Challenge Results: All Participants Got Happy In 7 Days!
I proposed a challenge that I could make you happier in 7 days or I would give you $500. Here are the results!
Welcome to Year Of The Opposite: Travis Stoliker's Newsletter for People That Don't Subscribe to Newsletters. Ex: Saddleback, Liquid Web, & Techsmith.
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3 months ago I proposed a crazy challenge: “You'll be happier in 7 days or I'll pay you $500!” I proposed this challenge because I was worried about how many of my friends were telling me that they were depressed. I had an idea that perhaps the strategies that worked to resolve my own depression from grief might help others.
I was a little surprised that this offer upset one of my loyal readers and someone I respect. After I mentioned that no one had accepted my challenge, I announced that I was raising the reward from $50 to $500, prompting this response:
“There’s a reason for that Travis, and it’s not the money. Are you really that tone deaf?
I read your comments a while ago about how much greater the world is today than in the past because of Elon Musk and his space ship right around the time that I read the horrific stories of the numerous women, young and old in Israel who were gang raped, passed from soldier to soldier, had their breasts cut off and tossed around like footballs, and only after all of that were brutally murdered.
Seriously?
Just yesterday, I watched the sentencing of the stupid kid from Oxford whose stupid and neglectful parents bought him a hand gun which he then used to execute four of his classmates, and traumatize an entire community.
This is the world we are leaving our children and grandchildren. It is NOT better. It is not better than the era when I went to school with my parents or myself not fearing if I would could home at the end of the day.
Your privilege is blinding you.”
Ouch. The comment stung me a little bit but I tried to make sure to listen for the truth in it. One of my favorite quotes from Naval is: “If it hurts to hear it, look for the truth in it. If it comforts to hear it, look for the lie in it.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe I was delusional that these simple steps might help make people a little happier. Maybe the world is just terrible and getting worse and this explains everyone’s sadness. Maybe she was right.
Luckily, 6 readers took me up on my challenge, so we were able to see if she was right! Let’s take a look…
As a reminder, here are the rules for the challenge to make you happier.
Work out for 30 minutes everyday.
Ignore your phone, email, & social media for the first 1 hour of the day and the last 1 hour before you go to bed - every single day.
Keep a private journal everyday.
No alcohol or drugs that aren’t prescribed by a doctor for all 7 days.
Results: Lets see how those 6 participants did!
Average Happiness Before the Challenge: Participants rated their happiness an average of 5.67 out of 10 before starting the challenge.
Average Happiness After the Challenge: After completing the challenge, the average happiness rating increased to 7.67 out of 10.
Average Tasks Completed: On average, participants completed about 25 out of the 28 tasks, indicating a high level of engagement with the challenge activities.
Average Happiness Increase: The challenge resulted in an average happiness increase of 2 points on the happiness scale.
Maximum Happiness Increase: The largest reported increase in happiness from a participant was 4 points on the scale.
Minimum Happiness Increase: The smallest change recorded was no change in happiness level. But it is worth noting that this individual already had a very high happiness level at 9 out of 10. It stayed constant at 9 out of 10.
Number of Participants Who Reported an Increase or the Same Happiness Level: 6 out of 6 participants!
This was A HUGE success! Thank you to all 6 participants.
Here is the feedback from each participant:
"It definitely worked, and the motivational texts helped keep me on track. I liked the journaling because it allowed me to ""vent"" to myself in writing and then go to bed with a clear mind. Also no phone/email/etc. for the first and last hour of the day really helped my sleep - much more than I thought it would. Trying to continue that habit! Also working toward no TV for an hour before bed as well - but I watch the news before bed :( Baby steps! Thank you Travis!"
"I thought the challenge had some valuable components. I was really good about shutting my phone off at night, so I was reading instead of doom scrolling. That was an accomplishment all by itself. I haven't been good about sticking with it, but filling out this survey is making it top of mind again. I was also a lot better about journaling when I was doing the challenge. I think the important part of that was that the journal prompts were positive. Since I have had some things going on in my personal life, my journaling has tended to be reliving negatives and trying to make sense of things. I haven't been disciplined about self affirmation. The most valuable piece of all of it was being accountable to someone I perceive as successful and disciplined, and also someone who wasn't my mom or an old friend with whom I would probably get away with (at least in my own head) being slightly less accountable than with a peer in the business community. Thanks for the opportunity!"
