Day 12 dropped me into the mental equivalent of a home renovation show. Except instead of tile and paint swatches, I was working with values, habits, and imagined futures. What would life look like if I actually lived like the person I claim I want to become? The process revealed an approach to addressing persistent challenges that merits further consideration.
Somewhere between naming my dream network and imagining my kitchen, a clear pattern showed up: if I can’t solve a problem alone, maybe it’s time to build a lab around the problem. For example, I’m not at all motivated to exercise. Solution: form a community of people like me who also have failed to find exercise motivation in gyms and conventional fitness programs.
What if I stopped trying to muscle through every life challenge solo and started setting up experiments instead? Picture tiny, hand-picked groups of people all wrestling with the same question—like ‘why does exercise always suck?’—and actually having fun trying to solve it together.
Potential applications for the idea include:
A business networking laboratory for people who are fed up with spammy networking groups
A mental health laboratory for people who have not found success with conventional therapy and support groups
A dating laboratory for people who are 1000% done with dating apps
A book laboratory for people like me who have a billion books they want to read and keep finding new ones every day
A creative laboratory for artist who have too many creative ideas (hold on a sec… isn’t that what Sheila and I are already building?)
