Introducing The Midlife Field Guide

Welcome to the evolution of the Creativity Guild.

The Creativity Guild is Evolving!

Welcome to the next chapter of this newsletter.

Geoff and I have been talking about a big new idea for quite a while, and we’re really excited that it’s finally time to share it with all of you.

Since we started writing The Creativity Guild in the fall of 2022, we’ve been kind of obsessed with the idea of conducting experiments. We interviewed the king of life experiments,

AJ Jacobs

, and never looked back. Many of our favourite experiences writing this newsletter have been experiments or saying “yes” to uncomfortable new situations, including painting penguins, living in a van, volunteering for extreme seafood exposure therapy, dabbling with bathtub finger paints, and dancing.

Evidence of our past experiments

Steve has already written about how the Creativity Guild is changing who he is and the experiences he has, and now both of us want to take it to the next level.

Our Next Big Experiment

Today, we are committing in an even bigger way to ongoing experiments with the launch of a giant new experiment: a year-long project called The Midlife Field Guide!

Geoff and I are committing to becoming human guinea pigs to try and figure out everything we can about midlife. We’re going to document our adventures here, and we’ll also expand into video, social, and audio where it makes sense for certain experiments.

WTF Is A ‘Midlife Experiment’?

What exactly do we mean by midlife experiments?

Well, we’re going to do anything and everything we can think of that might help us figure out how to best approach this unique stage of life. Here are some of the categories of experiments we’re considering exploring:

The experiments might include things like:

• Starting a band and performing a live concert by the end of the year

• Mounting a one-night-only theatre production that requires singing, acting, and dancing lessons

• Sending an extreme extrovert on a silent meditation retreat

• Going from zero running to a marathon in a year

• Giving up alcohol for 6 months

• Exploring and trying on new identities, hobbies, or roles (especially as our current identities, like parenting are fading and morphing as our kids become young adults)

• Measuring everything in our lives (steps, sleep scores, heart-rate variability, etc.) and then measuring nothing at all.

• Participating in psychedelic-assisted therapy to let go of the parts of ourselves that no longer serve us, and to deepen our most important relationships

There are also experiments that sound ridiculous—like Steve growing a beard for the first time in his entire fifty-three-year existence—but that are actually much more significant than they initially appear.

There are tons of things we want to do, but our schedule still has a lot of flexibility because we also want to gather suggestions for experiments from all of you. And, we’d like to invite any of you who are interested in exploring your midlife journey to experiment along with us.

It might also be helpful and clarifying to mention what we’re not going to do. We are not doctors. We are not scientists. We are not trying to live forever. We won’t be attempting to lower our biological age, we won’t be doing multi-generational plasma exchanges, and we won’t be doing plastic surgery.

We’re simply two midlifers who are curious, hopefully just like a lot of you. We are not experts. We’re participants who want to share our experiences with others dealing with the same questions and issues.

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What We Hope To Achieve

At the end of the project, we will gather the results of all the experiments we’ve done over the year and share the ideas, strategies, practices, and experiences that have had the biggest impact on our lives. Overall, we want to find some concrete answers to the Meaning of Midlife, including:

• Should we focus on living a meaningful life, filled with purpose?

• A joyful life filled with happiness?

• A psychologically rich life filled with interesting experiences?

• A healthy life that extends our lifespans and our health spans

• And, as many pieces of our identity are fading away, who do we want to be in this next stage of life?

Can we do all of it? And, even if we can, should we? These are the questions we are seeking to answer and we hope you’re excited to come along with us.

Why Are We Doing This?

Why are we doing this? There are so many reasons, but here are the top five:

1. We are both deeply interested in finding answers to all these midlife unknowns. By doing a full year of experiments, we hope to find the answers we are looking for in our own lives.

2. We have had a huge number of conversations with others in this age range, and it’s extraordinary to us that almost everyone is wrestling with the exact same questions that we are. We believe that doing these experiments will help a lot of you find answers for yourselves, and that it will spark a lot of meaningful and meaty conversations.

3. Doing this whole thing in public feels like a massive commitment device. It is going to force us to do things that are uncomfortable, but that we know we should explore. It’s going to hold us accountable because all of you are here. It’s going to require us to do some heavy thinking and introspection, to be vulnerable, and to be honest. And it’s going to force us to really go for it. It’s going to be hard to half-ass this project when it’s in full public view.

4. We hope that by doing this in public and setting the bar high, we’re going to end up having experiences that we would not otherwise be able to have. This whole project is designed to give us unique and memorable experiences that would not be possible without starting the Midlife Field Guide. We have a hypothesis that engineering unique and memorable experiences is going to be part of the solution to living our best lives and the Midlife Field Guide itself is an experiment to find out if that is true.

5. Finally, selfishly, and perhaps most importantly, we want to be excited about the future. We want to get up in the morning with energy, passion, and curiosity for the day ahead. We want to be part of a community that feels the same way. We haven’t had that in a while and part of it is because we haven’t done the work of figuring out the answers to these midlife questions.

The Meta-Experiments

There is one other big meta-experiment we want to share. Geoff and I have been creating content for decades and we’ve worked in many different media business models, from ad-supported to branded content to public broadcasting. We want to experiment with different business models to see if we can make The Midlife Field Guide project self-sustaining. So we are going to try to get sponsors to be associated with categories of experiments.

And, for the first time, we are going to explore opening up paid subscription options here on Substack. We’re not going to do it yet, because figuring out the best way to set it up and make the community uniquely valuable is… another experiment.

The community might involve:

• Full interviews with experts

• Full procedures and results of our experiments

• Invitations to join us in doing experiments from day one

• Midlife conversations, Q&As, AMAs with experts of interests

• A Midlife Book Club

• Special offers from sponsors

(Let us know what you think and what you would value in a midlife community!)

Finally, we’re going to document the journey of this entire creative project as an experiment as well. So there will be a bit of a meta-layer in which we will be transparent about how we’re approaching the Midlife Field Guide and how everything is going.

Same Words, Different Order

Even though this might sound like a major change of direction, it’s really more of a course correction. The Creativity Guild is currently described as “a community of mid-life creative explorers.” With the Midlife Field Guide, we’re just flipping the order of a couple of words to become “a community of creative midlife explorers.” As you can tell from some of the sample experiment ideas above, we are creatives at heart and there will be some really fun creative experiments coming soon. If you’ve enjoyed the Creativity Guild to date, we are confident you will continue to enjoy it as we enter into the Midlife Field Guide phase.

Coming Soon: Experiment Protocols

This is a big project, and we want a solid foundation to build upon, so we’re not going to fly blind as total amateurs. We’ve got some great people who are experts in all the areas of our experimentation lined up.

For example, we have already spoken with the author of Tiny Experiments, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, and we will also revisit our chat with

AJ Jacobs

from a couple of years ago. To kick off our grand life experiment project, we’re going to start by sharing their smart advice about how to actually conduct life experiments.

Thanks for all your support, and please let us know if you have any questions about the Midlife Field Guide and any suggestions for experiments!

Geoff and Steve

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