something that could be revolutionary for someone's life and start them on a path of becoming a better person, however they may define that. 30 day trials are hard, so this will be super hard if I ever attempt it. Working nights and attempting a supertrial would probably kill me, so I'm going to stick with one thing at a time for now, but perhaps in the future I'll give it a go.

[Johnny Skosnik]

Can't resist...urge...to nitpick...NGGG I believe you meant "[cue trumpets]" Steve. To queue them would be arranging them in a line, a queue, where they would just sit there and not to anything. To cue them would signal them to emit a trumpet-ty fanfare.

Now my new 30 day supertrial is to not nitpick on otherwise excellent blogs.

[Cado]

I've done a supertrial before and it worked because everything went together. I needed a major health overhaul so I started exercising, I cut the crap from my diet, I learned how to cook, and I set a routine. Four major changes with lots of small ones thrown in and I didn't deviate at all for nine months, and when I did it's because I rationalized that I could get away with being a little less strict because I was no longer in the same condition as when I started.

When supertrials fail is when I want to do a bunch of things which are correlated but I can't immediately and unconsciously identify the links (or when the things I want to do are really and truly unrelated to one another, which is rare because life is not compartmentalized). Regarding the above, while I made a ton of changes all at once it was to further a single goal, a meta goal if you will: to become healthier. I wasn't trying to lose weight, but that was part of it. I wasn't trying to change my diet, but that was part of it. I had a clear definition of what it meant to be healthy and I knew how I was going to get there. When my vision became a little murky I slid back into some bad habits, but I still retain benefits from the initial trial and it's far easier to get back on the wagon if I jump off. As a result, major dietary or workout changes are far easier for me to make than they would be for most because I'm used to radical change in that area.

Now let's say I want to get up earlier and devote a chunk of time to writing and I want to get my meditation and my workout in shortly after I wake up... Those are great goals and they flow together but I failed in making those changes all at once because there wasn't any cohesion. I've changed my sleep schedule around before when I've had a good reason to do it but if my days are flexible as they have been this year I wake up tired and think to myself, "why am I doing this again?" and flop back into bed. You'd think the other changes would provide a reason but no, without a sustained focus on one area the reason for the other changes was pretty murky too. The interesting thing is, though, that by focusing on one of those goals the others start happening automatically in order to accommodate that singular change.

So if you're looking for increased effectiveness with regard to changing many things at once you may have more success if you can find a way to frame it as a singular goal, or you can focus on the link in the chain which will influence and thus force changes in other areas of your life.

[cacheborn]

Cool stuff! Good luck for your trial, Steve.

A confession : I have never completed a successful 30-day trial up till now. Reading this post recharged me and prompted me to make some major changes in my habits. Thanks for the boost!

[Sai]

"That's what she said."

I was NOT expecting that. I cried like a child.

[nickwastaken]

so I just read the 30 day super trial post.. I have a few problems with it...

"This is a level you must build up to. Once you have at least 5-10 successful 30-day trials under your belt, then you might consider a Supertrial. Otherwise you’re wasting your time."


first of all, about two weeks ago I quit smoking (a 30 day normal trial, if you will). I haven't completed any trials, in fact, i even failed that one after about a week. long story short, my girlfriend and I got in a little tiff, I went and bought a pack of smokes and went out for a few drinks with my ex.

I ended up smoking about half the pack with her that night, which left me with the other half. I had 1-3 smokes a day after that until the pack was gone.

On december first, I started a detox with my naturopath... you should see the list of foods I can't consume... I also started taking a couple remedies from her to open up my kidneys and liver (then we're going to soak everything up and then finally flush it all out). with this detox I have:

1 - eliminated smoking
2- eliminated smoking weed
3- eliminated drinking
4- started eating healthier (this should count as more than one, because not only am I avoiding every good food in the world [good in terms of being bad :P], I also started taking a nice vegan protein powder..which leads to..)
5- started working out again


there's a few more things I added to the list but I don't think they're worth mentioning. My point is, it's day 4, and I failed miserably at one trial, yet this "super trial" that I apparently started is going just fine. In fact, it's going better than the first "trial"

note - I wasn't aware of trials or super trials when I started, but for the record I'd like to point out that the general statement of people going to crash and burn if they haven't successfully completed 5-10 trials previously is misleading and discouraging.

Sure, I've noticed some quick transitions through levels of consciousness (mainly a quick transition down the list, as my temper seems to be a bit less controllable at times, for example), but it's not like I've crashed and burnt.

you can probably add going to bed earlier, waking up earlier, making a list of goals, quitting my lame job at a brewery to become an entrepreneur (basically, for now.. designing my own games and starting a work structure for a club/bar/restaurant for friends/family)...

I also basically started my own business, and ...well, I guess I started reading about a month ago - so I lied - 1 trial was completed (but it wasn't consistent with reading so much everyday.. really, it was more of a failed trial :P)

I'm just saying, there's no need to discourage people from trying....

There's nothing wrong with failure and/or making mistakes, right? so worst case scenario you SHOULD be encouraging people to try and fail, and get back up again to try again...

I thought that was part of your subjective mindset, Steve? Instead of encouraging people to.. be courageous and informing them of the possibility of failure.. and somewhat (indirectly) inflicting fear...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that something you basically said?