Table of Contents
Introduction .....................................................................................................................................................................3
Ramit Sethi  How I mastered the 15-minute nap .............................................................................5
A.J. Jacobs  Using a carrot...or a stick? ...................................................................................................7
Lewis Howes  How salsa dancing helped me make my first million ............................... 9
Gretchen Rubin  How I stopped snacking after dinner .............................................................11
Cal Newport  Simple tests for complicated tasks .......................................................................13
Derek Halpern  How a  smack in the face helped me shed my big fat belly .......15
Ben Casnocha  If you aren t taking notes, you aren t learning ........................................... 17
James Altucher  Should I pray to Jesus or should I test? .......................................................19
Jay Cross  How I saved $29,000  testing out of college .....................................................21
Chris Guillebeau  When all else fails and you have to just go for it...............................23
Thanks for reading!..................................................................................................................................................25
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Introduction
I m obsessed with testing. From testing what I eat, to running
multi-variate and multi-cohort tests in my business, I test as much
as I can.
This is for good reason. I ve found through years of testing that
often little adjustments  or life hacks  can mean HUGE rewards.
Also, I know that at least half my theories are wrong. But the only
way to tell which ones are right is through testing.
Some of the most creative, intelligent people I know also use
testing and experimentation in their everyday lives to learn more,
live a healthier lifestyle, and manage hugely successful careers. It
doesn t have to be complicated  usually, it s just a simple notepad
of a couple ideas you re working on improving  but the results
can be huge.
This was the idea behind 15 Little Life Hacks That Can Change Your
Life, an ebook I published in 2012. It contains some of the most
life-changing testing results from some of the most successful
people I know.
But I knew that wasn t it. So, I reached out to even more of my
successful friends  writers, professors, and entrepreneurs who I
admire  and asked them to pull back the curtain and share the
results of their best testing.
Here s just a few things they came up with:
" Three approaches to give up junk food
" A way to save nearly $30,000 in college expenses
" How to position yourself as the smartest person in the room
Plus, they ve answered these questions along the way:
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" How do I apply testing when I m working on a really difficult
project?
" How can I leverage one test in multiple areas of my life
(business, home, family, etc.)?
" What do I do when all my best efforts to test fail?
I listed just a few of the results they shared. Read on and find the
experiment that changes your life.
Enjoy!
-Ramit
Founder, I Will Teach You To Be Rich
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Ramit Sethi
How I mastered the
15-minute nap
I love daytime naps, but it s tough to find 2 hours for
a luxurious nap  plus I d always wake up sluggish. I
wanted to know how to take a nap for more energy in a
short window.
I wanted to master the 15-minute energy nap.
I started off by trying to get a baseline: I gave myself an hour and napped just fine.
When I woke up (with an alarm clock), I felt good. But when I tried to go right down
to 15 minutes, I didn t fall asleep at all. Now I knew that I had to work on falling asleep
quicker.
I started tracking a bunch of variables. It looked like this:
TIME OF DAY
Early afternoon
Late afternoon
Evening
WORKED OUT
Yes
No
ATE BEFORE NAP
Yes
No
After experimenting with all of these, I got down to falling asleep in about 10-12
minutes. I learned that eating right before a nap in the early afternoon worked best
in helping me fall asleep faster. (Gym had no impact at all.) But after a 15-minute nap,
where I only really slept 3 minutes, I d just wake up frustrated.
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That s when I started playing around with all kinds of things. Should I nap on the
couch? In my bed? Put the pillow over my head?
The single-best technique for me was carving out 30 minutes  15 to nap, and 15
to wake up and get back into my day. I don t know exactly why, but somehow,
consciously giving myself that extra 15 minutes after the nap let me fall asleep faster.
Now, I can nap for 15 minutes and wake up energized.
You ll hear people say,  I wish I could take naps. But there was nothing magical about
this  just simple testing.
Takeaway: When testing a new system, try many different variables. Then, continually
tweak your approach for maximum benefit.
Ramit Sethi is a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of I Will Teach
You To Be Rich. His personal finance and career advice has been featured in The Wall
Street Journal, CNBC, FORTUNE, NPR, CNN and ABC.
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A.J. Jacobs
Using a carrot...or a stick?
Recently, I was battling a serious dried mango crisis.
Problem was, I was polishing off as many as twenty in a
day.
Dried mangos have the veneer of healthiness  but
really, they re just Snickers that happen to grow on trees.
I needed to do something.
I heard about a strategy pioneered by Thomas Schelling, a Nobel-prize-winning
economist. He found it helpful when people wanted to give up smoking. The idea is
this: You give money to charity if you fail to achieve your goal. Here s the twist: You
should pledge to give to a charity you HATE.
