# Why Patrick started his 52-week experiment

- **Episode:** [227](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/227.md) (2025-08-28)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** experiment, motivation, behavioral-science
- **Time:** 4:23–7:18 (start 263s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/227?t=263](https://truthliesandwork.com/227?t=263)

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[4:23] Leanne Elliott: So, this experiment feels like a bit of a pivot then from what your normal work is. So, tell us a bit more about it, where the idea come from and your motivation for wanting to try it
[4:34] Patrick Fagan: Yeah, there were a couple of things really which kind of came together at the same time. So we were just coming out of lockdowns and all of the kind of digital transformation that happened off the back of that. So a lot more remote working, screen time went up a lot. And then I also, or I should say my wife also had a baby. So that was a big kind of life shaking up event. I actually, for my book on how to not get manipulated, spoke to somebody who escaped or survived a cult. And a multi-level, she went from a cult to a pyramid scheme. But she escaped those things. And she was saying that she joined the pyramid scheme after she just had a baby, because when you have these big life events, it tends to kind of disrupt your normal way of thinking and new things happen. So that was going on in my personal life. And then I was on holiday, a kind of extended honeymoon slash digital nomad type thing. And we were in Croatia and we'd been away for a month and we phoned someone back home and they said, oh, have you been away for a month already? It only feels like yesterday. But for us, it felt like a lot longer than a month. It felt like 6 months or something. It had gone by a lot more slowly because we were experiencing new things all the time. We went to Kotor in Montenegro, this old town full of cats and climbed the castle and saw the bay. When we were falling asleep in Croatia, we could hear wolves howling in the distance. We had all these new, rich, meaningful memories, and that kind of slowed down time for us. So I realized very much set against the contrast of being indoors on my laptop all the time over the last few years, that actually what makes life meaningful and happy and something worth remembering is actually just Doing stuff, getting out there and experiencing new things. So all of these things together. Oh, and also I did some research for that book about how to not get manipulated, where I joined a cult, which I wasn't really looking forward to. I had to go away for a whole weekend to this cult, kind of light cult in the woods for a weekend. And I really wasn't looking forward to it, but my co-author is very stubborn and very much badgered me into it. And it was so kind of transformative and special and meaningful. I mean, maybe the cult brainwashed me, I don't know. Um, but it was a really great experience. Um, and so all of these things together just really made me realize that, hey, I need to actually get out of this routine and the screens and, and go and try crazy new things