Four small experiments that changed my year

This year, I ran four small experiments. None of them were dramatic, and most weren’t planned in advance. I changed one variable at a time, paid attention to what happened, and decided what to keep.

Some of these experiments were intentional from the outset. Others emerged out of curiosity. Taken together, they changed how I think about habits, effort, and what actually leads to sustainable change. What follows is a record of those four experiments and what they taught me.

1. The alcohol experiment

This experiment began after Christmas 2024, following a period of overindulgence that left me feeling sluggish and flat. I didn’t frame it as a reset or a resolution. I simply wanted to feel better in my body as I moved into 2025.

At the same time, my partner was trying to quit smoking, and alcohol was a trigger for him. We decided to do it together, which helped, but didn’t remove the challenge.

The first few weeks were hard, mostly because alcohol was embedded in familiar moments. A drink to relax. A drink to socialise. A poolside drink because it was the weekend. There were plenty of situations where I noticed myself thinking that I’d normally be having a drink here, and that I would genuinely enjoy it.

The day-by-day approach was the most important part. I never committed to a timeframe. I didn’t decide how long I would go without drinking. I focused on today. If today felt better without alcohol, I repeated it tomorrow.

Around that core structure, I put other things in place. I joined an online community doing the same experiment and marked off each alcohol-free day. I made sure I had alternatives available. I paid attention to how I felt and tracked things like sleep and energy.

Even with that support, it still took a fair amount of effort early on.

What surprised me was how much easier it became after the first month. The habits that once felt automatic started to loosen. I began to see that alcohol itself wasn’t doing what I thought it was. It was the ritual, the pause, the way it signalled a shift in the day. Once I created other ways to meet those needs, or realised that it didn’t always do what it promised, the pull reduced.

Alcohol didn’t disappear from my thoughts. There were still moments where I noticed its absence. The difference was that those moments no longer carried the same weight.

By the time we chose to have a drink again, it had been just shy of four months. That distance made the effects unmistakable. My sleep had improved significantly. My confidence increased. I felt calmer, more patient, and better able to handle frustration.

I chose to keep alcohol in my life, but the relationship changed. For the rest of the year, I drank far less than I ever had as an adult. This is by choice, as opposed to due to hard and fast rules, which don’t align with my strong desire to step completely away from all-or-nothing thinking.

What I took from the experience was a reminder about how habits form and change. Most habits are simply responses we’ve practised over time, often in reaction to stress, fatigue, or the need for comfort. The more often a response “works” (even temporarily), the more automatic it becomes.

When you try something different, there’s friction at first. That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s what happens when you stop using a familiar pathway and start carving a new one. Over time, the old response loses its grip, and the new one becomes easier to access.

What stayed with me: Habits don’t loosen because you force them to. They loosen when you understand what they’re responding to and give yourself enough time to practise and get used to a different response.

2. The weight training experiment

Until September this year, my training followed a familiar structure. Heavier weights, lower reps, progressive overload. I knew how to train hard and trusted that approach.

The frustration came from logistics. Some lifts required a spotter, and coordinating sessions around someone else’s availability started to feel restrictive. I value flexibility and independence in my training, and that friction was growing.

In September, I bought a program from an ex-bodybuilder who had completely changed how she trained. She’d moved away from heavy, low-rep sessions to lighter weights, higher reps, dumbbells and resistance bands. In the program, she offered both a gym version and a home version, and encouraged even committed gym-goers to try the home option.

I was sceptical, despite understanding the theory. I assumed it wouldn’t build muscle in the same way.

I tried it anyway.

The response surprised me more than I expected. There were sessions where the muscle fatigue and soreness were far greater than I thought possible, using loads I would previously have laughed at. It challenged my assumptions and, if I’m honest, my ego.

Since mid-September, I’ve trained this way consistently. Muscle has continued to develop. My fitness has improved. Sessions are shorter and easier to fit into my life. Injury risk feels lower. I no longer need a spotter, and many exercises can be done with bands or bodyweight, which has made training while travelling far simpler.