The idea is that the carrot has its uses, but so does the stick. Research from Yale
economics professor Dean Karlan has backed up the efficacy of making these self-
directed contracts containing a punishment clause.
In fact, Karlan started a website where you can create your own punishment. You
give your credit card number and it will charge you if you fail to follow through. Call it
anti-motivation. Or loss-aversion.
I decided to try the anti-charity trick on my mango addiction. When my wife got
home on day, I asked her a favor.
 If I have another dried mango this month, I want you to donate $1,000 of my
money to the American Nazi Party.
 The Nazi Party? Why not Oxfam?
 That s not enough of a disincentive. I want something that will make me sick to
my stomach.
She quickly got into the spirit. She filled out a check to the Nazi party, signed it,
and wrote  Courtesy of AJ Jacobs in the memo space. She waved it in front of me,
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saying  Don t eat any of those dried mangos as delicious they may be.
It was extremely effective.
I still open the cabinet, and see those slices, and get a few drops of Pavlovian saliva.
But, it s like a switch has been flipped. I can t even conceive of eating one. The
repercussions are too horrible. I m not going to pay for a bunch of new jackboots and
offensive tattoos.
It s as if I were dating a woman and discovered she was my long-lost sister. The
thought of
kissing her repulses.
I didn t eat a single slice the entire month. And hate groups everywhere wept.
Takeaway: Don t just reward yourself for doing well...Think of punishments for when
you fail (Use the stick instead of the carrot).
A.J. Jacobs is the author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs, including  The
Year of Living Biblically and  Drop Dead Healthy. He is editor at large at Esquire
magazine and a commentator on NPR. He can be found at ajjacobs.com.
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Lewis Howes
How salsa dancing helped me
make my first million
I m 6 4 and 225 lbs, and when people look at me I m
sure the last thing they re thinking is,  I bet that tall
white dude is a good salsa dancer.
But, with all humility, I m not bad for a white guy. And,
the lessons I learned along the way to becoming good on my feet are the very
principles that helped me make my first million online.
I ve had the privilege to dance all over the world with some of the best in the
business and here is the 3-step approach I tested to becoming great at salsa:
My 3-Step Strategy For Salsa Dancing
1. Seek specialized training in a group environment: Thanks to my football
experience I knew the importance of a specialized coach in a group
environment. This is why I immediately sought group salsa classes.
2. Total Immersion: I began listening to salsa music everywhere I went and started
going to salsa clubs almost every night of the week.
3. Watch the Pros: I watched hours of professional dancing on YouTube, then
practiced the same moves by myself in front of my mirror. This allowed me to
get familiar with the right technique. It also gave me a mental picture that I
could play over and over in my mind.
How These Steps Helped me Make My 1st Million
1. When I decided to become an entrepreneur, I looked for specialized mentors
within each of the areas I was trying to master. I didn t look to just one person
to guide my entire future.
2. I completely immersed myself into entrepreneurship by learning as much as
possible  while also applying it, taking action, and learning lessons along
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the way. I ve seen too many entrepreneurs remain stuck in the learning phase
without realizing hands-on experience is the way to truly become educated.
3. I only listened to the advice of people who had achieved the kind of success I
was after. I quickly learned that everyone will have an opinion about what you
should do, so it s important to decide who you ll listen to.
Takeaway: The results of testing can have impact in multiple areas of your life.
Look for ways you can apply success in one area (salsa dancing) to other areas
(entrepreneurship).
Lewis Howes is the ultimate lifestyle entrepreneur, world record holder, former pro
football player and current Olympic hopeful for Team Handball. Learn more at www.
lewishowes.com
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Gretchen Rubin
How I stopped snacking
after dinner
I m working on a book about habit-formation, so I ve
been incessantly tinkering with my own habits. One
candidate? I wanted to change my bad habit of snacking
at the end of the day.
I m never actually hungry after dinner, but I d fallen into the pattern of wandering
into the kitchen around 9:00 p.m., to forage. In our family, we joke about the eating
habits of Hobbits: breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea&
and I d fallen into a Hobbit-like habit of eating  second dinner. The habit had become
sufficiently entrenched that my evening felt incomplete without that last snack.
I ve been working on a related habit: to eat only when I m hungry. Hunger should be
my cue, not portion size, or other people s eating patterns, or TV commercials, or
anything else. Also, some studies suggest that it s healthier not to eat after a certain
hour.
So, to stop eating after dinner, I decided to adopt a habit to underscore the transition
between eating-time and not-eating-time. I d often heard the advice to brush my
teeth after dinner, but I was skeptical. I sort of enjoy brushing my teeth, so the
prospect of brushing twice didn t seem like much of a hindrance. I doubted that this
little action make a difference but hey, I decided to give it a shot.
