Focused - 225: Tiny Experiments, with Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing great. I'm real excited to talk to our special guest here today. Welcome to the show, Anne Lor LeCunf.

Thanks so much for having me, guys. Absolutely. We're big fans of your work. And for people who are not familiar with Dr. Ann Lor, you recently got a PhD or a neuroscientist. You're a former Google employee. You're an entrepreneur. You're a writer, but perhaps more relevant for this particular episode, you are also an author of a book called Tiny Experiments. And real excited to dive into the details of what's in that book. But how did you get there?

It all started with a newsletter. I decided to go back to university in 2018 or 19 to study neuroscience. I was completely lost at the time. I had just folded a startup that didn't work out. And all of a sudden I had no idea what I wanted to do next. So I decided to go back to the drawing board and, uh, kind of ask myself what it is I'd like to spend my time on. What would I like to spend my time on,

what would I like to explore, just out of sheer curiosity. And for me, it was the brain, how the brain works, why we think the way we think. And so I went back to university to study neuroscience and to capture my learning journey, but also just to learn better just for myself. I started this newsletter where every week I would pick one concept that I studied in university and I would try and translate it into something practical that people could apply in their life and in their work. This was initially more, as I said, for myself as almost as a study tool, but the newsletter grew pretty quickly and currently has about 100,000 readers.

And after a while, I had publishers who started reaching out and asking, hey, we like your newsletter. Have you thought of writing a book? And I said yes. And that's how we got here, I guess. I'm one of your 100,000, Anlar. I don't know how I found you early, but I don't I'm one of your 100,000, Ann-Laure. I don't know how I found you early,

but I don't read a lot of newsletters, but yours is in my must-read list. I just think the stuff you share is so insightful. And for folks in the audience, it's really about thinking about thinking, I guess would be the way I think of it. Well, three times in one sentence. But anyway, yeah, I think it's just really well done

and very accessible. From a neuroscientist, I know you're new to the trade, but at the same time, you're steeped in all of the science behind it, but you're right in a way for someone like me who's not a neuroscientist, that I get a lot of insight from it, and I just want to compliment you. It's not an accident that you have had this success.

Thank you. I actually think that a big reason why people like the newsletter and the way I write is because I'm new to it. And because I'm new to it, I write in a way that is still very close to the way a student would like it explained, versus maybe a neuroscientist who has 30, 40 plus years of experience and who might not remember what it was like to discover these concepts at the beginning.

So I actually think that the fact that I'm a baby neuroscientist is a strength that makes my writing better and more digestible for people. I totally agree. And I think that's, like I said, I think that's one of the big things. But when someone approaches you about a book, I've written a few books, I know what it's like.

Because you are someone who is writing these small bite-sized bits of wisdom that are very well done, but they're also very self-contained. It's like there's not a book-style thread through a lot of your earlier newsletters. So once they start knocking on your door and saying, we'd like you to write a book, how do you go from someone who writes the small newsletter- type content to an idea and develop that into something that becomes what is now Tiny Experiments.

That was a massive challenge. I did discover, you're right, that you cannot just stitch together a bunch of newsletters and voila, you have a book that was not like that at all, which was disappointing for someone like me of newsletters and voila, you have a book. in a completely different way from the one I used for my newsletter. I did start by collating some of the newsletters that I thought were the most interesting, and that had some common themes to them. The kind of things that I wrote about very regularly at NAS Labs around mindful productivity and systematic curiosity.

And then it really helped that I'm more of a gardener when it comes to the way I manage my notes and my creative work in general. I love looking for connections, for links in between ideas. And I approached this creative project at the beginning almost as a gardening project where I would try and grow different branches and uncover different connections and really see the patterns in between those ideas so I could construct a narrative that actually made sense to deliver all of this research, all of these tools in a way that was actually practical, as practical as every single newsletter that I wrote, but in a book format. I bet, yeah.

And I asked that question, having read the book, you succeeded. I mean, you're coming at this from a point of success. I mean, this is not a collection of newsletters. There is a thread going through this book, and it's actually kind of a unique take on productivity that obviously resonates with me and Mike, because this is the kind of stuff we like.

As we say in the show title, it's more than cranking widgets, isn't it? Thank you. Thanks so much. I am very happy with the result, and it's especially interesting to compare the final product to what it looked like a year ago. This is also why I love taking notes and keeping track of the different versions of the creative projects

that I work on because you can then see all of the, you can see the journey, the creative journey. And in this case, I'm honestly embarrassed when I look back on the first versions, but I think it's a good thing. It means that it's evolved a lot and I'm very proud of what it turned out to be like in the end. So you mentioned briefly the name of your newsletter,

which is Nest Labs. And do you mind explaining a little bit about where that came from? I feel like that kind of sets the stage for the title of the book, which is these tiny experiments. It's a, so Ness in English is the suffix you add at the end of words to qualify the state of being.

So consciousness, the state of being conscious, mindfulness, awareness, et cetera. So that's the N part of NES Labs. And the labs part is because I wanted to create a laboratory, a playground for experimentation around all of these topics, around those topics of the state of being human, and how can we engage with this, and how can we design our experience in a more intentional way?

And I absolutely love that. I've got a saying I used to describe myself of permanent beta and very much the same focus where you're constantly experimenting. You're never fully done. You're never released into the world. Like you're constantly making these, these tiny changes, um, which, you know, as I said, kind of leads into the topic or the title of the book. And I love that, that whole picture that comes to mind when you think of these tiny experiments. So you're constantly learning, you're constantly trying things out.

