The old adage about the best time to plant a tree applies equally as well to starting positive life habits: The best time to start a good habit was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.

In the art of living intentionally, good habits act as guardrails that help keep us on course, allowing us to slowly build a life that holds true to our values. But, figuring out which habits we want to adopt, practice and cultivate is not so easy. How do we know which, of the infinite possible new habits available to us, is best for how we want to live? And when we find a good new habit, how do we know if we will actually stick with it?

One straightforward approach is through experimentation: trying out—for a set period of time—a new behavior or practice we believe might lead us to a better, deeper or more fulfilling life. If the experiment succeeds, we incorporate the practice into our day-to-day life, hopefully forming a new, positive habit. If the experiment fails, we shrug, move on, and try something else.

This concept of habit experimentation is not new. I’m borrowing this idea from David Cain, the personal development blogger over at Raptitude, who has been trying out different life experiments for many years. As a long-time reader of Raptitude, I’ve been enamored with the idea of life experimentation for years, but have never made a serious effort to try it out myself. Today, this changes.

The experiment

I’m calling my first experiment “analog evenings.” For the next 30 days, I aim to avoid using any type of electronic device with backlit screen or Internet connection within two hours of when I normally go to bed. This means no phone, no computer, no television—nothing that emits blue light, and nothing that can fetch and display new information from a network. (I will allow myself to use my Kobo e-reader—since I categorize this as a “book” and it uses an e-ink display—as long as I keep it in airplane mode.)

I tend to go to bed around 10:00pm. This means devices down by 8:00pm. In reality, however, I rarely look at my computer or phone between the hours of 6:30pm and 8:00pm anyway, because I reserve those hours for family dinner, post-dinner cleanup, and bedtime preparations with my kids. What this means in practice (I hope!) is that once I’m offline from work for the day, I will likely be truly offline and device-free until the next morning.

What will I do once my kids are asleep and my evening is free? Meditate, plan the following workday (on paper), journal (also on paper), and read, in that order.

The challenges

I expect a few pre-existing habits and circumstances to possibly thwart my success:

  • I manage a global team as part of my job. Sometimes I end up having meetings with colleagues in India late in my evening in order to catch them during their morning hours. My only mitigation for this is to try and schedule any meetings with folks in India during my morning, which is what I prefer to do anyway (and, it seems, they prefer this too).
  • My wife and I sometimes enjoy watching a movie or specific TV show together after our kids are asleep. This experiment will prevent us from doing this, but I’m optimistic that this simply presents us with an opportunity to explore other ways to spend our evenings—in quiet conversations, playing games, or just reading together.
  • I enjoy listening to books as much as reading books. Each medium has its benefits and drawbacks, requiring different ways of processing and retaining information, and I enjoy bouncing between the two. My preferred audiobook provider is Libro.fm, which, unfortunately, requires a smartphone for listening. Either I will have to make an exception for this one app, or I’ll just have to forego listening to audiobooks in the evening. To respect the true spirit of the experiment, I’ll aim for the latter.

The why

I have two reasons for trying this experiment.

First, I simply enjoy quieter, more contemplative evenings. I want to hold space for the practices—meditation, journaling, reading books—that I deeply value and have found to be important for my own well-being. I also find that I’m more creative and less anxious if I do not allow the noise of the outside world to bombard my psyche in those precious hours before sleep.

Second, and somewhat related, I find I simply sleep better following “sleep hygiene” best practices, which precludes the use any device emitting the type of light that could disrupt circadian rhythms. For the past four years or so, I have experienced short bouts of intense insomnia, sometimes lasting a day or two, sometimes a week or more. During this time I have learned a lot about myself and what causes (my particular kind of) insomnia. While sleep hygiene alone will not prevent it—in fact, too strong a belief in sleep hygiene as a cure-all can sometimes cause insomnia!—I’ve found regular bedtime rituals to be a necessary, if not sufficient, practice, in maintaining long periods of regular, deep sleep.

The commitment

I’ll write a follow-up post in a month.

My hope is that, by publishing my intention here, both I and you, dear reader, may better hold me accountable. But, my other secret hope is that maybe—just maybe—this will also inspire other people to try out and blog about their own new habits too. Could this be you?