So instead of brushing my teeth right before I go to bed, I ve started to brush my
teeth after I tuck in my younger daughter, around 8:30 pm.
To my astonishment, this simple habit has proved highly effective; my urge to snack
diminishes noticeably after I brush my teeth. Partly, I think, this is because my mouth
feels the signal of  Done for the day. Many years of nightly brushing have made me
connect the experience of toothpaste with beginning of bedtime.
Also, as I brush, I repeat to myself,  No more eating for today, that s finished and that
thought seems to help the tooth-brushing act as a boundary between the eating and
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non-eating portion of my evening.
I m often surprised by how a small change in my daily habits can yield big benefits.
It s a Secret of Adulthood: habits are surprisingly tough, and habits are surprisingly
fragile.
Takeaway: Creating your own cues for eating (or not eating) keeps you from using
environmental cues such as TV commercials or the patterns of others.
Gretchen Rubin is the author of the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers,  The
Happiness Project and  Happier at Home, and the wildly popular site, The Happiness
Project. She draws from the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and
the lessons from popular culture for practical insights into how we can be happier
and, for her forthcoming book,  Before and After, how we can change our habits.
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Cal Newport
Simple tests for
complicated tasks
I m a college professor. My specialty is theoretical
computer science  essentially, I prove theorems. To get
tenure, I need to prove lots of important theorems in a
small amount of time.
This goal, it turns out, is hard. There s a lot written about  task productivity : cranking
through easy to replicate logistical obligations; e.g., launching a web site, answering
e-mail, going to the gym. Very little is known, however, about  value productivity :
producing hard to replicate, high-value output; e.g., theorems that are published,
screenplays that are sold, books that win awards.
I need to master the art of value productivity to keep my job as an academic, so over
the past several years I ve been pursuing this goal with a ruthlessly effective strategy:
quarterly testing.
Quarterly testing is a simple concept. Every quarter (think: seasons) I identify a
collection of habits to test that all relate to what s important to me (in my case,
improving my value productivity). I test these habits for one quarter, and then, during
the next check-in, I step back to evaluate what produced results and what did not.
The habits that did produce results are kept for further refining, while the latter are
dropped.
After several years of this testing regime, I ve discovered, for example, that Seinfeld s
 Don t Break the Chain strategy (work on your high value output every single
day, without exception) performs well, but only if coupled with: (1) a crystal clear
definition of what result you seek; and (2) good  focus hygiene : have food and
drink on hand, block all distracting websites on your computer, use an uncluttered
environment. If you miss these small additional factors,  chaining devolves into
wheel spinning.
I ve also discovered that Steve Martin s definition of  diligence  the discipline to
say  no to everything outside your highest value pursuits  is crucial. The more
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aggressively I retreat from the world of possibility to focus on my bread and butter,
the more successful and interesting my working life becomes.
Takeaway: Doing hard things is hard. Don t assume you know the best approach to
this work. Test your productivity strategies ruthlessly and regularly.
Cal Newport is a writer and a professor. In addition to running the popular Study
Hacks blog, he s written four books of unconventional advice. His latest,  So Good
They Can t Ignore You (Hachette, 2012), argues that  follow your passion is bad
advice. Learn more at www.calnewport.com.
14
Derek Halpern
How a  smack in the face
helped me shed my big fat belly
 Damn it, I screamed. The shirt I wanted to wear to
an important meeting didn t fit. The buttons pulled so
much that you could see my BFB (that s short for Big
Fat Bellayyyy).
For years, I ballooned from 155 to more than 190 pounds. I had to lose some weight...
...But knowing and doing it were two different beasts.
And if you ever thought,  I wish I could [insert anything], and never did it, then you
know what I m talking about.
That s why I m PUMPED to share the technique I used to shed my BFB. I call it the
 smack in the face technique.
Here s my story:
I m Derek Halpern, the founder of Social Triggers, and I was addicted to Coca Cola.
Not smacking my lips addicted, but I rarely drank anything else. Hello BFB!
My friends would say,  Just drink water. But replacing soda with water? Impossible! I
LOVED soda.
So check it:
Whenever I felt thirsty, I realized I d open my refrigerator and mindlessly grab a can of
soda. That s when I decided to put a roadblock between me and my refrigerator  a
scale! And, I made the rule,  Before I open the refrigerator, I must weigh myself. My
weight was the  smack in the face that I needed.
But I still craved those tasty bubbles and plain water wouldn t do the trick. So I
replaced soda with sparkling, lemon-flavored water.