Some things aren't going to work, but it's not a big deal because it's just this little thing. I'm kind of curious, what was the thought process with the name Tiny Experiments? How did you land on that? Maybe what were some of the other ones that you considered or was that just the obvious title for this book that you were going to write about this different approach to productivity? It was not obvious at all. It was also a process. This is kind of meta, but it was an iterative process, a process of experimentation. The original title when I wrote the book proposal for publishers was Liminal Minds. And the word liminal means being at the threshold of something, being in between, being in transition.

So the idea of that first title was for people who embrace the fact that we are constantly in transition, we're always changing, always evolving. And the thesis of the book, which hasn't changed, is that instead of approaching those moments of transition, our entire life really, which is a big moment of transition between the moment you're born and the moment you die really, with anxiety because we're not in control, we can actually approach this process with curiosity. The problem with this first original title is that we tested it, this process with Courier's ID.

The problem with this first original title is that we tested it and a lot of people didn't know what the word liminal meant. And to be fair, I actually didn't know the word until pretty close to starting working on the book. It's not a word that you find very often, and even testing it with people who read a lot of books, they didn't know what it meant. It's not a word that you find very often that, and even testing it with people who read a lot of books, they didn't know what it meant. And I thought at the time that that would induce curiosity, that they would look at this title and feel like, oh, what does that mean?

Let me pick up this book and read it. But no, they felt like if I can't understand the title, I'm probably not going to understand the content of the book. So I went back again to the drawing board and started brainstorming more titles. And it was very helpful for me to go back to the principles that I think have been the foundation of the success

of the Nest Labs newsletter, which was really about avoiding jargon and explaining complex ideas in a very simple way. And when I reread my manuscript, I discovered that I really kept talking about experimentation. Just experiment, just try this thing, take notes, see what works, see what doesn't, become the scientist of your own life. And I felt like that's the title, that's actually the core idea,

without a complicated word that nobody's going to understand, tiny experiments, that's the title. I then tested that title with other ideas that we brainstormed with people on my team, plus suggestions from the Nestlabs community. And this one came up on top in all of our surveys, all of our testing. So that was really nice to have this very clear alignment between what felt right to me, but also having the data to back it up

and showing that that was the title we should go for. It's always like a dichotomy for us nerds. Like I love the word liminal. The Dave Gray book, Liminal Thinking, is one of my favorite books. And so that connected with me. But you're right. I think if you're at an airport bookstore,

Tiny Experiments is going to land. And it also is equally merited because we like we've all said on the show, you never really get there, right? You're always evolving. And I think accepting that just makes change so much easier. It makes it so much easier to be forgiving with yourself when an experiment doesn't work.

That just means that didn't work. That doesn't mean that you're a terrible person or whatever. It's just, for whatever reason, that didn't work. That doesn't mean that you're a terrible person or whatever. It's just, for whatever reason, that didn't work with you. And that's really an underlying main theme of the Nest Labs newsletter. So I think you nailed it. And I think it's going to be a great book. I hope everybody in the audience picks it up because it really landed with me. Thank you so much. I'm so glad it resonated. And I still talk about liminality in the book. So it's not that I abandoned the concept,

but as you said, you have also to think about the concept in which your creative work is going to be found by people who don't know you. And the airport bookstore is such a good example. People probably make the decision as to whether they're going to pick up the book or not in a split second. So you don't want them to feel like they need to check in a dictionary, what the title means. Yeah.

And you go to people where they are and then you bring them along with you. Yeah. And again, that is very common with your newsletter. Like I did not, I am not a neuroscientist. I not studied it, but I feel like I know a lot more of it now from reading you for years. And I think that you have brought me on a journey and I suspect you're you shared a bunch of titles with your audience and that was the one that they chose. I guess since we're on the topic of tiny experiments, how would you define tiny experiments?

Kind of setting the stage for the rest of the discussion here with the content of the book. Yes. So I'm going to start with why scientists run experiments in the first place. Usually it's because you have a question. There's something you're either curious about or you have a doubt about or that is unclear. And so you formulate a research question and you might have an idea of the answer but you're not quite sure. You might have a hypothesis but you're not 100% sure

as to what the answer is. And so you collect data. That's what running an experiment is. You collect data and then you analyze it and based on the results of that analysis, you decide on what your next experiment is going to be. And if you keep on doing this, as you said, you're never really done,

but you are going to build those loops of growth, of learning that keep on adding to each other, and you're going to discover more, you're going to find out more answers, and you're probably going to come up with more questions. So this is what experimenting in general is about. And in the book, I take this idea of experimenting from the scientific method,

and I bring it into our daily lives and work. I tell people, as I mentioned earlier, that anyone can become the scientist of their own lives. Anyone can run experiments. Anytime you face a challenge or you have a question or you have some doubts, instead of being paralyzed or having, you know, not knowing what to do yet or overthinking things, you can just approach it from a place of curiosity and say, okay, what kind of experiment can we design around this so we can get closer to an answer? So that's the general idea of experimenting. You mentioned the curiosity and I think we should dive into that a little bit because I guess on the surface, this is a productivity book,

but it is different than pretty much every other productivity book I have ever read. And you have this way of explaining the experimental mindset where it's high curiosity and high ambition, but this is different than most productivity books, I think would define ambition. A lot. The thing that kind of bugs me about a lot of quote unquote productivity books

is there's a guru who has a system and all you have to do is follow the system. And that's not what you're talking about here. Yeah, I experienced burnout several times in my life because I tried to hustle. I tried the productivity systems. I tried to, a lot of the methods that we feel like should be working, like blocking all of your time in your calendar and using timers and pretty much anything

that is based on willpower and applying registr systems, I have tried at some point and it never worked for more than a week at most. And at the time, not only was I exhausted, struggling to finish my work, in a bad mood, but also I always blamed myself. I felt like, oh, so many people are using these systems. If it's not working for me, I'm the problem. Something's wrong with me. And so this is also part of why I started the Nest Labs newsletter. And I have now written this book.

