Saturday

Saturday was the best day I’ve had so far with a total of seven 30 minute naps.

Saturday Sleep

3am-3:30am
7am-7:30am
9:30am-10am
11:10am-11:40am
3pm-3:30pm
7pm-7:30pm
11pm-11:30pm

Saturday Sleep Total 3h 30m

I added an extra nap in between my 7am and 11am naps because I was exhausted. From what I’ve read taking additional naps in the adaptation phase might help you to adapt quicker. Sleeping an extra planned nap is better than stretching too far and dosing off for a whole afternoon. It’s not like you’re blowing off any progress either. If you’re going from eight hours down to less than four, the extra half hour makes little difference.

I wish the tiredness had set in a different interval though. I’d rather take the extra nap during the night time so I’m not missing out on daytime hours. Maybe I can purposely schedule an extra nap for future days at 5am during this adaptation phase, so I can sleep more at night when the rest of the world is sleeping and not during the day.

After today I was feeling like I was on my way to being polyphasic.

Sunday

Then Sunday morning came and my doubts crept back in. After my first successful day where I had no oversleeping I had my 2nd big failure. On my Saturday 3am nap I forgot to set my alarm. I set it for 3:30am, but I didn’t have the correct day selected. I woke up at around 8am really frustrated. I can remember thinking when I first opened my eyes “sunlight, huh?”

I’m not treating this as a big deal at all. Just continuing forward.

Sunday Sleep

3a-8a oversleep
1p-1:30p
7p-7:30p
11p-11:30p

Sunday Sleep Total 6h 30min

I decided to skip a nap and move another one around because I had already messed up in the AM. I thought skipping one would help me get back on track quicker.

Discipline

One thing keeping me positive is that I’m not just giving up and crawling into bed. I went to bed at the correct time both times I overslept. I basically messed up because I didn’t know how to set a proper alarm.
It’s not a lack of discipline that’s causing my failure but instead a lack of mindfulness. I set my cell-phone alarm so all the days are selected now so that shouldn’t be a problem anymore. Having less details to think about while sleep deprived is probably better anyway.

From most of what I read on polyphasic sleep so far the adaptation period is the most difficult part. The more you oversleep and get off schedule the longer it takes to achieve adaptation. I’m not doing myself any favors by oversleeping, but I’m not discouraged at all. I’m going to keep trying until I get this down.

Benefits

I’m not fully adapted and still having some issues, but I’m still noticing some benefits. I’m enjoying the extra awake time. Although I haven’t been fully polyphasic and sleeping 3 hours a day I have been sleeping less hours total. I’ve been spending that extra time on writing. That’s been fun.

Since I started polyphasic sleep my mental chatter has turned waaay down. I feel like I’m being more present and focused on what I’m actually doing instead of constantly thinking and over-thinking. This happened when I first ate all raw foods too. My mental chatter going away helped me sleep better and to focus easier. I was in college at the time and remember feeling extra focused those first couple weeks raw. I wasn’t having any trouble falling asleep at all.

Falling asleep right away has been great too because before I started this I was having a lot of trouble falling asleep. That’s why I called my last post Insomnia Induced Polyphasic Sleep Trial. I wouldn’t be doing this if I hadn’t had so much trouble sleeping before.

Look for another update tomorrow.

Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts!
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Polyphasic Sleep Trial Update 1

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On Tuesday night I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I got into bed, and I laid awake for about 2.5 hours or so trying to get comfortable and clear my thoughts so I could get some rest, but I wasn’t really tired. I took my phone off my night stand and started reading some articles on the internet while in bed. After reading a few and still not feeling tired I got up and went on my computer. I stayed up until 5am or so reading articles, and watching youtube videos. I ended up sleeping from about 5am to 10am. I woke up and went about my day deciding I would try to stay awake so I could normalize my schedule and not be up all night again. What followed was the most massive failure to be normal in the history of humanity.

Tuesday Night / Wednesday Morning

I stayed up all night again not being able to fall asleep. This time I was up until about 6:30am. I slept until about 11am still not very much sleep for me, but the peculiar thing is that I wasn’t feeling exhausted and needing to get more sleep. I was feeling a little tired but I didn’t have this overwhelming compulsion to dart into bed like I typically do when I’m tired. This is the moment I considered giving polyphasic a serious go. What happened to being normal? I took a 30 minute nap later that day around 3pm and still felt pretty good. I took another one at around 11:00pm and still felt alright.

A big mystery for me is wondering why I became an insomniac all of a sudden. I have no idea why I had so much trouble falling asleep on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Thursday

I had penciled in another nap for 3am to 3:30am. I set my wristwatch countdown timer for 30 minutes and an internet alarm for 31 minutes to wake me up. I woke up at 7:22am, almost 4.5 hours later. I was a little miffed when I woke up because I didn’t really get why I had slept that long, but still I wasn’t feeling that exhausted feeling. I was feeling relatively ok. I realized later that windows on my PC had installed an automatic update and restarted itself during the time period that I set the internet timer. The wristwatch probably just wasn’t loud enough to wake me up. So anyway I overslept, but wasn’t discouraged. I finished out the rest of the day according to schedule.

