It's September soon, and this year, it is the perfect month to start a new experiment for several reasons.

For one, September 1st is on a Monday, which is just like the most satisfying shit ever. I love when this happens, and when I become King of the World, I'll change the calendar in such a way that it happens every month. September 18 is also my birthday, which is why, for 10 years straight, I am off for two weeks. This gives me enough free time to do weird experiments like this.

So, this month's experiment is called "Shutter September." And as you probably have guessed, it's all about photography.

In one of my favorite Discord channels, a whole bunch of my friends started regularly posting pictures. Some of them have gotten into analog photography (maybe obsessively so), while others got new gear and just made their camera part of their EDC. My GAS flares up every time this is the case, but as you can see from the image above, if there is one thing I am not lacking, it's photography gear.

Here is the plan: for the whole month I will be taking my camera wherever I go and taking at least one share-worthy picture a day. I will upload these to both my Glass.photo profile and my Instagram. I hate Instagram, but it's unfortunately where most people are. If you hate Instagram as much as I do and have no Glass.photo account, don't worry. Glass.photo has RSS feeds for each profile, so here is mine, just subscribe to that.

The goal is not to win the Sony World Photography Awards (but Sony can sponsor this project, if they want; hit me up!) but to flex my photography muscle. I want to find stuff to shoot even on the most boring day, because to quote Wesley, "consistency matters more than perfection".

Wish me good light!

I tend to over-optimize the things I do. I basically constantly ask myself how I can get the best possible outcome out of whatever I try to achieve. I see this in my gym and running routines, where I regularly test new apps to figure out if one is better than the other. I see it in other hobbies too, where I'm endlessly tweaking to make something just a little bit better.

This has never really felt limiting to me, on the contrary. Trying to find ways to improve things is usually fun for me. But at the same time, I also know that good enough is often good enough, and there is no need to aim for perfect, as it only risks limiting yourself. And I sometimes wonder if I limit myself without knowing, but instead label it as "fun" and "part of the process".

So for July, I aim to stop all over-optimization. No apps for either the gym or running. No tweaking past a certain threshold, but instead ship it as is. By doing this for a month, I hope to recalibrate my sense of "good enough." And if there is some hidden perfectionism holding me back, I want to find it and burn it down with the might of a thousand suns.

In case you forgot what this is all about, here are the rules I wanted to follow:

• No social networks with timelines or algorithms
• YouTube only as a search engine, or if a link is shared
• All content must come via RSS, email, or directly from a human
• No online news. If I want to know what's going on, I'll grab a newspaper (thankfully, I work for one)
• No podcasts
• No phone while doing anything else
• Daily screen time limit: two hours (Manu picked that number; I might hate him by June 30)

I think I broke all of them at least once. Very early on, I realized where this was heading and what my learnings would look like. And so I simply started adopting the changes early.

Before I started with this experiment, I wanted to figure out one thing and prove another: Would I suffer from FOMO, and could I live without my smartphone? I think the answers are no, and yesn't.

About FOMO

Unlike Manu, I didn't completely dial down all my inputs, simply because I still wanted to write the newsletter for overkill. But if there is one thing this experiment proved to me is that there is nothing to miss out on. Most of what happens online simply isn't so important that you need to stay up-to-date day by day. If something truly important happens, someone somewhere will tell you, and then you can always decide if you want to dig deeper or not. And I'd like to argue that most of that stuff isn't even worth digging deeper.

Social media, algorithms, influencers, all make it seem like whatever happens right now is the most important thing in that moment, and you definitely shouldn't miss out, but that's because their incentives force them to operate in such a way. The companies and people can't make money if you don't give them your attention. And attention is the most important currency we all have, but we spend it lavishly on some random crap.

We all should be cultivating ignorance more, but that's for another blog post.

On living without a smartphone

Before the end, I picked up YouTube again. I also listened to a podcast or two while driving for seven hours. I even posted to social media a few times (but I can say I did not consume content).