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And it worked!
Now I have a sparkling water habit... and a shirt that fits.
Let s break down why this works and how you can use it to hack your behaviors.
" First, create a rule to interrupt your usual behavior. My rule was to weigh
myself before opening the refrigerator.
" Second, smack yourself in the face. Not literally... But you need something to
remind yourself that you want to make a change. For me, the smack was my
weight.
" And finally, replace your behavior with a better behavior.
Follow that 3 step strategy and bam! You re set.
Takeaway: It s hard to just stop or start anything, so replacing the behavior works
much better. For me, that was sparkling water.
Derek Halpern is the founder of Social Triggers, the place entrepreneurs learn how
to use proven psychological principles to get ahead in business and life. His blog
serves more than 130,000 subscribers, and Forbes calls him  an expert on consumer
psychology. But he s most known for his  no nonsense, insanely practical advice that
anyone can implement.
16
Ben Casnocha
If you aren t taking notes, you
aren t learning
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg addressed a large auditorium
of young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Every seat
was taken, and the 20-somethings who aspired to
entrepreneurial greatness were listening with rapt
attention.
There were two older folks in the front row who stood out: John Doerr and Ron
Conway, both legendary investors in Silicon Valley.
They stood out not just because their gray hair shimmered in the sea of youth around
them, but because they were the only people in the audience taking notes. The two
most successful people in the room after Zuckerberg were also the only two people
taking notes.
There s an old rule of thumb that if you have something really important you need
done, ask for help from the busiest person you know. Here s an analogous rule: if you
want to identify the most senior, knowledgeable people in an audience, look for the
people who are taking notes and asking questions.
There are many ways to take notes. I ve tested different approaches. Early on, I
scribbled notes in a notebook, and randomly and periodically flipped back through
the notes to see what I d written down. That worked okay  the sheer act of writing
them down was helpful, but I often missed the follow-up items. And the important
nuggets were often buried amidst my hard-to-read scribbles. What I tested next
worked better  it s a three-step process.
Ben s 3-step Note-taking Process:
1. I take notes in meetings in paper moleskine notebooks.
2. I go back through the notes with a different color pen and circle the key
sentences and in effect annotate my own annotations.
3. I transfer the highlighted notes to Evernote files on my computer (if they re
17
private) or directly onto my blog or twitter feed (if they re public). Probably
5% of what I write down with pen and paper ever makes it into an electronic
system, but the act of writing and then re-typing and publishing those 5% of
thoughts really solidifies them into my memory.
This process has not only increased my retention of key ideas, but improved my
follow-through on action items that come out of meetings, conferences, and the like.
Everyone s different. Try different systems of note taking. Figure out the right
approach for you (Tim Ferriss s extreme  take notes like an alpha geek system is an
example on the extreme).
Takeaway: Take notes. But, more than that, find a system to make use of the notes
long after the presentation is over.
Ben Casnocha is an entrepreneur and author. He is currently Chief of Staff to Linkedin
founder and chairman Reid Hoffman and coauthor with Reid of the #1 New York
Times bestselling book  The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself,
and Transform Your Career. He is also co-author of a forthcoming book based on
his article in Harvard Business Review entitled  Tours of Duty: The New Employer-
Employee Compact. Learn more about Ben and read his blog at www.casnocha.com.
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James Altucher
Should I pray to Jesus or
should I test?
I feel like killing myself when I lose money. When I was
daytrading to keep from going broke and I lost money
on a trade, I d have nightmares all night.
I d wake up early the next day and go to the church
directly across the street. I d kneel down right in front of the 12 foot tall statue of
Jesus and I d say,  Jesus, I have an open position long futures. Please make the market
move in my direction for the first five minutes of the day. Sometimes I d sit there like
that and pray for an hour. I would try to feel love for Jesus so maybe he would feel
love back towards me and bless me.
I m Jewish.
I had to change tactics. I did whatever I normally did whenever I had a problem.
Problems with a girl. Problems with homework. And now problems with the stock
market.
I wrote a software program.
First I modeled the markets. Every pattern you could think of.  If the market goes
down 8 days in a row, does something statistically significant happen on day 9. I d
look for all trades that were highly statistically significant. I developed a winning style
that way.
But still....but still&
The markets are never that simple. They know what you are up to. And then you have
to manage your own psychology, when she starts to whisper in your head.
So I modeled my own behavior also.
I charted my P&L as if I were a stock. Up $5000 one day, down $10,000 the next.
Up $3000 the next. And so on. And, like a stock, I looked for patterns of statistical
19
significance.