Friday

Despite the previous day’s failure I decided just to keep plugging along. Friday morning I overslept again on my planned nap for 11:00a – 11:30a. I woke up and it was 12:16p. This one was a little funny because I remembered waking up at 11:30a when my cell phone alarm went off. I can remember standing next to the desk looking at my cell phone. I have no idea how I got in bed and started sleeping after that, but it was only another 45 minutes.

The rest of Friday went according to schedule and I slept a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes on Friday.

Here are my sleep totals for the week so far. Wednesday afternoon was when I decided that I was going to give polyphasic a try.

Tuesday: 5.5 Hours
Wednesday: 5.5 hours
Thursday: 6.5 Hours
Friday: 3.75 hours

Over four days I would normally get between 32 and 36 hours of sleep. Over the past four days I’ve gotten 21:45. I’m still functioning at a pretty high level despite the missing sleep hours. I exercised yesterday, got 2.5 hours of writing and editing in. I had a couple periods where I felt like I was just spacing too though. When I woke from my morning nap and my 2nd nap I felt like a total zombie just trying to keep my eyes open. My energy was pretty consistent for the rest of the day after those two struggling incidents.

Outlook

From what I’ve read from other people’s accounts of polyphasic sleep there’s an adaptation period where your body has to get used to the new pattern. This period is said to be the toughest part and if you can make it through the 1st week your success rate improves dramatically. Once I get passed that initial period I’m expecting the spacing out zombie like feelings to go away.

The structure I’m using is the 6×30 nap strategy where I take six 30 minute naps spaced evenly throughout the day. I’m allowing leeway and not being super strict, but I’m also not trying to go too long without skipping a nap. Right now I’m aiming for my naps at 3am, 7am, 11am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm. Isn’t that cool how it works out like that? I’ll just sleep on the 3’s 7s and 11’s.

Saturday will be interesting because Friday was really the first day that I had this working. Under 4 hours of sleep is new territory for me. I feel okay though. I’m feeling like I want to try to get the nap schedule down pat and not have any slip ups like I did yesterday, when for whatever reason I went back to sleep once. I have no problem with adding an extra nap in there somewhere if I’m feeling tired in between a nap. I don’t have a general feeling of tiredness or lethargy or anything like that. Tiredness seems to come and go. I was by far most tired yesterday after I woke up from the extra unscheduled 45 min nap I took. Good thing I had to take the garbage out and do the dishes and not do anything where I had to think too hard because I was in zombie mode. Zombie Tom subsided after I was finished with the dishes.

Previous Sleep Experimentation

Polyphasic sleep is something I’ve always wanted to try ever since learning about it in 2006. It always seemed to me like it was odd that humans needed to sleep as long as we do. I thought you could game the system and sleep less. Resting for 9 hours seems like too big a percentage of total time spent alive. If you average 8 hours of sleep per day that’s 33% of your life sleeping. It just seems like a lot. Since your time in the physical world is limited it makes sense to me that you would want to spend as much time interacting with the physical world as possible.

I ended up giving polyphasic a try once and that’s all it was a TRY. I failed pretty miserably and just wrote off polyphasic sleep as prolonged long term sleep deprivation. After this I did try biphasic sleeping with moderate success in the summer of 2006. I stopped that because my schedule never seemed consistent enough to allow a 90 minute nap somewhere in the middle of the day with any regularity like biphasic required. That was really the end of my sleep experimentation.

Most recently I’ve just been letting myself sleep as long as I need to. Going to bed and then just letting myself wake up naturally whenever woke. Sometimes I’d sleep 7.5 hours. Sometimes 8 or sometimes 9 or 10. Usually not more or less than that.

Interesting Naps so Far

One of the odd things that happens to me when I go to take a nap is lying down and not feeling like sleeping at all, even if I’m feeling really tired before nap time. I can recall being conscious almost the whole time lying down. My alarm goes off and I’m surprised that I wasn’t able to fall asleep and then I get up. Only that I’m refreshed. I get up feeling rested and ready to tackle another few hours before my next nap even though I feel like I haven’t slept at all. This has happened about three times over the past couple days. I’m lying down, aware, not really sure if I’m sleeping because I’m able to direct my thoughts and even consciously move my body, yet I don’t think I’m awake. Sounds weird right? My eyes do this rapid fluttering almost like a twitching during this. Is that what REM sleep refers to? I know REM stands for rapid eye movement, and I could feel my closed eyes moving rapidly. I guess maybe I should study a little more about sleep and see what I can find on that.

From what I understand you can do polyphasic sleep because the middle stages of the sleep cycle aren’t as important as the first and last cycles. When you sleep deprive yourself you condition, or possibly recondition yourself to enter the last and most important stage (REM Stage) quickly. I say possibly recondition because I’ve seen evidence that newborns are not monophasic sleepers (Edit: although babies also sleep 18 hours a day so maybe that’s a moot point). I don’t know if you would consider them polyphasic or biphasic though.

Why Am I Doing This?