It's that there are a lot of people like me, I've discovered, who are highly ambitious, but who also don't necessarily have the confidence in the fact that they can design their own system. They don't need to copy paste a system from someone else. We all have the agency to try and figure out for ourselves what works and what doesn't for us. So in a way, I'm providing more of a meta system in the book.

I'm not giving you a rigid system to follow. I'm giving you the scientific tools for you to experiment with different systems and design your own, knowing that there is no way a friend or a colleague of yours could copy paste what you're doing because you have spent the time to figure out what works for you. Yeah, so it's not that systems are bad,

it's that one specific system is not going to magically unlock things. That was the thing that stood out to me when I thought about the scientific mindset and experimentation is essentially what you're trying to do is improve the systems that are already there in your life, but you're not going to blow them up and replace them with GTD or something. You're going to consider the inputs, you're going to consider the process, and then you're going to hopefully get some

better outputs, but you're going to constantly be trying things and paying attention to what seems to work. Yes. And also embracing the fact that your circumstances might change and you might change as well. So a system that worked for you even for a year or two years, all of a sudden might not be the right one anymore. Maybe you have a new job. Maybe now you have kids. Maybe now you're the caretaker for someone in your family, maybe you used to work remotely and now you're commuting. Things can

change and so your system should keep on changing with you. And this is also what the book is about, about really paying attention to the internal and external signals, to the feedback that you're getting. So when things stop working, you're not panicking or feeling again, like something's wrong with you. You're just noticing that new data, you analyze it, and then you figure out something to tweak, something to change, and then you see if that helps or not.

It's an evolution. I mean, I've gone through that in my own life. I was a lawyer for nearly 30 years and now I'm something else. My system's evolved and that's the way it works. Another point you make in the book though, but I just wanna call out because it is a hobby horse of mine is the inverse of the experimental mindset.

You know, you could, there's a lot of labels you could have put on it, but you use the word cynic mindset. You know, you could, there's a lot of labels you could have put on it, but you use the word cynic mindset. And when I read that, that really resonated with me. I am at war with cynicism. I feel like it is far too common in modern society. And for some reason, people think of it almost like it's cool or, I don't know, that, you know,

the cynical thing. Like if you look at don't know, that you know, the cynical thing. Like if you look at like comedians and you know, when you watch people on TV, cynicism is like a thing now that I don't think historically it has been in society. And I like that you're rebelling against it a little bit because I think that's kind of something that's starting. And I would like to see us all be a little less cynical and aspire towards experimentation

and away from this idea of the cynic. That's just, I'm sorry. I'm not even sure I'm asking a question. Yeah. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about what is the opposite of the experimental mindset. And as you said, there were lots of different options, but that's what I explained in the book,

that the experimental mindset is high ambition, high curiosity, and the cynic, having a cynical mindset is low curiosity, low ambition. And as you said, there's also this sense of pride in not trying anymore and feeling like it's not worth it. It's kind of cool to not have any ambitions or high level of curiosity about different topics. I think there's a very simple question we can ask ourselves is if we want the world to be a better place. Do we want more people to experiment or do we want more people who feel this way, this negative way, cynical way about the world

and feel like there's nothing to be done anymore? And the answer is very clear. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace gives you all the tools that you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings with a professional website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place. I'm a big fan of Squarespace.

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of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash focused, offer code FOCUS to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for the focus podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of relay. Yeah, we all have the same number of days. Are you going to spend them leaping out of bed and changing the world? Are you going to spend them sitting in bed and watching tick tock? It's up to you. Yeah, that actually gets into maybe a different topic on time,

but you bring up the wait, but why calendar in the, uh, in the book. And, uh, I remember the first time I came across that and how jarring and shocking it, it was to, to consider how much of my life had been spent. Kind of an accompanying idea to that is memento mori nowhere. Remember some day that you're going to die. I've actually got a little memento mori countdown thing on my daily note in Obsidian. But that kind of leads into your... In the book, you talk about how not all moments are created equal. Do you mind unpacking that a little bit maybe and kind of why that's important to fight against this whole idea of toxic productivity?

Yeah, it actually links back very nicely to what David was just saying about, are you going to leap out of bed and change the world or stay in your bed and scrolling TikTok? Which to me is interesting because I think the answer is not necessarily that you have to leap out of bed every day, but you should certainly ask yourself that question every day. And in the book, I explained that a relationship to time should not be about maximizing every single moment. And that's toxic productivity. That's really seeing this, as you mentioned,

jarring days in your life calendar that was initially published on Wait But Why. That shows every single day as a tiny square. And you see how finite your life is. And you feel like I have to fill every single box with as much stuff, be as productive as possible if I want my life to have meaning. And instead, it's really about changing your perspective

and your relationship to time, where you realize that each square has a different size, a different color, a different texture, and you can actually fill them with whatever you want. And it's more about intentionality. So some squares you can say, today I am going to leap out of bed and I am going to change the world.

