Life as a Series of Side Quests

Life is so much more fun when you just start looking at it as a series of experiments. Some experiments may fail, some may surprise you, and some may accidentally change your life! As a product manager perpetually obsessed with experimentation, I run a lot of experiments at work to test out hypotheses. Experiments are supposed to be low stakes, quick and most importantly should have freedom to fail. I realise I hardly ever used to do those in my personal life, mostly because of my obsession with perfection. But recently I decided to start experimenting with my life with random little side quests to discover and design a life I would enjoy a lot more. These side quests varied from doing long walks around the city to map out the pretty streets, doing a color hunt walk, going to art galleries, to writing posts on Twitter and the list goes on... These side quests do NOT come with a pressure to continue or a compulsion to be great at, unlike hobbies. Most of us don't create or write due to fear of being bad or mediocre. We want to be great at everything we do. We compare our paintings with those of others, which takes away the core reason why we painted in the first place. I personally struggled to put out my thoughts, thinking they were not good enough to be shared. I used to be extremely self-critical. But now, when I think of it as an experiment, I am giving myself the freedom to be "bad" at it, which surprisingly gave me the confidence to post this. So if you are struggling to start a new hobby, just start a side quest instead :)