Don’t take the above in any way as scientific because I’m really not sure what I’m talking about here. I’ve read others accounts on polyphasic sleep and I’m just going by them. Since I’ve had some extra time lately I spent about 2 hours the other night reading all of Steve Pavlina’s Polyphasic sleep logs. They’re the most extensive posts I’ve seen from someone who seems to have gotten this to work long term. Steve did polyphasic sleep for about 5.5 months in 2005 and 2006. I Also too a look at Puredoxyk who has lots of info too. She’s been polyphasic for longer than Steve, although she practices a different type of polyphasic that’s different from what I’m doing right now. I’m not seeking to make this more scientific. I’m not really interested in the scientific knowledge behind it.

The personal experiential questions are what I’m interested in answering. The science doesn’t really matter to me. I just want to see if and how this works from the inside out. Others appeared to have gotten it to work, but there’s not many of those claims out there, and it’s tough to know what to believe on the internet sometimes. I imagine that if I get this working and am regular with the polyphasic schedule I might become more interested in the why and how it works. Right now though I’m just interested in the: Does it work?

I’m interested in getting it to work and seeing how I feel when I’m doing it. I can read accounts of what others say about polyphasic sleep, but there’s almost something phony about that, like I’m not really learning enough about it by just reading about it. I have too many questions that could only be answered from an experiential standpoint. Like can I really survive and not feel tired on 3 hours of sleep per day? How does this tie in with athletics? Will my recovery be slower? On a hard training day will more naps be required to keep awake and alert? How will this affect my productivity? I’ll have more time to do work but will the quality of my output be the same? Is polyphasic sleep just a quantity/quality tradeoff? Like am I just trading a few hours of sleep to have some lower quality hours in the day? Even if it is working and feels like I’m doing no harm, what is the long term affect on health?

Don’t Believe it’s Possible?

If you’re skeptical of this I can understand. I’m a little skeptical too, and I’m doing it. It’s like wow if this works why doesn’t everybody do this? And why does nobody really know about this?

I felt a similar way when I started eating all raw food for the first time in November 2007. When I started my stomach did not feel good at all. I was extremely bloated for the first seven to ten days. On the first day though I experienced a very high degree of focus. There was no other external event that would have explained that and I heard other accounts of people saying the same thing. It just felt like a fog had been lifted. Like it had been a perpetually cloudy day in my brain and all of a sudden the clouds opened up and the sun shined through for the first time. This caused me to stick with it initially even though physically I wasn’t feeling so great with the stomach bloating. Eventually that subsided and I felt better than ever. This is comparable to the adaptation phase of polyphasic sleep.

The fog lifting is analogous to the extra time I’m gaining. Even though I’m having my zombie episodes, I’m enjoying the benefits of having more awake time. Just like how I enjoyed the increased mental clarity eating raw food. I have to deal with feeling like a zombie at times, but in a week or so hopefully I’ll adjust and won’t be feeling that way anymore.

It would have been easy to write off these accounts without ever trying it and just call somebody crazy because they do something that isn’t normal. When you try it yourself though it’s much more difficult to deny your own experience.

It’s 2:40am Saturday morning right now as I’m working on this post and I’ve spent a total of about two hours writing today already and the day is only about 3 hours old. That makes me feel really good! It’s like wow I can focus all this extra time into my goals and that prospect is really exciting. If I slept only 3-3.5 hours per day over the course of year that would lead to me to 1825-1642.5 extra hours of awake time per year versus someone averaging eight hours of sleep per day. That’s like living an 76 more days per year than the average monophaser!!

I’ll continue to update on how this is going over the next few days so check back when you can.

I’d really like to know your opinions on this. I want to encourage you to ask any questions you have on what I’m doing. You can do this by leaving a comment or sending an email to Tom at TomHolowka dot Com.
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The best part of this trick? You don’t have to do anything but wait.

Wait till it’s Spotted

I see so many people chomping down on these perfect looking golden yellow bananas. Those bananas might look perfect but they could taste waaay better. Why? Because that banana’s not ripe.Ripe bananas taste better.

The reason ripe bananas taste better is because during the ripening process the starch to sugar ratio changes. When the banana ripens the amount of sugars increase while the amount of starches decrease. Sugar tastes good. Starches are bland and boring.
(Photo: Unripe Bananas)

Seriously. Just wait.

How You Know They’re Ripe

The bananas aren’t ripe until they’re spotted. I know, it’s hard to wait until they get spotted, but it’s worth it for superior taste.

It almost seems a little counter intuitive, but that’s the way nature made em. Those spots on the peel signal that they are ready to eat.

Many people won’t even eat a spotted banana because they think it’s bad, spoiled, gross, or yucky. I was one of those people when I was a kid too. Time to grow up people!

(Photo: Ripe Bananas)

Taste Test

Don’t believe me? Do the banana taste test.

I’ve done this test with a few people and they all preferred my ripened banana over their unripened banana.

Get a ripe banana (yellow w/ spots) and an unripe banana (yellow w/ no spots). Take a bite out of the unripe banana. Chew. Swallow. Notice the taste. Next, take your ripened spotted banana and do the same. Viola! Behold the superior sweetness and flavor of the ripe banana!