But some other days you can say, you know what, I did a lot of changing the world yesterday. I'm a little bit tired. I am going to stay in bed and scroll on TikTok. But this is intentional. This is what I decide to do today because I need to recharge my batteries and not doing much feels like the right thing to do right now. Sometimes you're going to be the go-getter at work who's going to work really hard to finish that presentation on time so you can secure that client. And other times you're going to be the go-getter at work, who's going to work really hard to finish that presentation on time so you can secure that client. And other times you're going to tell your colleagues, I'm not coming, I'm not joining that meeting

because my kid is doing this show at school and I would not miss that for the world. And this is really what reimagining your relationship to time is. And this is not new, it's not a new concept. I explained in the book that in ancient Greece, they already had that different concept of times. They had two words for it actually.

One of them is chronos, which is that quantitative definition of time. The first one, the one that you see in the white but white calendar with all of those tiny boxes. And the other one is kairos, which is a qualitative definition of time. And that's the second one I described, the one where you understand each box with a different color and a different texture that you get to decide.

There are so many words in Greek that they had multiple definitions that we don't match in English. It's kind of shocking as you study it that it's almost like they understood things and sometimes at different levels than we do. And it's a fascinating area of research if you dig into that. **Jade, off camera** Yeah, the word kairos, when you use that, that jumped off the page to me because my wife is a former, uh, wedding photographer and her business was called the art of Kairos, which her definition that she found was the writer opportune moment. And, uh, that's what made her great as a wedding photographer was that she was able to capture these, these moments where people just forgot that you were there.

And like, that's when she would press the button. She got out of it when everybody started bringing smartphones to the weddings. And then she's at the end of the aisle, they get the money shot and everyone steps out into the aisle so they can take the picture with their phone. She's like, I'm done. But that, that idea of not all moments being created equal, and then really just selecting the right or opportune moment to do the thing, that's a really powerful idea.

C.P. Exactly. And when you think about going back to why people find that calendar, all of the days in your life so fascinating, it goes back to that question. The reason why they find it so fascinating is because everybody's wondering wondering how can I make sure that my time here matters? And I really don't think the answer is in filling all of these boxes with as much stuff as possible. It is about finding, connecting to that opportune moment, moment after moment, and making each of them meaningful in their own ways. And that might look very different every time. Again, just doing nothing and, I don't know, chilling with a friend, having a cup of tea,

not talking much, that can be a really beautiful Kairos moment. And sometimes working really hard, getting in the flow, losing yourself in some sort of creative project, that can also be a beautiful Kairos moment. So really it is about being present and intentional with the way you use your time. And that's funny because we read a lot of productivity books here. We talked with a lot of really smart people like you. And it seems to me the more steeped people are

in the true concept of productivity, the end destination is always the word intentionality. It's the common denominator of people who understand or really think about this stuff. It's like, can I find an intentional life? And it's so hard because the world throws so much at you. It's so anti intentional now more than ever. But if you can find that, that's the secret sauce.

Yeah. I, um, I really love that you mentioned how hard it is because I genuinely feel like it's a privilege to have the space to even be able to think about that, to think about these questions. A lot of people are scrambling to just be able to do all of the things that you're supposed to do just in order to survive. And so this is what I advocate for as well. And all of my writing at Nest Labs and in the book

is kind of trying to build for yourself, create for yourself that privilege to be able to think about these things by trying to just carve out a little bit of time in your days or throughout your week where you can inject a little bit of that intentionality. And it can be really, really hard. We can go entire days without having the space to think, let alone think. So imagine thinking about thinking even harder. So I

completely understand if that might not seem possible, but even carving out 10, 15 minutes every week to reflect on your experience and see if you can make any little tweaks, little changes, I think that can have an outsized impact on the quality of your life. Yeah, I had, in 92, I started a meditation practice that I do daily through today. And I feel like people ask me,

my friends tease me about it, like the hippie meditator, but they're like, so do you have enlightenment? And what I tell them is I have space between action and reaction. That's all I have to show for it, but that's all I need, that level of intentionality. And I just think it's very hard for someone to do it today. I know this is a little off topic with your book,

but to me, this question of intentionality is so important because in my experience, and I know this is all semantics and just us talking here, but once you find intentionality and the ability to access it, the side effect is happiness. I mean, I feel like that's the ultimate goal of all this. It's not to, like you said, check all the boxes and make all the money and do all the projects, but to live a happy life.

And that's what I'm aiming for with these discussions and these things. And, and the older I get them, I realized that intentionality is the gateway, but I'm now rambling. So I will stop. Absolutely not. And it does connect to a lot of important ideas I discuss in the book. I have an entire chapter that is called Intentional Imperfection, and it does connect to being able to be happy even in times where things don't really go to plan,

when you're not in control, when things get messy and life does get messy. That's also why you have a pet peeve with a lot of productivity systems is that they are designed based on the assumption that you have complete control over your life, over your time, over your energy, over your health, over your relationships. And that's not the case. Life is chaotic. And in order to cultivate happiness, you need to be able to do it from within. And you need to have a conception of it that is a lot more fluid than that rigid type of climb the ladder, always be on top type of happiness that a lot of books are trying to make us reach for and often fail to achieve.

