A year of evidence-based self-experimentation in pursuit of better healthspan.

Why This Experiment?

A week ago I decided to run a simple experiment.

Not a supplement.

Not a new gadget.

Not an expensive biohack.

Instead, I wanted to answer a question that many of us probably avoid asking.

What would happen if I simply stopped reaching for my phone?

Over the years I’d developed the same habit as millions of other people. Every spare moment seemed to end with a quick scroll. Waiting for the kettle to boil. Sitting in the car before leaving. A quiet evening on the sofa. Five minutes here, ten minutes there—it all added up.

When I checked my screen time, I was averaging over four hours per day.

That wasn’t how I wanted to spend my time.

So last Monday I started what I’ve called Monk Mode.

Not to become a monk, but to become more intentional.

The Rules

The aim wasn’t to eliminate technology.

My phone was only used to:

• Log workouts in Samsung Health
• Track meals
• Reply to important messages
• Navigation when needed

Everything else was optional.

The guiding principle was simple.

Replace mindless consumption with deliberate action.

📊 Metrics Dashboard

Screen Time

Before Monk Mode

During Monk Mode

What Surprised Me

Reducing screen time wasn’t the real win.

The real win was what replaced it.

I felt noticeably more patient with my children.

Family time became exactly that—family time. I wasn’t half-present while checking notifications every few minutes.

Conversations felt richer.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was how naturally I reached for my Kindle instead of my phone.

Without consciously trying to read more, I found myself making great progress through several books simply because I wasn’t filling every spare moment with scrolling.

It reminded me that I never really lacked time.

I lacked uninterrupted attention.

📚 Reading This Week

Finished

• The Dispossessed

Currently Reading

• Meditations for Mortals
• The Four Hour Body

☕ Coffee of the Week

Pact House Blend

Brewed using my De’Longhi bean-to-cup machine.

My current favourite is what I’ve started calling the “1 & 1”:

• One espresso shot with milk
• One straight espresso

Simple, delicious, and a great way to enjoy the same beans in two completely different ways.

⭐ Experiment Score

Can You Guess Next Week’s Experiment?

I’m currently reading The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss.

One chapter in particular caught my attention…

Next week I’ll be putting the Occam’s Protocol to the test and documenting everything—from the science behind it to whether it’s practical in everyday life.

Final Thoughts

One week isn’t enough to change your life.

But it’s enough to prove something.

The habits we think are fixed often aren’t.

Many of us assume we’re bad at reading, don’t have time to exercise, or simply aren’t disciplined enough.

Sometimes we’ve just filled every spare minute with something less rewarding.

For me, putting the phone down naturally created space for movement, books, conversation and simply being present.

No fancy biohack required.

Just a little more intention.

Protect your attention, and the rest of your life starts to follow.

Current Experiment

• ✅ Monk Mode
• ⏳ Planning: Occam’s Protocol

Thanks for reading.

See you next week for Field Notes #002.

Being in the office more I have perfected my in-office coffee making kit (Aeropress, pre ground coffee pots, and my beloved Keep Cup. I’ve also noticed this week that my regular Pact (coffee) delivery is now in fully recyclable packaging so props to them!

I also noticed that Huel have release their ‘Essential’ powder which I’ve been testing this last week. For me it hits the requirement, especially for breakfast on those, all to frequent days in the office. Again, I’m not sure how long this has been the case, but I’ve noticed that the Huel bags (the Essentials one at least) is not only made from recycled materials but is also completely recyclable, which is fantastic.

Other stuff I’ve been playing with this week:

I have found the all-time best use for ChatGPT; taking the contents of my kitchen and suggesting meals and cocktails.

![https://www.instagram.com/p/Cv5O8WYq33M/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==]

At work I’ve been messing about trying to find the right mix of tools for task tracking. We tend to use Planner and DevOps, while I’m fond of Microsoft ToDo, though its still missing a key feature for me, the ability to report on tasks completed that day / week. I haven’t even found a way to get at this info with Power Automate. Admittedly, I haven’t really spent enough time on it.

I’ve updated my reading list this week and am, frankly, amazed at the number of books I’ve managed to get through the last couple of years. Yes, Audible is expensive but, in my opinion, is well worth it, especially on those longer commutes or solo dog walks.

I’m excitedly using my new Samsung Buds 2 Pro, which work perfectly with my Fold 4 and Flip 5 (yes I have a thing for folding phones). Being able to play music on the phone and managing playback and volume on my watch makes me understand the appeal of ecosystem lock in. I wonder if I’ll by typing this on a Galaxy book next….

Huel and Pact referal codes: Huel Pact

On the fitness front I’m looking increasingly at the option of doing a Sprint or Olympic Triathlon. To that end I’m back to spending at least 3 hours a week down at the local pool. This has reminded me that, while I can swim, I don’t really know how to swim efficiently. The first step for me is to simply spend more time in the water getting used to it. Just one week has me feeling a bit more comfortable and a bit less, constantly out of breath and feeling generally weak!

I’m also addicted to watching The Unlazy Way on Youtube. Its both hilarious and motivating.

I had a mental break through this week while out walking the dog. Normally I have a standard, extendable dog lead, but when I’m out running I have a belt with attachable lead. And I thought “why don’t I just use this, all the time?”. This has changed my life, and I haven’t spilt my morning coffee once this week while trying to stop my dog eating the neighbors cat.

This last week I’ve been lucky enough to attend the Gartner symposium, not lucky enough to fly to Barcelona, but you can’t have everything. There were a number of fantastic talks, I especially liked the keynote with Rachel Botsman and Adam Grant and the keynote by Rolf Dobelli, although I think he should probably just park his car in the right place and keep that money for charity! Hearing all these great speakers has added a number of books to my, already over flowing, reading list for 2021. I suspect this will be an ongoing theme.

