The “100 Day Game”: The Scheme to Author Your Life
Project code-named “Ayahuasca”: Rewriting Your Mental Code and Rewiring Your Brain
Back in my postgraduate program years ago, starting with bioimaging, I was entering a course on bioinformatics and genetics. It started from a few projects where statistical methods were used for biomedical analysis. At the same time, I was dealing with several troubled students; many of them had severe issues. Several were suffering from depression.
I turned my methods from genetic motif-finding and drug success analysis to human behavior tendency. I had a pool of troubled students who were seeking recourse from me. To make the observations, I kept logs on them. Initially, I directed them to the Chinese Christian Committee’s food kitchen that occurs every Friday night. They found comfort and support from the Committee, and I went further to put their lives back on track.
The testing continued with some students after I left the postgraduate program, and it was extended when some friends started revealing more about their depression during nightly discussions. Since then, more people have volunteered and joined the testing. To make it intuitive and easy-to-follow, I reformatted the human performance enhancement scheme into a game.
You have to affect the change in the brain chemistry or the way the brain is wired for that chemistry. — Mi’kail to biomedical students, 2009
The central aim and idea is to rewire the human behavior and thinking through continuous induced conditioning. As the brain can be subjected to neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, the subject re-condition themselves by acquiring skills, ability and behavioral change to create an affect on their physiological structure of their physical brain over time. Hence, the scheme is a process, through human learning, of stimulating new neurological adaptation with the aim of achieving lasting physiological and cerebral changes. The immediate behavioral changes and the the longer term character transformations that were observed are promising. Test subjects become an enhanced version of themselves.
In Phase 1, the scheme has 5 rules:
1. One must commit to an activity in each domain of their life. There are 4 domains: Pnuema (character cultivation), Psyche (intellectual ability), Soma (physical ability), and Opus (skill set in an employable field).
2. The game lasts 100 days. When one completes a daily task in each domain, a score of 2 for that domain is marked. If they fail their contract, 2 points are deducted. If one can do another 50% for the day, an additional point is added.
3. If an attempt is made but it does not fulfill the task, they maintain a score of 0 on that task for the day.
4. They must log the feelings and thoughts of the day. If there is a significant event or noteworthy incident, they should log that too.
5. Another focus of the journals is to find the conducive conditions helping them with their tasks, whether it be a time that is most opportune, a person who is notably helpful, a place that is most conducive, tools or techniques that are useful, etc. They are supposed to hunt for the best conditions.
The reason why the 100 Day Game works is because the individual can correct and enhance (debug / troubleshoot) their life by hunting down their anti-kairos, and installing and promoting their kairos after identifying them. Data is not usable if we cannot convert it into insights. Only by acting on the insights can we make the difference (a.k.a. delta(s): measurable differences of behavior or performance in a certain task/ability).
In order to win the game, 3 cardinal principles are introduced.
Cardinal Principle 1 (Milo’s Paradigm): Performing changes/tasks that are easy, gradual, incremental, and subconsciously done. The only conscientious thing is daily review.
Cardinal Principle 2 (Ulysses’ Pact): Adhere to the pre-designed plan that was laid with rationality and forethought, and do not let the situation “siren” and derail you. This cardinal will see you through troubled times.
Cardinal Principle 3 (Game of Herculean Labors): Innovate on the problems faced, and seek to be resourceful.
法则 一 : 瞒天过海 , “Cover the sky and cross the ocean,” Stratagem 1 of 36 Strategies. Applied on oneself.
法则 二 : 背水一战 , “With no exit behind, one is cornered to face the battle.”
法则 三 : 只可智取 (，不可力敌), “Win by wits, never by force.”
The design of each cardinal was deliberated. Cardinal 1 frames a conducive mental state for operation. It keeps one’s mind on their plan and its momentum. Cardinal 2 holds the person on track throughout their chain of actions with pre-committed determination. It also caveats to the person that there will be “sirens” to derail him/her. Cardinal 3 reframes the problems faced as opportunities for innovation and overcoming. The 3 cardinals condition and shape the person daily, in both attitude and aptitude. Over time, they solidify solidifies the habits into reflexes. The brain, through the phenomena of neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, forms new pathways which also reforms one’s character. This sets the neurostructural foundation and formation for the individual to be re-created by design.
Caveat: Please be reminded that doing things for 100 day is not 100 Day Game. The Central Dogma of the 100 100 Day Game is to get the 3 core principles (aka Cardinals) for 100 Days. Hence, please keep the 3 Cardinals in mind during and through out the game. Till date, there is no one who cannot pass P1 if they follow the 3 Cardinals.
