Hello all organic and artificial life forms,

I love doing experiments since I was a kid, especially the ones I did on myself. Lately maybe from pure boredom or some subconscious things, I started doing experiments on myself again. I’m trying to push my boundaries and overcome my biases toward myself and my capabilities. In Durum Raporu # 1, I talked about Aaron Swartz’s and his partner’s approach to transformation into a growth mindset. I put Aaron’s words from his post “Believe you can change” downward for those who don’t remember.

Growth mindset has become a kind of safe word for my partner and I. Whenever we feel the other person getting defensive or refusing to try something because “I’m not any good at it”, we say “Growth mindset!” and try to approach the problem as a chance to grow, rather than a test of our abilities. It’s no longer scary, it’s just another project to work on.

Aaron Swartz

In that post, I said that we’re trying Aaron’s approach with my sister. We tried that a couple of days and gave up as always. During this long quarantine period, I was able to stay with myself for a very long time. This made me plunge into my dusty, rusty mind shelves to create new idea crumbs and rethink the past ones. Thanks to this little cleanup I came across “growth mindset” idea again and I gave it a try. I made a decision, if I say I can’t do something, I have to try that thing for 30 days and see the results. Now I’m going to share my experiences from these little experiments.

We have to go back 2 months. It’s 5 July, clocks are showing 7 pm. I’m trying to concentrate on my lesson notes and in the back of my mind I’m thinking what will I do with all of these exams. As if this wasn’t enough, I feel an urge to check twitter every 30 minutes. In that time around, I’m reading Deep Work from Cal Newport. I’m thinking about deleting social media with effects of this book. My determination increases exponentially with these urges. Then a thought popping up in my mind, tries to remind me of all the joy of scrolling through Twitter gave me. And I say those magical words “I can’t do. I can’t delete social media.” Yes, all organic and artificial life forms, our first challenge has been identified. Be more careful next when you say “I can’t” Aech.

I wish I could say I deleted my Twitter right away, but first I need to save my 200+ bookmarks elsewhere. After getting angry with myself for bookmarking so much, I delete my twitter. Today is approximately 76th day without twitter. During this period, I clearly saw my funny behaviors. When I opened my search engine I was directly typing Twitter. I continued to feel that urge to check twitter for a long time.

Now, we move on effects of not using social media. Best effect I experienced is the decreasing of information and stimulants that I encounter. When I see new info about anything, I’m jumping on that right away and I end up with 200+ bookmarks. Thank to this challenge I don’t see new info coming from all direction and I can focus on what I want to focus on. Addition to these, finally I can look at my saved articles and 200+ bookmarks. There are really wonderful treasures in there. I’m better at focusing, faster in learning new concepts. I feel like my mind and focus sharpened. All of these instant communication apps are definitely scatter our focus.

Apart from these, I have really got a lot of time, a lot of. But this data is not objective because we’re in quarantine and I already have got a lot of time according to my normal day. If I sum up, I’m delightfully happy with taking this step and I don’t think to use twitter in a near future.

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After this successful attempt, I wanted to challenge myself tougher things. I needed to face level end boss: Sugar. If you don’t know me personally, you can’t imagine how much sugar I consume in one day. Some days I was eating only junk foods. More than one chocolate, chocolate cake, some kind fruit flavored milk was my usual meals.

I was not a person that take care of my health. I lived a turning point when I listen to one of Bilgem Çakır’s interviews (I can’t ignore Covid’s subconscious effect too). In fact every person talk about same issues but Bilgem Çakır put it in a way more sensible and more systematic. He talked about that he wants to be physically, mentally and psychologically healthy in his 80s. I want that too, I want to learn and discover amazing things every day. I want to be mentally healthy to keep my learning adventure alive even when I came to my 80s.

I didn’t cut sugar directly as it was a tougher villain. I had to make smart plans to beat it. I was always thinking about cutting sugar in the back of my mind, thanks to this I was getting used to this idea more. Then one day I watched That Sugar documentary. Everyone was talking about how wonderful and impressive that this documentary is. Seeing sugars effect over mind and happiness levels was a real game-changer for me. On that night I put the plan into practice. That time around, we were in our hometown surrounded with so many people. I told everyone I don’t eat sugar for 30 days and with this way I socially committed to this challenge. My inner voice said ” Well done Aech! There is no turning back anymore.” By the way, when I say sugar here, I mean processed sugar. I continue to consume sugar from fruits. I’m proudly say this is my 35th day without sugar.

Now I want to talk about the process and my experiences. For the first few days, I was thinking about chocolate and sugar every two hours. But I was reminding myself that I have to do this only 30 days. With the 30-day rule, I turned this challenge into a game. I love games and I love winning. So there is no giving up. When we came to the 10th day, I had headaches, I was resting all day long and I was thinking about giving up. It continued like this for a couple of days.

After all of this, my remarkable days came. Despite all of this unusual time, I’m feeling constantly happy, I’m full of energy for live, learn and discover. My mental health better than ever. In fact, this change affected my family members and close friends and they decided to live without sugar too. I’m trying to learn to make delicious desserts without sugar. I’m producing less waste and I’m interested in the ecological life nowadays. It created a momentum in my life to a better direction. I’m so happy with this result and I don’t think to consume produced sugar in a near future.

While finishing my writing, I want to say that I’m so glad that I did the things that I say I can’t do. These experiments are intellectually transforming and satisfying. I will continue to try to overcome my biases. There are more challenges going on right now. In the next posts, I will continue to share my experiences. Live long and prosper. 🖖