Yeah, there's this belief that once I achieve this goal, that's when things are going to change and then everything is going to be easy. And you kind of rail against the standard goal setting approach at the beginning of the book. We're kind of jumping all over here, but I actually really appreciated that because I'm not a big fan of the traditional smart goals myself. But I really like the way that you, you defined it as this, this linear state. I've kind of always thought they're binary. You either achieve them or you don't.

But you also have this framework for doing the tiny experiments, which is creating these packs. And I feel like this is much more approachable because with goals, it seems to me that the smart goals, the specific, the measurable, etc. It kind of assumes that you have complete control over everything that's going on in your world, and therefore you can delegate precisely the resources that are required in order to do this thing. And with the PACS, you have this formula where I'm going to do this thing for a trial period. It's a short amount of time and it feels like, oh, well, this isn't that big a deal. I can squeeze this in as opposed to, well, I got to put that off until the day that never comes when I've got control over everything that's going on. And as it pertains to the discussion of time management and being intentional, I feel like this is the place to start. And why I love this idea and this book so much is that it's something that just about anybody can put into practice now.

Like you don't have to wait until things are better or you've achieved this certain state. You can start doing these tiny experiments the minute that you understand what goes into them. And then just doing that creates better outcomes in the long run. Yeah. And they are actually two important aspects of those experiments that really connect to what you just said. The first one is, as you said, they're tiny. So even if you're not in a place where you have a lot of resources, a lot of space, So even if you're not in a place where you have a lot of resources, a lot of space, a lot of energy, you can pick something very small to experiment with. And as you said, the only thing you need to know is what is the action you're going to try and for what duration. So for example, you can say I'm going to meditate for 10 minutes every morning for 10 days.

So you have the action and the duration is 10 days, right? You can say, I'm going to write a newsletter every week for one month. That's the action, that's the duration. So that's the first part, they're tiny. The second part is that they are experiments. They're not habits, they're not New Year resolutions. What does that mean? That means that failure is potentially a part of it,

and that's completely fine, because the only goal of an experiment is to collect data, to learn something new, to discover and answer some new information that you didn't have before. So if you say, I'm going to do that tiny experiment of meditating for 10 minutes every day for 10 days. And after day three, really, you can't keep going.

You absolutely hate it. Meditation is just not for you. Then you learn something. And again, that might not be a complete answer. What you know is that this format and this particular mindfulness practice as you designed it for that particular experiment doesn't work for you.

So what do you try to change? Maybe the next experiment you say, let's just do five minutes for five days. That was too ambitious. Let's go even smaller. Maybe you feel like actually it's just meditation. That's really not my thing. What is another mindfulness practice I can try?

Maybe let's do 10 minutes of journaling's just meditation. That's really not my thing. What is another mindfulness practice I can try? Maybe let's do 10 minutes of journaling instead of meditation. Maybe you feel like doing it on my own, that makes it difficult. Maybe I'll grab my spouse, my partner or a friend, and I'll say, hey, what about we do it together? Either virtually we call each other in the morning, we put our phone next to us 10 minutes together,

or if you live with someone, you do it together. And you just try it again. If it doesn't work out, it's fine because there's no real failure. There's just getting an unexpected result. And when you use that and you look at it without self-blame or self-judgment, you can use that data to design your next experiment.

If you can just eliminate self-judgment, you can use that data to design your next experiment. If you can just eliminate self-judgment, you can solve so many problems. What are some of your favorite experiments you've conducted on yourself? Well, the meditation one is one I did. The format was slightly different. I did 15 minutes for 15 days. And what was really nice is that,

this is something I talk about in the book as well. I have a chapter called Learning in Public. For this one, I decided to conduct the experiment in public because I had tried meditation several times before, never worked for me. So I created a Google Doc and I took my experimental notes in that public Google Doc that I shared with a bunch of people,

including friends that I knew were good at meditation, if there's such a thing, but who at least had managed to stick to it for a long time. And that was incredibly helpful. Not only did I manage to stick to the 15 days, but every day I would write my notes in the Google Doc and people would leave comments and give me advice and share resources. So I think the first or the second day, I wrote something like, is it normal that I'm itchy all over

and I just want to scratch myself and I can't stay still? And someone posted a comment and said, yes, that's very common. And there are different things that you can do. You can just say, okay, I'll just scratch that little itch and then move on. Or you can do. You can just say, okay, I'll just scratch that little itch and then move on. Or you can meditate on it. You can meditate on that itchy sensation and see how that feels. So that was really interesting and I got lots of advice around how to breathe,

the position, and eyes closed or eyes open. A lot of information that would have probably taken me a lot longer to figure out on my own. So that was a successful experiment and I really liked it. And meditation hasn't become something I do every day, but it has become part of my toolkit now. I do it several times a week and this is something I go back to whenever I need to regulate my nervous system

and I feel a little bit stressed or anxious. So that was a massive improvement in quality of life for me. An experiment that did not work out, that didn't work out, again, with that definition of an experiment where the outcome was not for me, was with YouTube where I said,

I'm going to publish one video every week on YouTube for six months. And every single time I had to sit in front of the camera and record myself, I was dreading it. I'm talking a knot in my stomach and not being able to focus on anything else in the few hours that was before the recording time. And so that's why I mentioned earlier, it's important to look at internal and external signals, because if you look at external signals, actually, all of my videos got a decent number of views. I got, I think about 10,000 subscribers on YouTube.