As mentioned in the 5 rules, there are 4 domains to work with:
- Pnuema (character cultivation): This has lesser of your mental capability from memorizing details to manipulating numbers or abstract concepts. There are 2 foci in this domain — encraty (self-control) and volition (self-will). Encraty (self-control) regards having the control when the desires or weaknesses set in. With this strengthened, one will be less of a victim and subject to the mental derailment that discourages or distracts one from the task. Volition (self-will) regards having the determination and courage to maintain one’s stance. It must be caveated that the 2 foci must not be confused with stubbornness; they must come from perspicacity, i.e. clear thinking.
- Psyche (intellectual ability): This domain focuses on mental faculty that empowers perspicacity. One of the references may be on the 11 intelligence posited by Howard Gardner. By enhancing this domain, one would be able to build up mental facilities that comprises of acquired mental model and framework of thoughts to assist in the rationalization of all matters of rationality and reasoning. With mental faculties and mental facilities building and compounding upon each other, the subject will greatly extend their horizon of insights and heighten their awareness.
- Soma (physical ability): The scheme is not complete without the synergy of body and mind. In this domain, the subject focuses on elevating their stamina, strength and both their mental and physical endurance.
- Opus (skill set in an employable field): Though employable skill sets may be part of the above. The focus is on the person’s skills that are desired by the labor market to ensure and enhance their employability. This may take away part of the individual’s worries and stress while functioning in the economy and corporate society.
With all the above progressing in tandem, their character is gradually morph as if they are re-adapting to be another version of themselves — faster, stronger, smarter and kinder.
The reason and origin for the 4 domains was because the ancient Greeks had realized that the complete person is fulfillable via 3 domains which they had classified as — Pneuma, Psyche and Soma. I had to add the 4th domain, Opus, as the ancient Greeks did not have to work. They had slaves.
Confidence requires evidence, you have to build the case over time to win it. Respect requires warrant, you have to earn it. All requires works, not words. If faking till you make it, is your own hope, it will only be a time that it falls on it’s own emptiness.— Mi’kail Eliyah
How to play the `100 Day Game`?
For Phase 1, the objective is to get used to understanding how to use the system. Start with a habit that is so easy and trivial for you, there is little to negligible inertia to begin with.
Increase the task gradually and lightly. Micro-progress, cumulatively, and gradually gaining momentum, compounds into a big impact. Increment without conscious thinking. It should be undetectably gradual or impalpable. If you are able to do more than usual, that is consider a new stage. Be conscious and forgiving that you may retrograde. It may indicate that you are not ready to mature that stage yet.
Log the events and draw a chart to observe the trend. List the barriers and impedance, both actual and psychological, honestly face them and resolved them innovatively as indicated by cardinal 3. When new methods are found, re-attest them.
This is termed as `hunting for Kairos`. `Kairos` is a Greek concept of the state of `optimal time, place, way, and with whom` of doing things. This is the central idea of getting the state and method to that state to re-engineer the person. `Anti` in Greek connotes `the opposite`, hence, Anti-Kairos are the conditions that drag down a person’s motivatiions, mental energy and performance.
The notion is to mine for the Kairos and promote them, and, for the Anti-Kairos to avoid or mitigate them. As one evolves their methods over the 100 days, reforming and innovating on them, Kairos and Anti-Kairos are increasingly uncovered and discovered. By enhancing your Kairos and designing counter Anti-Karios, one will be able to conduce for favorable conditions and mitigate unfavorable ones. The efforts can be halved and performance will be boosted multifold, turning deficiencies into efficiencies.
Kairos may be synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronous Kairos are cyclical or seasonable; they are time-based or specific. Asynchronous Kairos are event-based or conditional. One has to mine the Kairos to adjust oneself for optimal, peak performance. They can be mined from the daily logs and charts used to monitor and observe the “breath test” (a way to help diagnose a number of conditions. Analogously to the “breath test” done to check how a person is breathing in medical diagnosis, by analyzing human endurance in this case, we can measure the amount work load a person can take, and the factors that determine it) of the game.
Tabulate the Kairos and Anti-Kairos, along with the methods that promote or discourage them, so that you can be aware of what they are. With time and diligence, these methods become part of us, developing us into a state known as “subconscious competence”, effectively building an enhanced character and competency.
Conclusion comes after the 100 days are over.
Once you become the system, discipline and motivation are just the side effects. — Mi’kail Eli’yah
Observations from the 100 Day Game, Phase 1
The 100 Day Game is a framework of tools people can use to reshape themselves and reset themselves towards the direction of progress in life. It sets them in a self-designed environment to simulate a course of self-directed actions to observe how they manage. In the process, they learn to manage themselves while subjecting themselves to atypical situations they set themselves up for. The situation becomes a “breath test” and conditioning testbed.
We observe that people are gaining control of themselves. It fulfills the notion of “control your mind, control yourself”. While Phase 1 does not seem to have the grand effect most people are hoping for, it sets the foundation for the mind to use the framework, and sets the framework itself. This is the purpose and intent, nothing further. It helps the subject to understand oneself and, thereby, learn to make the adjustment. The course of action itself is proactive. It sets the momentum for change. Change does not happen overnight, but when the game is concluded 100 days later, the subjects will realize they have way gone far past their starting point. Many subjects found themselves ready for Phase 2 — `Peripeteia`, the “turning tide”.