Excuses

People eating unripe bananas give me the excuse that bananas are too sweet when they’re spotted. Lame.

Too Sweet? Really? I’ll see this person gorging themselves on ice cream or cookies sometime later. Maybe they’re just comfortable deluding themselves. A ripe banana is definitely not sweeter than a big bowl of chocolate ice cream. Lots healthier too.

Wait till they’re ripe for a tasty delight!

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For those not familiar I ate completely 100% raw for two periods. The first began in November 2007 and lasted until April 2008. The second began in July 2008 and lasted until October 2008. My diet has been forever changed, because even in the periods after and in between I still eat a very high percentage raw.

Not 100% Raw

Some days I still eat 100% raw but most days I’ll have raw fruits all day and have cooked meal at night. Like yesterday I had a Banana, Spinach smoothie in the morning, about two pounds of grapes in the afternoon, and at night had potatoes, a very small bowl of soup, a vegan chocolate chip cookie, and a piece of vegan coconut cake.

I don’t really speculate nor care at the moment about what percentage raw I am, but if I had to guess I’d say about 50% raw by calorie. Could be more or less but I really don’t know because I’m not really keeping track of what I’m eating. It always felt to me like people in the raw food world focused too much on percentages than progress in general, so I don’t really like to go by that. (I read over this post and it’s basically all about percentages so I guess I do that too…oops)

The staple of my diet is still bananas! When they’re ripe and abundant I can eat upwards of 30 a day.

100% Vegan

I started being vegan in November 2007 and I’m still vegan today. I won’t say I never “cheated” during that time, but I have been 100% vegan since at least April of this year. I’ve eaten meat about two times in the last eighteen months and both times were in the same week in November. (I fell off the wagon HARD that week!)

When I do eat cooked food I always make sure it’s vegan. When I first became vegan I was interested in being vegan for the health reasons. Today I’m into it for the environmental reasons as well as health reasons. Veganism is a pretty important part of my life now so I stay vegan.

I also tend to eat vegan foods that are very low in fat. These are considered bland tasting to the average person, but they’re good to me. Eating all raw for a long time really changed by taste buds. I can eat a plain slice of whole wheat bread with no topping and be perfectly fine with it. Same goes for a baked potato with no toppings or oils. I like the way the foods taste on their own. Plus it’s unhealthy to add oils to your food because oil is 100% FAT.

Health

My physical health has slid since not being 100% raw anymore. When I was 100% raw I never had any physical illnesses. Nothing more than a headache and even that was a rarity. Since then I’ve had two colds. One in December 2008 and one about two weeks ago. They both were very short, lasting only a few days. When I notice myself getting sick I make it a point to eat a higher percentage raw, to rest more, and to eat less to help myself get better quicker.

Prior to my dietary makeover in November 2007 I would get sick numerous times per year. I wasn’t the guy with the runny nose always sneezing all the time, but I would usually get sick hard two or three times per year. Strep throat, pneumonia, flu, and bronchitis all have multiple occurrences in my medical history report. I considered that normal at the time because I didn’t know any better. I would usually have a fever accompanied with some type of nasty cough and the only thing I could do would be to lay in bed for four days to get better.

About a month before I tried all raw for the first time, I had tonsilitis really bad. I was sick for 5 or 6 sick straight days. I was living in an apartment in South Orange, NJ at the time and actually called my mom to pick me up and take care of me. Wuss!!

Since drastically changing my diet I’m much healthier. I wouldn’t attribute all of my health gains to diet though. I get a lot more sleep these days than I used to. I usually get about eight to nine hours of sleep per night. Sometimes more or less depending on my activity level. If I ran 12 miles that day I tend to sleep more than if I ran only 5 or 6. If I don’t get enough sleep I feel the effects of it pretty quickly.

I’m also a lot more fit today than I was in 2007. I can go out and run 10 miles no problem just about any day. A claim I couldn’t have dreamed of before.

Why I’m not 100% Raw

So why am I not 100% raw despite all the benefits I gained from it? It’s hard!! Being 100% raw is difficult to do to begin with. It’s even more difficult when you’re in an environment that doesn’t feel supportive to it. I’m enjoying being a cooked food vegan who eats a high percentage raw though. I may over indulge sometimes with cooked food, but that’s okay with me right now.

My girlfriend is becoming an excellent vegan chef and it’s fun to try the new things that she makes too. She made the coconut cake and chocolate chip cookies referred to earlier. It’s also fun to go to the vegan restaurants where I live. There’s two very tasty vegan restaurants a short drive from where I live (New Britain, CT)

I’m not 100% happy that I’m not 100% raw anymore. A part of me wishes I was still following the low fat, raw vegan, 80/10/10 lifestyle, but I do my best not to beat myself up for it. I’ve come a long way in terms of my health and I can appreciate where I’m at right now in contrast to where I was. I also know that some day I will be 100% raw again. I’m just waiting for the right time to do it. I’m not trying to rush it. I think it will be easier for me once I move.