I tended to lose money on Mondays, for instance. I tended to make money on
morning trades and lose on afternoon trades. I made all my money on Nasdaq futures
and broke even on S&P 500 futures.
I found all the patterns in my own behavior that were statistically significant for me
making money. And I stuck to them.
I was up for almost 24 straight months in a row. I was successful enough that I then
started a fund of hedge funds where I invested in other traders.
Takeaway: Everything I do now I test before, during, and after. Testing is just a social
science. It s not physics. But it s a lot better than praying.
James Altucher is an investor, entrepreneur and best-selling author of  Choose
Yourself. His advice has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times,
Forbes, CNBC, CNN Radio and more. Learn more at http://www.jamesaltucher.com.
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Jay Cross
How I saved $29,000
 testing out of college
So you re just starting college and you need to earn all
of those major-independent  general education credits
(ie, English 101) that every student takes.
What do you do?
Option #1:
Take a standard English course. You know what that means: classes, homework, tests,
quizzes, projects, group assignments...ugh. 95% of students assume this is their only
option.
Time: 4 months
Cost: $3,000+
Option #2:
Take CLEP tests instead. They cover a full semester of material...and if you pass, you
get the same credits you would have spent months in a classroom for.
Time: 2 hours
Cost: $80
This isn t just for English class. I earned the final 36 credits of my degree this way and
was the only person I know to graduate 100% debt-free.
CLEP offers 33 multiple-choice exams in five subject areas, is accepted for credit
by 2,900 colleges and universities, and is proctored in over 1,800 test centers
nationwide. Developed by College Board  the same organization behind AP
and SAT  CLEP measures your knowledge regardless of how you obtained it:
independent study, internships, and work experience included.
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Even if your school only allows 30 exam credits, that s still a quarter of your degree.
You will save over $29,000 by NOT earning those credits in the classroom!
Takeaway: Don t waste time shaking your fists at student lenders. They don t care.
Avoid debt in the first place by testing out!
Jay Cross is the founder of The Do-It-Yourself Degree and helps thousands of
independent learners graduate faster for less. His college acceleration strategies have
been featured by Fox Business, Huffington Post, Popular Mechanics, Brazen Careerist,
The Personal MBA, and UnCollege.org.
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Chris Guillebeau
When all else fails and you have
to just go for it
I was on a mission to visit every country in the world.
For nearly ten years the pursuit had consumed me. It
was the thrill of my life, and most of the time everything
went as planned  but once in a while, I got stuck.
One of the biggest challenges was receiving visas for a few especially interesting
countries. For some reason, the government of Saudi Arabia wasn t excited about me
crashing their country for no good reason. I had dutifully applied for a visa (under the
pretext of  cultural enrichment ) but the process was stalled. I had the sense that no
matter how long I waited, the embassy would keep delaying.
Finally I had to travel  so I just decided to go for it. I booked a ticket and talked
my way onto the flight from Jordan. Landing in Riyadh, I presented myself to the
immigration office and tried to explain how excited I was about visiting their country.
It didn t go well. The officials were ready to put me back on the flight to Amman,
which would result in a failure for my quest (I don t count airport stops).
Now it was my turn to stall. I figured if I kept talking I could delay the process
long enough to miss my flight, and then they wouldn t know what to do with me.
Technically they could put me in jail until the next flight a day later, but I had to take
the risk. I went off on a long monologue about why this project was so important,
and I presented various paperwork that showed I had prepared well: my hotel
reservation, tickets for the next country, and so on.
Sure enough, the flight back to Jordan took off without me, and after much
persuasion the officials agreed to let me stay in town as long as I surrendered my
passport and agreed to leave three days later.
That was fine with me  I had no plans to illegally immigrate.
Walking outside the terminal and hailing a cab, I hoisted a fist pump into the air.
Against the odds, I had made it. Victory!
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Takeaway: Sometimes, no matter how much testing you do, you just have to jump in
with both feet and take a risk.
Chris Guillebeau is the New York Times bestselling author of  The $100 Startup.
During a lifetime of self-employment, he visited every country in the world (193 in
total) before his 35th birthday. Every summer in Portland, Oregon he hosts the World
Domination Summit. Connect with Chris on his blog or at your choice of worldwide
airline lounge.
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Thanks for reading
I hope you enjoyed this little guide full of small tests that can
change your life.
If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from any of
these tests, please feel free to forward this guide to them.
If you re interested in using a  testing mentality in all areas of your
life to earn more, create habits, or improve your career, I share
some of my best psychological insights every week to my private
email list.
You ll get access to some of my personal test results as well as
tests that I do with my team at IWT.
Here s that link:
http://iwillteachyoutoberich.com/more-tests
Thanks for reading,
- Ramit
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