So far, not so good....

So far, we have not done much. Our candle of inspiration was brightly lit, but now it is dim

1. We have learned that there are many other fun theory experiments that have been tested. There have been experiments to make throwing trash away fun, making people obey the speed limit for a reward, recycling bottles, and much more. We also dove into the field of psychology by looking at the different factors that people are influenced by.

2. We need to focus on the bigger picture rather than getting caught up in the small details of what we will do.

3. Our major setback is the fact that we can not think of an experiment that is reasonable to do within the boundaries of Saratoga High School. To attack this problem, we need to be more aware of possible experiments we could conduct in the school and getting some serious brainstorming finished.

4. Our next step is to brainstorm more experiments. We have tried thinking of a few, but they are either not doable or pointless.

5. We might use these experiments in our own school, since some of them would benefit the daily lives of the student body such as having a cleaner school.

Here we go! -Identifying the Problem

So far, we have learned that our question is very vague and it needs to get narrowed down to a more specific topic. We also learned about things that people dislike, and these can be changed because these are good things that people need in their lives but do not like doing, since they are boring.

We found there is not much in our own personal lives that we dislike AND can make a difference to.

In these past two weeks, there have been a lot of setbacks. We are unsure exactly of what situations we can use to improve our lives or how to make them more fun. Currently, our project is in the brainstorming stage. We wish that we made our original 20 time question more specific.

More brainstorming is necessary but at least we established that we want to improve our everyday lives, but do it with the fun theory. Firstly, we need to define what is "fun"? This is one problem we came across this week in our planning.

According to dictionary.com:

Fun

noun

1. something that provides amusement

2. enjoyment or playfulness

Something is defined as fun if we use the fun theory to make it more enjoyable, as well as having positive benefits on daily life.

Depending on what the definition of fun is only then we can measure our progress.

We have determined that we want our fun activities to fall in the following categories:

-mental health

-physical health

-food health

To make these groups of life-improvements enjoyable, we must create a way to do them that causes us to both look forward to the activity and enjoy accomplishing it. Applying our entire project to the student body of SHS would be our goal because we want t to improve the lives of our fellow classmates.

Do you sometimes just get bored regular, old, everyday life?

Do you hate the guilt from skipping gym for one day?

Do you dread the time of week when you have to clean your house?

Do you cringe every time you have to make your child eat his/her veggies?

These are just some questions that most of us know the answer to ….. and can find fun solutions to.

This is Reva and Ella. We will be documenting the progression of our 20% Time project in biology. The 20% time project, or passion  project, is when someone dedicates 20% of their time (hence the name) to do something they are passionate about and want to develop or take the time to learn more about.  We want to find how can we use the Fun theory to improve our everyday lives (by improving mental/physical health etc.) We have chosen to follow the model of the “fun theory” to construct a variety of experiments that will give people little things to do in their day-to-day lives that will not only improve their health, but also improve their personal happiness : )

We are both very interested in human psychology (and hate tedious tasks). This project fell under that category and also seems very doable in the time period we have. This project answers the essential question because The Fun Theory states that by making something seem more approachable and fun, people are more likely to do it. By making something more “fun” we can make people do it. We will do this for tedious tasks that although we hate, are good for our health and well being.

Our goals are to successfully complete at least three experiments with two trial rounds.

We will sometimes measure our progress by asking the people who participate in our experiments to measure how much happier or healthier they felt on a scale of 1 to 10. Other times, when given the choice between a fun way or a usual way to doing something, it will be obvious what the results are.

Our plan is to have a boring task and a “more fun” version of that task. Right now, we will come up with a group of basic solutions to boring tasks. Then, set up an experiment to test to see if people are more likely to do it. With this data, we can make a list of things that people can do to make their lives happier and healthier. We will post this list on this site to conclude our project.