Moving to Miami

In less than a month I’ll be moving to the Miami area in South Florida. Part of that decision was health related. I’m not a huge fan of winter either. It’s stressful to me. In this part of the country I feel like it’s tough during the winter to get high quality produce. It’s much easier to eat unhealthy in that environment because even when you’re well stocked up on produce it doesn’t always taste so good. Makes you not wanna eat it. No one wants to eat food that doesn’t taste good. In Miami I’ll definitely find better weather during the winter and hoping better quality food too.

I’m thinking that I’ll begin moving up to a higher percentage raw once I live there. I lived in Hawaii from June 2008-August 2008 and it was so easy to eat raw there. The produce is fresh, cheap and abundant. I”m hoping the Miami area will be similar.

Health like all facets of conscious growth takes time to develop. What does your diet and health situation look like??
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Gladwell points out that epidemics have three characteristics. Contagiousness, little causes and big effects, and their rise and fall in a single moment.

The way the internet works today is very important to contagiousness. Things are spreading constantly like mini epidemics. Social media services like Digg were practically built on that concept. Ditto for Twitter. The blogosphere too. Information digitized is very contagious.

Growing consciously is all about little causes and big effects rising and falling iin the moment.

Lets explore Gladwell’s three rules for epidemics and how they apply to conscious growth.

Stickiness

Stickiness is the ability of a message to spread. If something is able to spread quickly it’s sticky. If it isn’t it’s not. Is growth sticky? Absolutely. Change is sticky. Especially positive change. Barack Obama’s political campaign in 2008 really took advantage of that. The stickiness is built right in to the message. People want to their lives to be better. Most of the highly conscious people I’ve met want the world to better too. I went to Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Growth workshop a few weeks ago and one of the phrases I heard a lot was changing the world. The inherent stickiness comes from the fact that many of us realize that the world isn’t nearly as good as it could be right now. There’s this want to make things better not just for ourselves but for everyone on the planet and there’s a great opportunity right now to do that. At an individual level we want our lives to be better. At a social level we want everyone’s lives to be better. Change is the stickiness of a growth epidemic.

The Power of Context

The power of context tells us that our environment and groups of people play a big role in what we do. What is the context of growth? Our environment isn’t in good shape right now. My immediate world is in ok shape right now, but things could be a lot better globally. People in other parts of the world are not as fortunate as I am. People are unhealthy, starving, there’s wars going on, and the environment is deteriorating. I don’t like that. In the world I envision those things don’t happen. Those conditions and the awareness around them are invitations for change.

I’ll address groups in the next section, because there’s one group in particular that’s very important.

There’s power in that context. The world is good, but it could be much better. A growth epidemic has strong context.

The Law of the Few

The Law of the few says that there’s very specific people that start and cause epidemics. Gladwell identifies the few as the connectors, mavens and salesmen of society. Who are the mavens, connectors and salesmen in a growth epidemic? It’s growth related bloggers, and all bloggers in a sense, because a good blogger is all three of those things.

Connectors

One piece of advice given when starting a new blog is to find and occupy a niche. That’s exactly what a connector does. Gladwell says a connector is someone occupying the corners of society. There’s so many different blogs and bloggers out there talking about growth. Something really unique about blogging is that they all connect to one another. If one blogger reads another bloggers post, they link to it or post a comment on it. This is hardcore connecting going on through hyperlinking in cyberspace.

By blogging the bloggers get an audience. They get to know readers and readers get to know them. Connectors know lots of people and lots of people know them. A blogger is an excellent connector.

Mavens

A maven as defined by Gladwell is an info broker, someone who helps because they like to help. See the connection to blogging? Bloggers write about topics to get information into the minds of readers searching the googles all over the world. The majority of bloggers get nothing directly out of doing it. There’s internal rewards sure, and external rewards for very few, but even so they still do it.

Blogging is the fastest growing medium ever. There’s over 100 million blogs on the internet. 100 million! That means there’s about 100 million people just writing blogs. That doesn’t even count the people reading blogs. The nature of blogging is growth oriented. The most popular blogs are blogs that help the readers in some way. If you follow any blogs regularly ask yourself what you get out of them. You’ll come up with something, otherwise you wouldn’t be following it.

Salesmen

A salesman is a person who is intensely persuasive. It’s not that person tries to be persuasive, they just are. They naturally infect you in a positive way. The bloggers that you read, you read them because there’s something about them you like. You relate to them on some level. You allow them persuade you on things.

The nature of blogging is persuasive. Searching for something online is like allowing yourself to be persuaded. Giving someone permission to connect with you. Permission to teach you something you didn’t know. Most people come to blog articles through search engines, searching for a piece of information they need. When the blogger gives it to you in a way you appreciate you’re sold on them.

We’re seeing a lot of blogs these days with themes of change, and growth. A lot of websites talking about changing the world. The more people we see enter this conversation the greater chance of social development we have. Bloggers because of all of the things they do are sticky people.

I’m not saying that solely blogging will change the world. Blogging itself is just part of the puzzle, because in any epidemic including a growth epidemic…

Little Things Make a Big Difference

An epidemic is something small that spreads quickly into something big. So how do you do to create a personal growth epidemic in your life? How can we create a growth epidemic in society? How can we get the results we’re after?