There is a time and space for all these things. If you actively decide to interact with one of these media in that exact moment, and you do so mindfully, I don't see any problems. Heck, I'd argue that this is exactly the way we are supposed to use this. The point never was to become a hermit who doesn't partake in modern society, but to live on your terms.

The issues I have with all this lie in the mindless, automatic behaviour, where you pick up one of these things to fight boredom. I used to do that a lot. I probably still do that way too often.

But now I also try to sit with the boredom for at least a little while, or alternatively, grab a thing I deem more worth my time. During June, I finished seven books. I also actively wrote stuff by hand in one of my notebooks, often to come back to it later (while it's great to have all the world's knowledge in your pocket at all times, it's also ok to not know a thing immediately). And I meditated, near daily, after a year-long hiatus.

Before all this, I thought the smartphone was the bane of my existence. Everything that bothered me about myself had its origin in my smartphone use, so the answer clearly was to try and actively fight it, or look towards a dumbed-down solution.

But what this does is give this little thing too much power. I hand over my agency to a piece of glass and metal, and throw up my hands, saying that I am fighting an unfair fight and that none of this is my fault in the first place; I am but a poor human being, and something something trillion-dollar companies.

Sorry, me, but that's bullshit. That is an excuse to not work on the true underlying issue, which is that I hate being bored, and the smartphone is the quickest fix. And I hate being bored because being bored means I have to sit with my thoughts, and I am afraid of what I might find there. Though during this experiment, I realized that there is nothing to be afraid of anyway, thanks to therapy and years of work.

Actually, I got my best ideas while being bored.

Experimental June: The End

So, where does this leave me now?

I will probably embark on more of these experiments, all to challenge my default states. All to figure out if the things I am doing, out of habit or not, are worth it in the first place. And I think I already know what the next one will be, but it's not July yet, so no spoilers.

Like and subscribe, or something.

Last week was a bit weird. I have just given up on the whole No-YouTube thing and started watching it again. But before that, I unsubscribed from 120 (!) accounts that I either barely watched, were inactive, or that I only watched sporadically. I kept a few where I am still torn, so my new rule is that I will unsubscribe if I don't watch at least two out of three videos uploaded to those channels.

My screen time was all over the place. During the week, it went up, as I started using a new gym app and kept it running on the screen. I reached 5 hours on gym days, which is a new high.

Meanwhile, during the weekend, it dropped dramatically, since I spent time with friends and only used my phone to text my special person or look up directions.

Last week incoming. Time to think about my learnings.

This week’s been a bit all over the place. I probably broke a bunch of my rules, though I think I can let them slide since most of it was for "work".

WWDC happened this week, and I watched the livestream on YouTube. I also listened to a few podcasts afterward, primarily Dithering, since it kind of counted as research. I might write down some thoughts on the event for overkill, so I wanted a few different angles.

Speaking of YouTube: I miss it. I still go through my subscription tab once a week to save stuff for after this experiment, but there’s so much good content online that I’m starting to wonder if I should just admit defeat, clean up my subscription tab like I said last week, and start watching again. Manuel might be shouting at me in a second.

As for the other things, I’ve been meditating daily, except for yesterday. I was so deep in a rabbit hole I woke up this morning, realizing I completely missed it. I’m also slowly increasing my sitting time from 10 to 20 minutes. I’m using this app, and it might be the best one I’ve tried so far. Still early, but it’s unlike anything else I’ve used, and I’ve done meditation retreats.

Still actively reading, still running and going to the gym.

Two more weeks to go. But I think the experiment won’t have as big an impact as I expected.

He asked:

What’s your dream life scenario? Without thinking too much about the financial aspects of it, that is. Like, if you could have all your basic needs met no matter what you decide to do, what would you want to do?

It didn't take long to answer the question: the life I currently have, minus the day job, except I’d work with my current employer as a client instead.

This made me realize that the life I currently live is close to what I'd call a dream life scenario. The only difference is that I'd like to have a bit more freedom in how I plan my day. Right now, I'm trying to fit all the different puzzle pieces (gym, running, overkill, cliophate, reading, journaling, meditating, spending time with loved ones) around a 9-to-5 lifestyle.