Phase 2 requires for using the mechanisms and methodologies found in Phase 1 to repeatedly transcend one’s old self. In the days to come, one will go beyond their old limits. This will be discussed in the next article where we will see that Phase 2 comes with the end goals in mind. Each goal targets the delta of what they cannot do before the start of the game.
It is, however in Phase 3: Metamorphosis that the requirements aim at fulfilling the notion of `control your mind, control your situation`. In Phase 2, the subject learns to use conditioning and control to focus and enhance their methods; this creates a compounded momentum to make micro-breakthroughs in doing what one could not do before. In Phase 3, the requirements get more exacting to direct the focus on creating related outcomes that will induce to engage the energy towards producing the desirable events. Scaling up the operations, Phase 4 aims to chain the events and direct the series of carefully crafted plots into a masterfully engineered outcome.
To date, (2018–07–18, 1240hr), Phase 1 and Phase 2 are stable and consistent. Phase 3 has limited results, and remains inconclusive. Hence, without Phase 3, Phase 4 cannot be initiated; it remains theoretical and under review.
The central aim of rewiring the human behavior and thinking through continuous induced conditioning is stimulate lasting neurological changes and physiological cerebral changes via neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. We have observed promising behavioral changes and character transformations when subjects work themselves forward assiduously.
The 100 Day Game is a manual and a map; it is not something to be passively read. You use it to make things; you use it to find things — you make and find yourself in the process. It is a manual; use it. It is a map; walk with it. You do not go anywhere or get anything moving by merely passive means.
Further Notes on the Observation of Depression
In the past, people were forced to hunt in the wild, and sometimes they were hunted by saber-tooth tigers in return. They brute-force their way to increase survivability, but the mortality rate was high. It is not a matter of experience, but expertise. They can keep experiencing failures with no discovery of the solution. The generations continue broken traditions of brute-forcing. Unfortunately, to this day, schooling and parenting remain poor sources to learn about survival. The tradition continues this lack, and people suffer on with the deficiencies.
Due to this evolutionary flaw, the mind lacks the skills to handle the situation, causing anxiety which leads to neurological exasperation, and finally failure when it becomes a hardwired desperation. When the mind reaches its wit’s end, desperation drives it to desperate irrational reactions, as the condition scales to a chronic paranoia; it becomes clinical insanity. As the brain is wired for the convenience of its use, the reaction and the reflexes become hard-coded. Adaptation is how evolution works its physics, and it could be adapting it in the wrong way or means. Evolution is not divine; it makes mistakes. Usually, mistakes in evolution lead to extinction. In this case, the lack leads to suffering and mortality. If the patient is conditioned into it, they have to be conditioned out of it. The reconditioning can and should be medically assisted if need be. This is the drug-assisted mode of conditioning. The ecology, i.e. the context the person is subjected in, is part of the nurturing cause of natural psychology, and the information determining the physical constitution can be genetically passed on to the next generation. This is where most people fail to understand the physics of nature.
We are no longer living in a literal jungle, but a social one. In the same way, we are perpetuating the deficiency.
I surmise that depression is an evolutionary lack of the organism (human being in this case). It lacks the ability to function in its ecosystem context and the mental sufficiency to manage its own existentialism. Hence, we have to fix the capability in terms of faculty (skills), facilities (tools), and mental sufficiency (mental stability, whether through a mental framework or philosophical context). But knowing is science, and mastery is art; hence, we designed the 100 Day Game as the working intervention. Rationalizing sanity is not as obvious as how we think we understand our feelings, just because we experience them everyday. Having intuition, and having faith that it works, is not the same as knowing that it works, nor is anywhere near knowing how it works. If there is a flaw or lack undetected, and it is causing a dysfunction or the lack of functionality, this is where systematic analysis and interventional synthesis must come into scope.
… to be continued — in Phase 2 …
The 100 Day Game
Phase 1: `Germination`: The Scheme to Author Your Life
Phase 2: `Metamorphosis`: Autopoiesis
Phase 3: `Peripeteia`: Turning The Tide, Breaking The DawnGuide : The 100 Day Game Survival Guide
FAQ : The 100 Day Game FAQ
Crucible : Code 159
The Arenas : Different Schemes and Modes
Group Scheme : `Ecological Clusters`Things We Learned From People On The 100 Day Game
1. How People Beat Their Odds
2. What People Tell Us About Their MotivationsThings People Do To Make A Difference In The 100 Day Game
1. Domain: Pneuma
2. Domain: Psyche
3. Domain: Soma
4. Domain: Opus
5. Domain: Kismet
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. — Plato (428/427 or 424/423 BC — 348/347 BC)