“I didn't really participate to increase my happiness. I was interested in starting some habits that are pretty well proven to improve your life. My only feedback for the next rou s of research might be some simple tools to break the inertia. A checklist to check off every day once a task is done. A document with a couple prompt questions for the thankfulness journal. Nothing too advanced and nothing that need to be turned in. Just tools for those who want to use them that might help. Looking forward to hearing more about where you might be going with this line of thinking and informal research. And....we need to set a date to.tour the maker space. I need to get creating again.
"Definetly felt better and slept better when I followed the phone rule. Activity is a bit difficult due to back issues, but I did start a regimen of chair yoga. Continue to do it as I'm able. You continue to be an inspiration! Carry on!"
“I loved the challenge of it. Life is just hard especially with a toddler running around getting sick all the time... It was a great experience”
“It was a great motivator for me and I was determined to succeed (I did). The flexibility of the task timing helped a lot. I have continued on with the tasks, and in particular, the exercise. But being more mindful of screen time was also a great habit to get into. Overall, I feel more mindful, relaxed and happy. Glad I took you up on the challenge!”
My thoughts on this data:
This Reinforces The Theme of The Year Of The Opposite: If you are disappointed with your life or sad, change it up and it might have a huge positive impact! What worked for me has now worked for 6 others.
The biggest benefit went to those that are very sad to begin with: Participants who started off with a Low Initial Happiness level experienced a greater increase in happiness, with an average increase of 3.0 points on the happiness scale. In contrast, those with High Initial Happiness levels saw a smaller average increase, at 1.5 points. This suggests that participants who began the challenge with lower levels of happiness had more room for improvement and, as a result, tended to see a more significant positive change through their participation in the challenge.
Too Many Variables: I think I may have introduced too many variables into this challenge by having everyone complete 4 tasks each day. Since there are 4 variables, it’s hard to know which action had the highest impact.
Accountability and Community is hugely important to happiness: One of the things that I did for this challenge was that I kept in contact with each of the participants each day. This seemed to make a big impact on the participants. It goes to show how important having an accountability partner and a strong social network are to your happiness.
Ignoring Screen Time Had Huge Impact: Participants reported that ignoring their phone had a massive impact on their happiness. I was surprised at how many people mentioned this in their feedback.
My Hypothesis:
There is clear scientific research that all 4 of these activities are statistically proven to improve happiness. But I have a hypothesis that I would like to test at some point.
I’m starting to think that only one thing matters: Your Reputation With Yourself. When someone sets a goal to accomplish and then they follow through and achieve it, it makes them happy! We all know it. We’ve all felt it.
It was said that “Self esteem is just the reputation you have with yourself.” If you are a person that can set goals for yourself and follow through with them, you’re gonna be happier. I know this deep in my bones. If the goal is challenging, it’s gonna have an even greater benefit to your mood.
I have an idea to launch another challenge. I think that if an individual set themselves a goal to do something positive for themselves every single day and they completed it consistently, I think it would make every person happier. I don’t think it was so much the specific tasks that I setup.
For instance: If you want to learn the piano and you set a goal to practice everyday for 10 minutes, I bet you’d be happier at the end of a week! If you wanted to learn spanish and you practiced consistently everyday for a week, I bet you’d be happier at the end.
The bigger the goal, the more challenging it is to you, and the more important it is to you - I bet it would correlate with the improvement in your mood. The bigger the goal, the greater the improvement in your mood. But this is just a theory I’d like to test.
Challenges With The Data:
Of course, this is not a scientific study, it’s only a few individuals, the data is self reported, and probably the biggest issue with the data is a “selection bias”. Which basically means, the people that selected themselves to participate in my challenge are probably people not fully representative of the human population because they are all people that follow my newsletter and they are people that are willing to challenge themselves to get happier.
But even with the challenges in this imperfect study, every single person (including me) improved their mood and one person kept their happy mode consistent. That to me is incredibly awesome!
Thank You!
Thank you so much to all 6 participants in the challenge. I appreciate you.
If anyone would like to take me up on the $500 challenge for themselves, I’m willing to do it again! Just let me know by leaving a comment.
Thank you all so much for reading my newsletter, The Year Of The Opposite. Don’t forget that all of my articles are available as a podcast too. If you enjoyed this, I would really appreciate if you would share this with a friend.