If my basic needs were covered², I could probably dial down the 9-to-5 by either working part-time, or by taking my employer on as a client (and maybe some other companies, too), and then flip the puzzle pieces: try to fit in the client work around the other stuff.

This realization showed me how the life I have right now doesn't need much changing, and that anything messing too much with this lifestyle, without bringing me closer to that dream life scenario, just isn’t worth doing.

There's an interesting equation by Chris Williamson (timestamped) that I came to believe in strongly:

One of my favorite insights is that we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. So we sacrifice happiness in order to be successful, so that when we're finally sufficiently successful, we can actually be happy. And if you have some sort of simultaneous equation, and you just sort of stripped success off from both sides, [only happiness remains].

Realizing this showed me that a recent path I thought I’d be interested in³ was a dead end. Following it would’ve meant giving up all the puzzle pieces I actually care about, just to pick them back up later, with nothing gained but burnout, since those pieces are what keep me balanced in the first place.

That path wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Not worth giving up happiness, not even for a while.

The truth, though it often makes people indignant to hear it, is that it’s almost never literally the case that you have to meet a work deadline, honour a commitment, answer an email, fulfil a family obligation, or anything else. The astounding reality – in the words of Sheldon B. Kopp, a genial and brilliant American psychotherapist who died in 1999 – is that you’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

You don’t have to answer. You don’t have to show up. You don’t have to do anything, really. You just have to deal with the fallout. And I’d argue that in a lot of cases, the fallout’s just a story you’re telling yourself. One that isn’t half as bad as you think.

It doesn’t matter if they tried doing a thing and it didn’t work, or simply came across something unfamiliar. These people go the extra mile to figure out how and why things are the way they are.

They don’t stop at the first layer either. They dig deep, keep asking how and why over and over again until their curiosity is satiated.

Not all paths they follow have a specific end goal. Sometimes they stumble upon something, explore it, find alternative routes, and decide to follow those for a while.

This curiosity always comes with a certain friction. Not giving in to it is the default, easier mode. Being curious is, at times, hard. Joan Westenberg explains it like this:

⁠Because in the real world, knowledge is earned through movement. Friction. Ambiguity. The old experience of falling into a stack of books at the library wasn’t efficient, but that was hardly the point. You’d go in looking for one answer and come out with five better questions. That’s how curiosity thrives: in the space between expected and unexpected, between map and territory.

My closest friends are very curious people. I’d like to believe I am too. But from the outside, this trait might seem unnecessary. Some people might even find it bothersome. “Stop asking questions” or “because I said so” are phrases curious people have heard hundreds of times.

Asking yourself why things are the way they are doesn’t always bring obvious value. There might not be any benefit to knowing, except for the fact that now you know. Knowledge and embracing curiosity is often the end goal.

But if you practice curiosity over a long period, you start to see the world differently. You ask questions others don’t, simply because they didn’t know they could. And once you start doing that, the world opens up.

You also train your mind to switch modes at will. That’s useful, since curiosity and anxiety share similar brain regions. Anne-Laure Le Cunff²:

Curiosity activates many of the same brain regions [as anxiety], but with a crucial difference in framing. Instead of asking “What might go wrong?” curiosity asks “What might I discover?”
⁠⁠The anterior cingulate cortex, which processes uncertainty in both anxious and curious states, shifts from threat-detection mode to exploration mode. The prefrontal cortex, instead of ruminating on potential failures, begins generating possibilities.

Curiosity is the basis for a creative life. I doubt you can reach your full creative potential without cultivating it.

And cultivating curiosity is simply the act of asking “why” and “how” about seemingly mundane things. It’s the act of digging, removing layers one by one, until you feel satisfied. On some topics that comes quickly. On others, you dig for years and one day realize you’ve become an expert. Without even noticing the shift.

For curious people, being curious is like swimming for fish. We do it because it’s just the way we work.

So, stay curious.