In one of the most interesting parts of the Tipping Point Gladwell writes about how seemingly unrelated events make huge differences in epidemics looked at in the book. In New York City, public officials were able to curtail crime on the subway by arresting fare beaters at subway turnstiles and painting over graffiti on subway cars. They applied the same principle to the streets and began arresting people for public drunkenness and public urination.

These seemingly insignificant actions had a major effect. Crime in New York City dropped dramatically over the next few years after 1990. What about this can be applied to personal and social growth? There’s tiny actions adding up all over the world right now, and they all begin at the individual level.

The Broken Windows Theory

The Broken Windows Theory says that an environment with “broken windows” is a likely environment for more violent crime because broken windows give the impression that no one cares about the area. Broken windows can be anything eliciting neglect, not just glass.

In New York City the lesser crimes like fare beating and public urination were the broken windows that invited more violent crime like murder. By reducing the smaller crimes they greatly reduced the larger crimes. How can we apply this to personal growth?

Fix Your Broken Windows

Every event in your life, even seemingly insignificant events make a big difference. Every choice you make from the decision of what time you wake up in the morning to where you put your keys after you come home are important.

So what are some things you do that invite larger “crimes” in your life? Do you leave dirty dishes in the sink? Do you hold your tongue about something you really want to say to your boss? Or your partner? Do you leave your socks on the floor after you take them off? (I’m guilty of this one )

Maybe telling your partner you love them and giving them a hug one extra time per day will lead to a more fulfilling relationship. Over the course of 6 months that leads to 180+ hugs and I love you’s. It’s very possible that could make the difference between a successful and failed relationship. What’s one little thing you can do in your relationship to show your partner you love them and keep your relationship strong?

Where are the broken windows in your life? How can you begin to start repairing them? Maybe you can triple your productivity by picking your dirty socks up off the floor. Seems unlikely but is it totally impossible? Who knew curtailing violent crime in New York City could come from cleaning up graffiti and cracking down on public urination, but that’s what happened. Who knows? Something small might steamroll into something bigger.

To think more globally where are the broken windows in society? And how can we fix those?

The awesome thing about growth is that once you’ve repaired your own broken windows you can help other people repair theirs. Some of the windows you’ve already fixed on your own building will undoubtedly be broken on someone else’s. This gives you an opportunity to contribute, connect, help out, and further your own growth too.

Take Any Action

Remember, these actions aren’t necessarily related. In the previous paragraph I gave you an example where they were. Working a little on your relationship leads to a successful relationship. But maybe making your bed everyday will give you a more fulfilling relationship. Maybe getting 10 minutes of exercise everyday will make you a better relationship partner.

All the aspects of our lives are interconnected but we have a tendency to ignore this and compartmentalize areas. The food you eat can have an interesting effect on your mood and emotions. So can exercise. So can your job. And they all affect each other too.

The influences in my life at the time I’m writing play a big role in the type of article I write and how it’s written. If I’m reading a lot about a particular subject at the time it tends to show in my writing. I even notice that I subtly emulate the style of the writer after I’ve read a piece by a certain author.

This is actually a good thing, because when we focus on one area and compartmentalize it for a little bit, we actually improve other areas too. Focusing on your math skills might improve your writing or vice versa.

I’ve been writing a lot recently and I’ve found through writing that my reading comprehension is a little bit better than it was before. I’ve been moving through books faster than normal.

Experiment

A key is ability and willingness to experiment. Make a change and notice the feedback you’re getting. It could be emotional, spiritual, physical or it could come from another person. No action is too small.

Make a small change in your daily routine and notice how it affects the rest of your day. Write it down in a journal or text program. Even things that seem unrelated could possibly help. For example if you have a goal that you want to exercise everyday. Maybe watching less tv will help, or drinking more water throughout the day. It’s can be a little hard to tell, but you have to be willing to try anything to get the results your after.

It’s not necessarily that all of these little actions add up and produce a large result over time. That’s something I hear a lot, little actions add up and over time you will begin to see results, but that’s not the way it typically happens. It’s more like small actions lead you to take bigger actions. Those bigger actions lead you to take even bigger actions, and all of a sudden you’re seeing progress. That’s your tipping point.

Many of the very productive people I know of make their bed everyday. Most will scoff and say “oh well that doesn’t make you more productive” and you’d be right in saying that because there isn’t ONE thing. It’s many things.

We don’t usually see experimentation on a grander scale. Most people aren’t willing to experiment to create large social changes. The way our economic system works doesn’t make it any easier either. Having to make money can be a direct barrier in willingness to experiment. Many people aren’t willing to invest money they won’t ever get back. If something helps people but doesn’t appear to be profitable, the likelihood of it getting done is small. That’s a big reason we have more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet but there’s still plenty of people that go hungry.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Some actions might hold more weight than others but that doesn’t mean the ones that hold less weight aren’t important. This is a version of the FAE (Fundamental Attribution Error) from the Tipping Point.

Humans like to attribute effects to one major cause. We make blanket statements about what specifically makes us successful in an endeavor. Instead, it’s usually a lot of smaller causes and a few medium causes all together that produce a desired result.

