Experiment #01 - No Expectations Day
Greetings Alchemists!
It’s the first week of the month and therefore it is time for an Experiment!
I’ve been experimenting for a few years now with ways to make my life and world more accommodating to my unique needs as a divergent human. Now I want to embark on this experimental journey with you!
For my blog post on the first Wednesday of every month I will pitch an experiment to you that you can test out during the month. Then in the last week of the month, if we have collected enough data, I will write up a blog post that includes your findings! FOR SCIENCE!
(Keep reading and you’ll find a free downloadable PDF of this experiment so you can try it out for yourself.)
Without further ado, I present our first experiment together:
The No Expectations Day
Imagine a day where you have literally no expectations placed on you, by yourself or others, for the entire day, no matter what. Don’t want to cook? Cool, don’t cook, order yourself some foods. Wanna stay in bed in your jammies until 3pm? Rockin, let that moss grow you absolute treasure. Wanna play video games, or watch a million episodes of Bob’s Burgers, or sit in the bathtub until your skin prunes, or sort your fibre arts supplies into a colour spectrum? Do it. BUT, only if you aren’t expecting yourself to. That is the only rule of No Expectations Day. You can do whatever you like, but it cannot be an expectation. Yes you can clean your room or cook or look at your budget, but before you do these things check with yourself. Are you doing them because you ‘should’ or because you said you would do them to someone else or something? Alas, can’t do it, it’s a no expectations day.
A human wearing pajamas lies in a bed covered in books, their face is hidden by the book they are reading.
Origin Story: Javelin’s Experience
This experiment was born out of a string of devastating autistic burnouts in my life. Essentially the No Expectations Day started as a day where I resolved to give my demand avoidance utter permission to exist. I was running on less than fumes, and by making an official day where the rule was “I am not allowed to expect stuff of myself or accept expectations from others” I was able to release a little of the pressure that was suffocating me. What can I say, my brain loves a good rule, especially if it’s one I made up for myself.
Making It Work For You
Now you might be thinking “This is all well and good Jav, but there is no way I can dodge expectations for a whole day!”. Totally fair, a no expectations *day* is not always feasible for people. When I first started experimenting with this I was a single person with no care responsibilities and no small business I was trying to shepherd through its first year. These days, things are a bit different.
As such, it might be more accomplishable to choose a shorter window of time. Make it a morning, or an evening, or even an hour somewhere in the day. The point is to give yourself a stretch of time during which, no matter what comes your way, you have complete permission to say ‘Stop, this is a no expectations space, thank you very much and go away’ to every single demand that comes to you from both inside and outside your brain. Put yourself in ‘do not disturb’ mode, you know?
An Important Caveat
Some humans may be of the variety that come with pre-downloaded expectation software (also called anxiety). It can be very difficult to complete a No Expectations Day if your brain box feels that meeting expectations is an important part of surviving. In such a case it may be important to find something to do during your no expectations time that uses enough of your brain power to bypass your pre-downloaded software for a short time, as uninstalling it is costly, time consuming, and most definitely filled with expectations.
Example: I find comfort shows plus some sort of small craft that has little to no point to it to be exceptionally well suited to this task. It uses up enough bandwidth that I can’t get caught in a thought loop about how I really should be doing this, that, or the other thing.
So, a recap for the tldr people:
Running the Experiment
Experiment #01 - No Expectations Day (printable PDF)
Hypothesis: Carving out time that is dedicated to lowering the demands on my neurodivergent system will help me to rest, recharge, and mitigate burnout.
Design: Over the course of the next month, test out giving yourself a block of time where the only rule is that there are no expectations placed on you, internally or externally. Try to do this with some regularity, depending on how long the chunk of time is (i.e. 1 hour daily or 1 day weekly). Make any further adjustments as necessary to tailor this to your own unique system.
Data Gathering: Notice if and how this changes things for you! Answer some of the reflection questions if you need help:
How do you feel during the no expectations time? How do you feel after? What kinds of things got in the way? If you weren’t able to do it, what were the reasons?
Share Your Findings: Tell me how it went! Comment on this blog post, or send me a DM on insta @alchemydivergencecoaching. You can also email javelin@alchemycoaching.ca with the subject Experiment #01.
Remember the Alchemist’s Code: All information is useful, a yes is as good as a no in response to our hypothesis, because it means we learnt something.