One of the factors my experiment into working practices is looking at is affirmations. This is the idea that continually repeating a mantra throughout the day leads you on to greater achievement. This is the factor I have the least confidence in. It smacks a bit of woo and nonsense like the Law of Attraction. Surely our brains are too complex to be manipulated so easily by such a low effort trick?
So I am skeptical, but I am also open to the results of experiment. In an ideal scientific experiment I would decide on the affirmations I am going to use in advance and test them at random. However unlike the other things I am looking at in this study I don't really have much experience with them so I don't really know very well how they are supposed to work.
I will start with one, and see if it seems to be having any effect. If it does I will keep going with it, if it doesn't I will give others a try. This offends my inner physical scientist because I should be keeping things constant, but if I waited to get everything perfect I would never get this study off the ground at all.
So the affirmation I am going to start with is 'I want to become a millionaire'. It doesn't correspond to what the people who write about this kind of thing would regard as a good affirmation. For a start it isn't in the present tense and it is a little vague. But the people who write about this kind of thing don't generally go about testing things as systematically as I am planning to do. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I thought about it, so maybe it will resonate with me. I will make sure I write it down at least every hour and I will say it to myself every 20 minutes or so. I don't know how many times I should repeat. I'll start with 10 times, as it is a round number. I will also use it as a tool to get back to work after interruptions.
So the stage is set. Wish me luck.
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