And so the external signals would tell me keep going. But the internal signals, how I felt at a mental and emotional level, all of that, that didn't feel good at all. And so because of that, at the end of the experiment, I decided, okay, that was interesting. I learned a lot, but I don't think I'm a YouTuber. I'm not going to keep going with this. And so this was a successful experiment, but in a different way where it failed in the sense that I didn't want to keep going. But to me, that's a form of success too, that I learned that that was

not my thing. I feel like that is a very important point we need to dig deeper on because deeper on because a lot of productivity books seem and productivity advice in general seems to me like well you should just add this thing and if you were getting the results that you were talking about it would make sense to keep going with that because you're just looking at the external signals and kind of the inherent advice I think that people should take away from this is that you don't have to do all the things. You should figure out which are the things that are really going to move the needle for you to borrow your term, David. So you can speak to that point generally if you'd like, but I also want to bring in the plus minus next idea here because I'm

assuming this is the tool that you use to figure out what are the right things to focus on. And I feel like this approach is pretty brilliant. I'm gonna steal this for my weekly reviews. You wanna talk us through plus minus next? Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, and you touched upon, very important to look at both the internal and external signals.

If you focus only on the external signals, then you have the risk of chasing other people's goals. A definition of success that is not your definition of success. And especially in today's world where we're all online, we can all see some image of what the success that other people are projecting. It's very easy to feel like we're all staring at this giant leaderboard and because this person has that many YouTube subscribers, so this person has a big newsletter or a big podcast, you too should aim for that.

And so instead of chasing other people's goals blindly in this way, it's very important to regularly review your progress and not only ask yourself, am I being successful here? But also, is this the kind of success I want? Do I actually wanna keep going with this project? Plus minus next is what I call a metacognitive tool. Metacognition just means thinking about thinking. And so it's really about turning your,

observing your inner landscape, your thoughts, your emotions, and assessing how you're feeling about things. Not just the external success, but those internal signals. It's super simple. You can do it in your note-taking tool super simple you can do it in your note taking tool or you can do it on a piece of paper if you're journaling in a notebook for example. It has three columns plus minus next I'm very good at naming as you can see. In the first column plus you write everything that went well that week. In the second column, minus,

you write everything that didn't go so well or didn't go as expected. And in the last column, next, with an arrow symbol, you write everything you wanna focus on next. And for the things you wanna focus on next, those could be things that you want more of compared to that current week you're analyzing, or things that you want more of compared to that current week you're analyzing, or things that you want less of.

And instead of having this rigid plan where you decide weeks in advance, where you're going to be working on and where you're going to put your focus, you really have this iterative process, much more experimental, where you look at the data from the past week to make decisions as to where you want to focus your time and energy for the upcoming week. I love that. And I'm kind of curious how long you've been using this tool or some some form of it and maybe, you know, reflecting what are some of the biggest looking back now, the biggest tiny experiments, you know, they provided the biggest impact to where you are now that have been a result of this. I think I've been using PlusMinusNext for four or five years at least now.

And I actually run a survey recently with my community and PlusMinusNext is the most popular tool that most people are using and have been using for the longest which makes sense. It's very simple, you can just incorporate it into whatever system you're already using and it's very quick to do every week. In terms of the experiments that have had the biggest impact on my life and work I think it's just the very first experiment that I run that completely changed my life. Because the NASLABS newsletter was my very first experiment. At the time, I said, I'm going to write a hundred newsletters in a hundred weekdays. And I said, I will

only decide whether I like this or not, whether I like this online writing thing after I'm done running this experiment, after I'm done running this experiment, after I'm done collecting the data. And as you can see now, that experiment, the result of that experiment was that, yes, I actually love writing online, and I'll probably keep on going for a very long time. So this was my first experiment, and this is really the one that put everything else in motion for me. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Cleft. Capture and share notes with Cleft's AI scribe.

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Our thanks to Cleft for their support of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. You know, a common theme in your experiments and in the book is the idea of when you decide to try something, to take it on for a set amount of time. Don't judge it after you do it once, in essence. And I think that's an important point because a lot of times it does take a little while to get a feel for, does YouTube work, does newsletters work, et cetera.

Yeah, and that's why I make the distinction in the book in between a habit and an experiment. For a habit, you assume that this is going to be good for you. You need to build the habit of going for a walk every day. You need to build the habit of going to bed at a certain time every day, of drinking enough water, of stretching, of whatever it is. And those things you just assume this is going to be good for me, I need to build that habit. With an experiment there's no assumption whatsoever when you get started. You can try that, you can say I'm going to go for a walk every day.

Try it and see if that works for you. Maybe that's not the thing for you. Maybe you need to go to a yoga class instead. Maybe you need to try dancing in your living room. Maybe you need to do something completely different. And you're not going to know until you try it. So that's the big difference. A habit has an indefinite number

of repetitions. You're supposed to keep going forever. And if it doesn't work out, you need to get back onto it. You need to restart the habit. With a tiny experiment, you do it for a set period of time, and then you decide if you want to keep going or not. you do it for a set period of time and then you decide if you want to keep going or not. That's a very important point you're hitting on there about the difference between habits and experiments. And it kind of reminds me of the book Atomic Habits, which sits kind of in my mind anyways at the exact opposite end of the spectrum as tiny experiments. Because like you said, it feels like this is something that I'm committing to forever. And yes, there is truth in that idea of these small things can compound to big results. But you're hitting on something which is very

important in that just because something could produce this big result in your life doesn't mean that you should automatically do it. And you mentioned in your book when it comes to, um, making better decisions that there is no quote unquote right choice. So you're doing these experiments, you're seeing what the results are, and then you're giving yourself the permission to just completely change your mind and be like, you know what, that thing isn't for me anymore and I'm just gonna let it go.

