Experiments vs Goals: 100 Days of cold water swimming
Everyone talks about goals.
Set goals. Achieve your goals. Get motivated to reach your goals.
Goals are the number one success topic that people write about (1). The message is that to be successful in life you have to set specific measurable goals.
But goals are also problematic. The 1st January is traditional goal setting time in the form of New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t really think New Year’s Resolutions work for most people. In fact, research suggests that only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s goals (2).
This year I didn’t make any resolutions or set any goals. Instead I decided to do an experiment (3). An experiment feels very different to a goal. An experiment is about discovering what happens and learning something. A goal is about achieving the outcome.
What happens is what happens.
A Cold Water Experiment
My experiment was going cold water swimming for a few days. In a lake. In January. I wasn’t quite sure for how many days and for how long I would swim. I was curious to try it despite hating the cold and usually doing my best to avoid it. Cold water swimming has been growing in popularity with many reported physical and mental health benefits from helping with depression (4) to mending a broken heart (5).
At the start of January the UK was in lockdown and I’m very fortunate to live in the Lake District with Lake Windermere close by. On day 1 I swam for 3.5 minutes. The water was 5C and it felt very cold, like ten thousand pins were being pressed into my body.
Day 2 was cold. I swam for just under 2 minutes. Day 3 I was in for 3 mins. Day 4 was 3 mins.
I immediately noticed that doing an experiment was different to goal setting. Having a goal requires ‘push’ and motivating yourself to do something. For many people this is one of the reasons to actually set a goal. An experiment is different because there isn’t the same achievement focus. I could stop at any time and there was no pressure to MAKE myself to do it. It felt more like being ‘pulled’ to do it because I wanted to discover what would happen. The curiosity of discovery made me WANT to do it. I kept going.
Curiosity or Achievement
Until I didn’t want to do it.
Around the middle of January I stopped ‘wanting’ to get in the lake. It was raining. It was windy. It was cold and since this was an experiment I could stop at any time. If you’re someone who has a focus on achievement then you probably have a well-established ‘internal voice’ which cajoles, encourages, berates or motivates you to ensure you reach the goal. All of this constitutes internal pressure and I always want to rebel against pressure. Whenever someone tells me to do something I automatically don’t want to do it (and that includes telling myself to do something).
However, doing an experiment changed this pressure. Once I’d accepted that the lake was going to be cold and unpleasant I was curious about how it would feel. Then I then wanted to go.
Goals aren’t all they seem
Research about goals suggests they work. Goals direct focus and attention, inspire commitment and can improve performance. There are decades of research supporting this.
But goal setting also suffers from a serious case of achiever bias. The world is full of who people achieved / won / succeeded through setting goals. But, what of all the people who set goals and didn’t achieve them – not so much publicity here. Our view of goals gets skewed because we only hear about the ones that worked.
When goals don’t work they can add to pressure and stress. And when goals feel like pressure and stress then performance can actually DECREASE. My experience of doing an experiment was that my ‘performance’ increased because I was driven by curiosity about what would happen.
I was curious about how long I could stay in the water and by day 15 was swimming for 6 mins. Don’t be under the illusion that it wasn’t painfully cold and excruciatingly unpleasant at times. It was both of those. But I became increasingly was curious about how many days in a row I could swim for. There was a local group who were raising money by swimming every day in January. I started to wonder if I could do that too? 31 days in a row? That would be an interesting experiment.
Growth Mindsets
For me, an experiment is aligned with a Growth Mindset. A Growth Mindset is more about learning and developing than success or failure. Carol Dweck writes, “the passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” (6)
As the end of January approached I began to wonder when I would stop. I had never imagined swimming for 31 days in a row during the coldest month and the experiment had continued longer than I could have imagined.
One of my realisations on day 31 was that I would probably never have an opportunity to do the experiment again. My work usually involves lots of travel and so I wouldn’t be able to swim every day. This year because of lockdown I could continue the experiment and see what happened.
Snow and Ice
Two days later (2nd February) the weather got really cold. It snowed. Despite this I began to wonder if I could swim every day for 50 days. 50 days! I was starting to notice physiological changes and wondered what would happen if I continued The curiosity was getting weird. No one was more surprised than me.
Then it got colder again and there was ice on the lake. I wondered what it would be like to go through a hole in the ice. So, I walked up to a tarn in the hills behind my house and got in the water. It was slightly surreal being in the water in a hole in the ice while people whizzed round the lake on ice skates.
Time to End the Experiment?
Fast forward 6 weeks to day 80 (21st March) and I was still doing the experiment! Each time I thought about stopping the realisation that I probably wouldn’t ever do it again made me want to continue.
However, around this time there was LOTS of rain and wind and I started to hate the experience of going swimming. It wasn’t the water itself but getting changed on the shore in a howling gale and driving rain. My swims became shorter and 6 mins became 5 and then 4. I decided that it was time to end the experiment. Day 90 (31st March) would be my last swim.
Day 90 - The Final Swim
As soon as I decided to stop the experiment I felt excited again. For my final swims I was curious about how long I could be in the water. For 3 months my swims had been around 6 mins long. The water was warmer now (7C instead of 5C) and for the final swim I wondered what 10 minutes in the water would feel like. Amazingly it felt fine, I was again surprised.
I announced with relief on social media that I had completed my 90th swim. That was it. Experiment over.
Or was it? People started commenting that I should go to 100 swims.
Experiment No.2
On day 90 I started another experiment. For each person who said I should do 100 swims, I invited them to join me for the final 10. I was pretty sure that no one would do it. It’s much easier to tell someone else to do 10 swims from the comfort of your warm home than it is to get in a cold lake.
Except then one friend said he would do it. My bluff was called!
I decided I would do 91 and if he didn’t carry on then neither would I.
But he did carry on. 92, 93, 94….
I did my 100th swim on April 10th.
I’m still swimming and right now I don’t know when the experiment will end. I might stop tomorrow because I don’t want to do it anymore. The whole point is not to set a goal and only continue while I’m interested in finding out what happens.
An invitation…..
My overriding learning from the last 100 days is that an experiment is different to a goal. I’m pretty sure that I would never have done 100 days of swimming if I had set it as a goal. I would have had to force myself to do it. As an experiment it was grim at times, but there was also a curiosity that kept me going.
I’m not suggesting that goals aren’t worthwhile. For many people they are highly motivating. But if you want to try a different approach then my invitation is to consider setting yourself an experiment instead of a goal. When you define success as being what you learn then your focus will be different. Difficulties become opportunities to learn.
People often set goals at the start the year but you can start them any time. Today could be the start of an experiment that would help you feel or behave differently or improve the way you do things. Tomorrow could be the end of it. Or the next day. Or maybe in a 100 days. Or maybe in a year’s time. Maybe you’ll like the experiment so much you’ll keep going and you’ll forget it was just an experiment. Either way, let me know, I’m curious!
Notes
I have no idea if this is true. It just seems that way to me.
Actually I started 3 experiments: cold water swimming, a plant based diet and intermittent fasting.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/mar/23/how-cold-water-swimming-cured-my-broken-heart
Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential Paperback – 2 Feb. 2012 by Carol Dweck.