First of all, welcome to this newsletter and THANK YOU for being an early supporter of my new project. I’m grateful 🙏🏼
Life happens, right? We all face change, whether it’s external shifts like layoffs or the rise of AI disrupting our jobs, or more internal changes like questioning our career choices or feeling “we are meant for more”. We live in fast-paced times that call us to have an adaptive approach to not just survive, but thrive.
That's where The Adaptive Times comes in. I’ll be sharing practical exercises, tips, and ideas to build our adaptive muscle — no matter where the change is coming from.
So, let’s dive into this week’s topic… (in a 4’ read)
The Quitters Club
It’s the 31st of January. Did you know that 43% of adults are quitting their New Year resolutions by this day? This stat doesn’t surprise me. Think about your own resolutions or goals for the year. How many of those have been in your list for a few consecutive years now? Be honest!
If that’s the case, what’s stopping you from bringing them to life? I’m pretty sure it’s not motivation. You might think is discipline. But I bet you it’s not either. The challenge is that our resolutions tend to be quite bold or quite generic - rarely in between:
“I’ll be healthier this year” (means what?)
“I’ll workout 4x a week” (while you’ve barely been to the gym twice)
“I’ll get that promotion” (the decision is out of your control)
Do you see the pattern? They are either anchored in a new habit we need to build out of nowhere, or unrealistic, or out of our control, or not really defined in a way that allows us to take action. Not sticking to them, not only doesn’t bring us the change we desire, but it adds a feeling of failure for our own selves.
So, what can you do instead to follow through and stick to what you want? Instead of focusing on big, intimidating annual goals, I want to introduce a different way of thinking about change.
Turning changes into experiments
Let’s approach the desired changes as controlled experiments. This is how an experiment design looks like in my work for testing new technologies or marketing tools.
Create a hypothesis statement
Define a success KPI
Set a start / end date (1 week for all the tasks up to here)
Learning / pre-training period (1-2 weeks)
Flight period (4-6 weeks)
Post analysis and learnings (1-2 weeks)
This is your 7-13 weeks experiment design, or your 2-3 month if you prefer. Which means you can do a different experiment towards your goal every quarter until you find something that sticks!
My experiment example
From the generic “I want to exercise more” I tried back in 2023:
Context: I was exercising 2-3 times a week but I could’t see results, and I was feeling it like a “to do” on my list.
Hypothesis: Going to the gym every day will make me feel SO good and build the habit that it will become a desire, not a hurdle, and eventually see results.
Success KPI: Stick to daily (you see the success KPI is not the desired outcome, but the bare minimum to judge on whether the experiment was done properly).
Pre-training period: Tried different types of exercise to define my range of what counts. I decided that anything low duration/high intensity counts (is 20’ HIIT, 30’ boxing) or high duration/low intensity (ie 10K steps, 1hr yoga). Otherwise, I would exhaust myself.
Flight period: Daily exercise for a month.
Post analysis: I did stick with the daily exercise, except for 2 days I was feeling under the weather. Success!
Learnings: I did see results. It was my fittest ever. But I HATED it. It didn’t make me feel good at all. (Remind me to not do it again.) After the 4th day every week I was looking for excuses. However, something new in my brain was wired about “needing it” and creating the habit.
Moving forward: From 2-3x a week max, to avg 4x per week. Anything above is a bonus because I feel like it. Anything below is because I don’t feel well, not because I’m lazy anymore. I made peace and stopped adding “I want to exercise more” in my list. Now I know the answer.
You can do a similar exercise for any type of resolution or desired change for this year. When I wanted to get promoted at work, I did it with personal branding approaches in order to find what method of speaking up about my work was more authentic to me and landed with senior leadership. I’m even doing an experiment now as we speak (yes, this newsletter is part of one).
Why experiments work
Because they are designed to fail. Well, not exactly. But if you approach something as an experiment you take it more lightly and a failure is not affecting the trust on yourself to deliver. On the other hand, a win can stay with you for good. Allowing the space to design it carefully and then reflect on the learnings, you can have answers once and for all. New insight about yourself and things you want to change.
Here’s my catchy 3R methodology for setting resolutions or goals towards a change:
Reflect: pick one repeated area you really want to move the needle this year.
Rethink: how can you turn a generic aspiration into a structured experiment?
Renew: what are your learnings? Can you stick to the new thing? If so, great! If not, what other experiment can you design in this area?
Bonus tip 1: keep it flexible. Life is unpredictable. You may need to adjust your experiment as you go along — and that’sotally fine. You might have such a strong insight early on that you can drop the whole thing.
Bonus tip 2: measure your success with how you feel. Is it making you feel more energised or more stressed?
Get in touch
If you try this experiment approach, I’d love to hear how it goes. If you’re not a resolution person at all, I’d love to hear what you do instead. If you’re a resolution person and you stick to them, tell us how. 😂 Any of the above, hit reply and let me know. Thank you for reading all the way through!
Stay curious. Stay adaptive.
Angeliki x
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