When I want to stop idle web surfing (something that still bites me today) it helps when I realize I’m about to open up my browser for no conscious reason. Then I just stop. I just close the browser. That tiny little action caused me to think about what I really wanted to do. I might do some writing after that or go for a run. Does closing my web browser make me a better runner?

Here’s where we see the gray area. It’s hard to make an unrelated connection like that, but it is true that without closing my browser I might not have gone running. Closing my web browser had a little ripple effect through the rest of my day. So does closing my web browser make me a better runner? I say absolutely YES!

Your Tipping Point

When you have a sudden awareness of progress that’s your tipping point. It would be like if your interest rate went up every time you put money in the bank. You’d keep adding money to your account and your rate keeps going up. Keep adding the money and the rate keeps going up. One month you’d look at your bank statement and be a little surprised about all the money you’d banked. When you look at that bank statement you’d realize your finances tipped. All of a sudden crime in New York City drastically declined. Crime in New York City tipped.

The tipping point works like that in your personal life too. You’re exercising day after day. When you notice you’re looking a little thinner in the mirror you’ve tipped. It’s like an epidemic of your awareness. All of a sudden you’re just noticing all the progress you’ve made from the time you’ve been putting in.

September 2008 was a Tipping Point for financial markets. All of the inputs that went into the moment when the institutions collapsed had been going on for years. That one moment where it’s noticed is the Tipping Point.

Start an Epidemic Today

My challenge to you is to do just one thing right after you’re done reading this article. Anything. Just pony up and do it. Start a positive epidemic. Notice how it affects the rest of your day.
If you’re stuck for ideas here’s 20.

20 “Insignificant” Actions

1. Close your browser
2. Turn off the TV
3. Open a book
4. Read for 5 minutes
5. Go outside
6. Go for a walk
7. Go for a run
8. Do 1 pushup
9. Do some jumping jacks
10. Take out a pen
11. Send someone a hand written thank you note
12. Give a hug
13. Tell someone you love them
14. Say hi to a stranger
15. Play a game w/ your child
16. Call a friend
17. Throw away something unhealthy
18. Pick one piece of dirty clothing up off the floor
19. Write a sentence
20. Clean off your table or desk

The growth epidemic is already underway. I’m a part of it, and if you’re reading this you’re probably a part of it too. Keep doing the little things in your own life and make a big difference in society.

Note: I obviously heavily used Malcolm Gladwell’s material in this post. He is one of my favorite authors and hold all his work in extremely high regard. The Tipping Point is about 10 years old, but it’s still as relevant as ever. Buy the Tipping Point Here (not an Affiliate Link)

Did you like this article? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts!
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Day 1 – Wasn’t feeling enthusiastic about starting this challenge, normally a bad sign. I delayed getting started all day and began a workout at home at 7p doing a variety of push ups, crunches, pull ups, dips and squats.  My maximum amount of push ups was 26.  Lets see how many I can get on December 30th.

Day 2 – Easier to get started.  Went running in between classes at the indoor track.  I didn’t keep track of how many laps, just ran for time, ended up doing 26+ minutes.

Day 3 – Did a similar workout to Day 1, again feeling relatively unenthusiastic about the challenge. I waited until after 7p again.

Day 4 – Running at the indoor track again, 26+ minutes.  Made myself exercise before leaving school because I felt like I wouldn’t wanna do it when I got home.

Day 5 – Got out earlier today, getting to the gym at 10:30a.  My Shoulders were a little sore so I wanted to ride the stationary bike, but the gym only had two stationary bikes, both old and in bad shape.  Using them was very uncomfortable.  After a few minutes, I scrapped the stationary bike and shot a basketball in the basketball gym instead.  I was the only one there so I shot alone.  Shooting by yourself is fun when you’re as rusty at as I am.

Reflection

Quality

The workouts have been good quality except for today, basing that on a little sweat and muscle soreness.  Today’s workout quality wasn’t great, but my goal isn’t to get efficient quality workouts everyday. Consistency is my goal, so I won’t feel bad about a poor workout. At least I know not to expect to use the stationary bikes at that gym..

Enthusiasm

My self-discipline’s been dragging me to my workouts so far.  I haven’t been as motivated as I normally am for a 30 Day Trial, but I’m still having success.  Guess I owe that to my self-discipline.

Start Time

All of my workouts were after 5pm except for today.  It felt better to do the workout early and not have it looming.  From This day forward I’m going to do the workouts as early as I can.  Anything I can do to make the challenge easier on me.

Onward to Days 6-10

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What I Can Do

I can give you reasons why you should care.

I can tell you life is beautiful.  I can preach to you about how people have persevered through circumstances much worse than yours.  I can read you inspiring quotes or show you inspiring movies.

I can speculate why you don’t care; You might feel powerless, like you have no control like nothing you do matters or like no one cares about you.

I can even understand why you don’t care.  You’ve been conditioned by your TV, your parents, your classmates, your boss, your family, your coworkers, and finally yourself. Your whole world taught you not to care, then you taught yourself.

But none of the things I can do will make any difference.