I don’t see this as a rejection of heavier training. It’s an expansion of what I consider effective. My body responded without caring about the training identity I’d held onto for years.

That was humbling, and unexpectedly freeing.

What stayed with me: My body responded far better to curiosity than to loyalty. Letting go of what I thought “counted” as proper training opened up options that were more flexible, enjoyable and just as effective.

3. The habit tracking experiment

I’ve always liked data. In the past, my habit tracking reflected that, but it was rigid. Each day felt like a pass or fail.

This year, I tried a different approach.

I created a spreadsheet listing habits that tended to show up on a good day for me. Some were simple yes-or-no items, like having green tea or writing my gratitude list. Others were numbers, such as minutes of yoga, steps, or time spent reading. At the bottom of the sheet, a daily percentage score was calculated.

I never reached 100 per cent. That wasn’t the goal.

Each day, I entered the data and moved on. Some days improved on the last. Others didn’t. Over time, weekly and monthly averages told a much clearer story than any single day could.

Later in the year, I added sleep scores, general nutrition quality, weight and body fat, mostly out of interest. This will delight spreadsheet people and horrify everyone else.

For me, it took the pressure off. Habits stopped feeling like rules I had to obey and became information I could learn from. A low day didn’t require fixing. A high day didn’t require celebration. Both were just data points.

This approach won’t suit everyone. It suited me because it replaced judgment with curiosity and made progress feel steadier and more realistic.

What stayed with me: Progress became easier to sustain when I stopped treating each day as a verdict. Looking at habits as data trends over time gave me far more useful information than trying to get everything right on any single day.

4. The learning experiment

Over the years, I’ve bought a lot of courses in the self-development and business space, and for a long time, I treated learning as something best done privately. I’d work through the material on my own, take notes, reflect, and assume that progress would naturally follow.

Sometimes it did. Often, it didn’t.

What I began to notice, particularly over the past year, was a pattern. The courses I completed quietly, without any accountability, tended to blur into each other. I understood the ideas, agreed with them, and still found myself circling the same behaviours.

More recently, I made a deliberate shift. I invested in learning that included coaching, feedback, and accountability, as well as structured learning experiences where progress was visible, and action was built in rather than optional. The content itself wasn’t necessarily better, but the difference was that I was no longer invisible while I learned.

That visibility mattered.

There were moments where I would have eased off or rationalised a delay if no one else was involved. Hearing my reasoning out loud made it obvious where I was avoiding discomfort or inconvenience rather than lacking understanding. Being challenged shortened the time I spent stuck in familiar loops and pushed me further than I ever would have on my own.

What became clear to me was that accountability, not information, was the factor that changed my behaviour.

What stayed with me: Accountability removed my ability to hide from myself. It pushed me beyond my usual comfort zone and accelerated progress in a way private learning never had.

Keeping experiments small

One mindset shift tied everything together. I stopped needing experiments to turn into permanent decisions.

This aligns closely with the idea of small, low-pressure pacts, as Anne-Laure Le Cunff describes in ‘Tiny Experiments’. You choose an action, show up and pay attention. There’s no requirement for it to work, and no failure built in, only information. At the end of the pact, you decide whether to persist, pause, or pivot.

That way of thinking ran quietly through the year. Alcohol-free without a timeframe. Training without allegiance. Habits tracked without judgment. Learning without hiding.

Nothing needed to be forever. Nothing needed to prove anything.

That made it easier to begin, easier to continue, and easier to change course when something no longer fit. Some experiments had clearer review points than others, but all of them gave me permission to reassess rather than lock myself into a decision upfront.

Looking back, none of these experiments was dramatic. They weren’t designed to transform anything overnight. They were small, low-pressure changes that I stayed with long enough to learn from.

I don’t feel the need to overhaul things in the same way anymore. Testing, noticing, and adjusting have proven far more reliable.