It's funny you're mentioning Atomic Habits because we actually have the same editor with James Clear. And I actually see my book and his as potentially working in tandem in the sense that you can start with a tiny experiment, try it, see if it works for you, and only then decide, okay, I'm actually going to turn this into a habit. So it's almost as a little like pre prep work

kind of like step that you insert before picking a habit. It's very similar to what we talked about earlier, where instead of copy pasting the goals of others and instead of copy pasting the habits of others, even if that's been successful for them, it doesn't mean it's going to be successful for you. So first, give it a try, collect some data that is your own data, not the data of other people. And then if you notice after, for example, meditating every morning for 15 days or for a month, or in my case, writing the newsletter for a certain number of editions that this has a positive

impact on your life, then you can say, actually this could be a really good habit. Let's do it. Let's just turn this thing into a habit so they can work together. And I don't think habits are necessarily bad, but we've gone too far in thinking that we need to have all of these habits into your habit. So they can work together and I don't think habits are necessarily bad, but we've gone too far in thinking that we need to have all of these habits and all of the same habits as successful people. Exactly. Yeah. Like there is a lot of, a lot of, I mean, Tomic Habits is one of my favorite books. I've probably gifted that book more than any other book up to this point, but did that book more than any other book up to this point. But there is this inherent assumption that the things that you start as habits, you should just automatically continue indefinitely. And you

add a couple of those things together and then life life's you and it all falls apart. So you have in chapter nine, you have a whole chapter on how to dance with disruption, which I think is really important before you decide, yeah, this is really something that's critical to my success. It's in alignment with my vision and my values. And I'm going to incorporate this into my morning, evening routines, because this is just so important to me. You have to figure out for yourself, you know, what do you do when these disruptions interrupt your choreographed routines is how you defined it. And I love that. You mind speaking a little bit to the idea of dancing with disruptions? Yes. This is related to something

we discussed a little bit earlier about how a lot of systems are not designed to work with the inherent chaos of life. So I really wanted to address this and I didn't want to just mention it in passing, which is why it has an entire chapter around this idea of dancing with disruption. And I call it the two-step reset and it's inspired by a lot of types of dances that have a two-step pattern. The first step is to look at the emotional impact, the subjective experience of the disruption. This is something that we tend to bypass a lot, we go into problem solving mode straight away. And very often we're still dysregulated from the disruptive experience and we're just not thinking straight really.

So it's better to wait a little bit before you do that and have a little pose where you look at the subjective impact. I suggest in the book, a very simple method that is evidence-based. a little pose where you look at the subjective impact. I suggest in the book a very simple method that is evidence-based. There's been quite a bit of research around it called affective labeling. And it's really just about putting words on your emotions. And so you can say,

this disruption made me feel anxious, stressed, inadequate, imposter syndrome, or whatever it is that you felt because of this thing that happened that was out of your control. There's a lot of research showing that by just labeling your emotions, you can regulate them better. Once you've done that, once you've worked around the subjective impact, you can then calmly assess the objective impact of the disruption. And this is when you really look at, okay, what are the actual consequences of what happened?

Sometimes the consequences are really nothing. Once we're calm enough to look at it in an objective way, in a calm way, we realize that actually nothing that bad happened. It was maybe a bit surprising. Maybe we didn't feel prepared for this. Maybe that was not exactly the plan that we had in mind, but that's completely fine. And in other situations,

there are actual consequences to be dealt with. But again, once we're in a place of calm, we can look at them and figure out an action plan. So that's the two-step reset where you start with the subjective experience and then you look at the objective consequences. I love that. And the effective labeling,

that stood out to me from your book as well. I've heard that term before, but not been great at it. And I'm kind of curious what you would say to this. Brene Brown wrote a great book, Atlas of the Heart, where she gave people like me, who tend to view any sort of sad, mad emotion sad, mad emotion as negative and you have like five or six that you pick from if you're gonna say, what am I feeling about this right now? But as you increase your emotional vocabulary and you get more specific about these emotions, it seems to

me that that is the thing that kind of unlocks what you were talking about. You just recognize that these things are there and then you can think about it kind of objectively, like do I want to continue with this experiment if this is going to be the result or not? But I think an important point here is that the emotions aren't necessarily like good or bad. It's just the result of the experiment. Yes, absolutely. Any emotion is just a signal from your body and your brain

that are trying to communicate some useful information to you. And if you decide to see it in this way as just useful information, you can then use it. You can use those emotions to make better decisions. You can decide if you look at anxiety, for example, that is it because you're pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, you're doing something new, you've never done it before and so it's a bit scary and then you can decide okay actually I want to keep going, I want to try and see what is on the other side of this anxiety or it can be because you're working with someone who has poor communication and that's creating anxiety. In that case, same, your anxiety is giving you some information and you can decide what to do with it.

Am I going to stop working with this person if that's something I can do? Let's say I'm an entrepreneur, I have a lot of freedom around who I work with or don't work with, or is that someone who's part of my team? Do I need to sit down with them and have a conversation? Do I need to ask a colleague for help because it will be easier to have this conversation together as a team? All of a sudden, anxiety is not this horrible thing that you need to squash and get rid of. It's useful information you can use to make better decisions. Yeah, it's not a problem to be solved. Because I'll speak as the meditator.