You’ve Gotta Help Yourself

Ultimately the choice is yours.

That Choice is your most powerful ally, your only true possession.

If you have nothing else you’ll always have that choice. You can ignore it, pretending like it’s not there but it is.  You can run away from it, but you won’t get very far.  You can delay it, but it’ll be back. You can hide from it, but it’ll find you.  That choice will always be there even if you’ve already made it. Even if you’ve already chosen thousands of times before. The choice is still yours to make again.  It’s always there for you to make.

All you have to do is start caring.

Besides, do you really expect me to believe you don’t care if you’re asking?

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30 Day trials are great for building habits because you can focus on one change.  When you try to change everything about your life overnight you often fail miserably, get discouraged and forget about it, wondering why you bothered in the first place (guilty as charged ).  By focusing on one habit at a time you make it easier to succeed, creating positive momentum to build on.

Another reason 30 day trials work well is because of the small commitment.  30 days, no big deal, It’s not like you’re going to do it everyday for the rest of your life.  You’re just tryin’ it out.  Temporary change is easier to wrap your head around then permanent change.

There’s already been awesome articles written on 30 Day Trials so here’s the links.

30 Days to Success
The Beginners Guide to the 30 Day Trial
ZenHabits.net

December Trial

I like to do a trial at the beginning of every month to build new habits and trash old ones.  Starting December 1st, I’ll be blogging my latest trial.

I’m not going to update daily, but I’ll make a post on my progress every fifth day, recapping the previous five days.

December’s trial will be 30 days of exercise, so for the month of December I’ll exercise everyday for 25 consecutive minutes.

In high school, (doesn’t that sound like something you’re only supposed say when you’re over 40?)  I exercised at least a half hour per day, running on the cross country and track teams.  Now, I go through spurts where I’ll exercise everyday for two weeks and then not again for the next three or one day of exercise four days of none, so this for me this challenge is about making exercise a consistent daily habit again.

I decided on 25 minutes because 20 minutes seemed too easy, but 30 seemed like a big commitment, 25 is an adequate challenge.

I’m trying to build a habit of getting some sort of exercise every single day, running, basketball, body weight exercises, basically anything that gets me moving.  I’m being flexible because the most important thing to me is consistency, not the results of the actual exercise.  If I were training for an event like a 5K, I’d focus on the exercise itself, but this is about the habit.

December 1st is Day One.

Give it a try?  It’s only 30 days…

I welcome anyone who wants to participate or start a trial of their own, just post a comment stating your trial and post your updates in the comments every fifth day when I post mine.

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Last time I saw those relatives was about 11 months ago and except for having longer hair I don’t look much different. After thinking it over I remembered other people reacting similarly seeing me for the first time in a few months. It made me wonder why people were telling me I look good and different when I look the same.

I’ve been eating raw vegan for just over a year now.  Maybe I’ve got the glow.

The Raw Glow

I’ve read about the raw glow before, but never an explanation of what it was, just that it happens to people.  Some people like Philip McClusky and Angela Stokes have lost over 150lbs eating raw and look great. As far as I know they don’t glow in the dark.  That’s because the raw glow isn’t something you see, it’s something you feel.

The raw glow is actually non-physical energy. People around you subconsciously sense  positive energy in your presence.  They have no other way to reciprocate feeling your energy than saying “you look fantastic!” even though you look the same.

The energy doesn’t come from raw food. The energy exists within you, but when you eat unhealthy food you block it. Instead of radiating outward, the energy is absorbed by other processes like heavy digestion and toxin elimination.  These processes use up your energy when you eat toxic food.  Cleaning up your diet allows your energy to flow freely, unblocked.

When you eat toxic food you take in toxic energy too. Negative energy coming from the suffering, the mercilessness, and the human indifference of animal production and the negative effects on the planet as whole.  This negative energy blocks your natural positive energy, canceling it out or even producing a net-negative energy.  Could that be why it seems like we live in such a negative angry world?

So are you wondering what makes people compliment you? They’re simply reciprocating the positive energy you’re broadcasting to them.  Your lifestyle change causes you to become a beacon of positive energy. Others receive your positive energy and wish to reciprocate it, so they compliment you, telling you you look fantastic.

It has nothing to do with looks.  I look almost the same as I did last time I saw my relatives.  I was wearing sweatpants and a hoody when I saw them yesterday.  Not exactly fantastic by traditional standards, right?

Other people sense that you are fantastic, even though it has nothing to do with the way you look.  They feel the positive energy.  They feel it so much it makes them think they see it, and that’s what the raw glow is all about.

This might sound a little hokey to you close-minded folk and I understand your skepticism, but I’ve heard and experienced this phenomenon too often lately to not at least consider it possible.

So what’s your experience with The Raw Glow? Does it exist?  Comments?

In need of more proof my blog wouldn’t be the most useless blog on the internet, I found on Technorati  almost 9,000 blogs about cats. If 9,000 cat bloggers can write about their pets, there’s no reason my blog can’t be more useful than one. 

So, if you subscribe I offer you the TomHolowka.com Guarantee:

I guarantee my blog will be more useful than 1% of all cat blogs or your money back!