Given that it was also the school holidays its been a fantastic chance to reconnect with and spend some quality time with the family. Long dog walks and family visits have been the primary focus of this last week off, oh and getting a personal best on my 10k time!

Despite all the ‘distractions’ I’ve been able to get some solid reading done and have got started on Mysterious Island, which I’m reading in paperback, and Dune on Audible. Why have I gone back to paperback books? Having to take some kind of electronic device to bed to be able to read at night gradually led to phones, iPads and even laptops back in the bedroom at night. Moving back to good old paper books has solved this problem and now all my devices either stay downstairs or get put on charge in the office, not near me when I’m getting ready for sleep.

I’ve also managed to make some decent headway in the home automation / monitoring arena setting up two Raspberry Pi’s with Motion and connecting this to my Home Assistant server. I’ll hopefully get another one set up next week and be able to fully replace my ancient Dropcam (which I’ll probably end up re-deploying as a baby monitor). I’ll admit to wasting not a small amount of time trying to get the Pi camera board working with one of my second gen Raspberry Pi’s only to realise that the ribbon cable I was using was for the Pi Zero…..
There is still quite a bit of tinkering to do here to get the cameras to only monitor motion when I’m away and to Telegram notifications working.

Faced with the prospect of having to move house yet again, I’m becoming increasingly aware of just how much stuff we have bought in the last 4 months. This has led to some serious clearing out of our junk and will doubtless power a week of furious e-baying, who knows, we may even make some money!

While I have a list as long as my arm of stuff I haven’t managed to get done this week, we did finally manage to check out the local swimming pool and had an all round good time. I also discovered it’s almost exactly a 5k round trip run. This opens up the option of getting some swimming included in my weekly workout: 2.5k run to the pool, swim (working up to c. 20 lengths) then a 2.5k run home. Probably not doable in a lunch hour, but more than possible of an evening.

1) Tech I’ve been playing with this week: My love of Docker has led me to put even more services on my little Raspberry Pi this week, primarily Wireguard VPN which was so remarkably simple to set up I think I went from nothing to a fully functional VPN in about 5 minutes.

2) What I’ve been reading this week: Not long ago I discovered World of Books and have promptly ordered several ‘old’ books. This week I’ve been reading The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne and enjoying playing OceanBlock, which is what I though Sky block should have been all along.

3) What I’ve been drinking this week: Oh, how I love my coffee! While I’ve been experimenting with delaying my caffeine intake until at least 90 minutes after I wake up, I’m also trying to improve not only the quality but also the consistency of my morning cuppa. Currently I weigh the beans (15g), and measure the amount of grounds into my areporess, and measure the amount of water (200g), finally, I time the brewing (2 min). My results are pretty good and consistant, so what remains? Water temperature! That’s the next challenge.

4) Articles I’ve been reading this week: The Time Millionaires is an interesting concept, while not new. I’ve always been a fan of working form home and the last two years have enabled me to spend much more time with my family. I also used to work a 4-day week, which again, gave me the freedom to get more done outside work. As work and life settle after the impact of the pandemic I hope that people and companies continue to be flexible in their approach to work enabling us to create time for actual leisure, not a side hustle!

5) Practices I’ve gone back to this week As mentioned, work has been, and continues to be quite demanding. Initially this lead to a drop off in some of my daily practices, and boy, did I feel the effect. This week I have tried to go back to those foundational practices and, while work and home life are no less demanding, I have found both much easier to deal with! My standard, go to practices are; a daily three rounds of Wim Hof breathing, without getting too hung up on the breath hold retention times, followed by at least 20 min of meditation. I have found this to be a winning combination with the Wim Hof breathing getting me in the right mental state for meditation.

I’ve noticed an increasingly negative effect on my mental health from using services like Instagram, so have been using it less and less. I am still pretty active on Twitter.

With exercise and meditation (for me) comes getting back into the Wim Hof Method and I’ve been loving catching up with his new podcast. While some may find him over the top (he is crazy by his own admission!) I find the method itself extremely valuable, both for fitness and meditation. I’m even considering getting myself an ice bath as my shower never really gets cold enough.

I stumbled across this article last week and it really made me think. Yes, I often take my phone to the bathroom, and yes, it often means I spend longer in there than actually required (maybe TMI?). So I’ve made the conscious choice to stop this habit. Unfortunately, at least for now, this means I just think about what I could be looking at on my phone instead… maybe I have a deeper problem?

This week I’m continuing to experiment with delaying my coffee intake until at least 90 minuets after waking. This has had the benefit of encouraging me to drink quite a bit more water in the mornings, which I have noticed has had a dramatic impact on my mood (making me much less tense). I’ve also started substituting a Titanium Tea for my first or second coffee which gives me a much smoother caffeine curve, similar to taking l-theanine (I obviously don’t add the butter!).

Finally this week I’ve been dithering over which ToDo list is best for me (yes, again). Recently I’be become a great fan of Todoist but I’m also still clinging to ToDo.txt. I love the usability and portability of ToDo.txt, but I find the lack of mobile apps really limits my usage. Todoist on the other ad has apps for all the platforms I use, but it just feels more limited… The battle continues. Annoyingly I’ve also started to really like using Github Projects which is only making things even more complicated.

Bonus: I’ve updated my reading list for 2021, and I’m quite please with my progress so far!

If you want to see more stuff from me throughout the week, the best place is probably Twitter. If you just want to see what I’m reading check out my Pocket profile.