To me, emotions are trailing indicators. And when you can sit with it and run it to ground, there's always something behind it. And like you said, sometimes the things behind it are positive or negative. But the actual emotion is nothing more than just a breadcrumb trail to follow. And then if you're willing to sit with it, you can get to the bottom of it.

It's a very, it's a powerful technique. Once I stumbled into it just through the meditation practice, I know other people do it with journaling and maybe you talk to a therapist or everybody's got different ways to do that. But it's something I discovered quite by accident, but it's been at my side for a long period of my life. So that's David's most successful experiment.

Yeah, and I think it's something, as you mentioned, you discovered it through meditation. I discovered it through scientific inquiry of just looking at anything I don't understand with curiosity. And the fact that so many different disciplines, so many different philosophical schools have come to kind of the same conclusion that emotions are not necessarily something bad, but again, either a signal or trailing indicator, something that you can learn from if you look at it with curiosity, speaks to kind of an almost

universal human truth here, that we could all learn from engaging with our emotions in a more generative way almost rather than trying to control them. Another technique I use just to, you know, since we're on the topic is, is I like to intentionally laugh at myself. It's like, oh, look at that. You got all afraid again. You got all anxious again. You got all angry again. It's like, you just, you know,

the world just played you and you fell into the trap again. You know, just, and not judgmentally, but just funny. It's like, okay, well, that's all right. You did that. Get better, that's all, you know. You know, be kind to yourself in it, but just kind of acknowledge it and move on. Yeah, another simple technique

that's very similar to this one is to almost talk to them and personify them as friends. So same with you, so you're like, hello old friend, what have you come to tell me, right? That's exactly what I mean. Yeah. Yes.

Now there you are again. I thought I had put you away, but you keep getting out. The thing that really just stands out to me about all of the emotional side of this, though, and maybe this is just my high achievement drive personality tends to look at the outcomes. You know, and that's, I think, probably what drew me to the idea of habits was, well, with a little bit of effort, you can create these pretty substantial outcomes if you can just do this thing every day. But I think it's worth pointing out here, because at least in the things that show up in my

feed you've got the Gary V's, you've got the Jacos, you know, the people who are like, just forget what you feel like and do the thing. And I think this is a much healthier and more sustainable approach to this stuff. If all you're doing is seeing and social media just kind of feeds this in my opinion, you know, you've got these pictures of people who are killing it, crushing it, whatever, you don't see the struggles that they're going through necessarily. And if you were just gonna sell the farm and try to do what they do, that experiment is probably not gonna end well for you. It's a lot of like little micro adjustments that you make

along the way that are ultimately gonna help you get to the point where it's your version of that thing. And I just think that considering the internal feedback as well when you're doing these experiments, it's kind of a unique thing in this space and it's very much needed. in this space and it's very much needed. I guess it all boils down to the question, what are you really optimizing for? Yeah. And are you optimizing for happiness, aliveness, living a life that feels full and exciting,

that feels like an adventure? Or are you optimizing for a more tailor-ist view where you're just trying to win, to be productive, to produce as much as possible? And again, I think most people, if they ask themselves this question, the answer would be pretty clear for most people. We do want to feel alive. We want life to feel like an adventure. We want to deeply connect with other people. We want to be creative. But it's very easy to go about our lives and forget that

that's what we want because there's this giant leaderboard we talked about. Social media has definitely amplified this. And we can get so busy trying to get things done that we don't give ourselves the space to wonder why do we even want to get these things done? I think it's so important that you have some introspective process if you want to stay on that goal of intentionality and happiness. I think it's if you just leave yourself to the winds of the world it's gonna you're gonna get caught up in it and and you just got to figure out what that what

that means for you. It doesn't have to be a giant leaderboard either I mean we're running out of time here but you've got a whole section of your book which is really about like social flow and things like that. You know, you don't have to compare yourself to others and success really doesn't have to be a zero sum game. If you can surround yourself with other curious folks who are running their own tiny experiments, you can actually achieve more when you approach that together. Yeah. And not only achieve more, but have more fun while doing it.

Yeah. I'm, I'm really a big advocate for sharing that playground for experimentation with other people. And this is really what I talk about when I talk about social flow. Again, there's research around it that shows that we can be more effective and we can be more creative when we work together and collaborate with other people. And that's actually a positive aspect of the internet. It's made it a lot easier to do that with people from all around the world. It's made it easier to find your fellow nerds that are interested in this very same weird niche topic

that nobody living like even like 10 blocks around you, you wouldn't find one person who cares about this thing. But if you go online, you'll find dozens of people who care about that exact same thing as you and who might want to explore and experiment and create together. So this is an aspect of the internet I'm actually very grateful for. You're in London, I'm in California, Mike's in Wisconsin. There's no way we would be together without the internet.

Yes. And Laura, when I heard you were writing a book, I knew it was gonna be so much more than just a productivity book, and it completely delivers Gang, you want to check out Tiny Experiments, two thumbs up from the Focus podcast, I would say. And Mike's only up two thumbs. Yeah, it's just so good. And please check it out. And Laura, where should people go if they want to learn more about what you're up to? You can go to nestlabs.com if you want to subscribe to the newsletter and you can go to tinyexperiments.org

to order your copy of the book. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focused. Thanks to our sponsors, Squarespace and Cleft. For those of you that are deep focus subscribers, getting the ad-free extended version of the show, stick around, we're gonna talk to Ann-Laure about architects, gardeners, and librarians.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're gonna have a fun conversation. Either way, we'll find you here again on the Focus Podcast in a couple weeks. Have a great day.