book notes: tiny experiments
Tiny Experiments: How to live freely in a goals-obsessed world
Pact: "I will [action] for [duration]".
Intro
Approach life as a giant playground ['open world game']. Dedicated 'to the wise teachers who always lead me back to curiosity'. PACTâpact, act, react, impact. Toolkit p.242 and online. Anne-Laure Le Cunff seems blessed: raised in Paris, mom from a city attracting spiritual leaders, dad from a medievalist city, she "spent my teenage years [...] maintaining a hand-coded blog whose design changed every few weeks, translating obscure Japanese songs into French, and managing an online community for young fiction writers." She worked at Google (but only up to 27), did a failed startup, then neurosci PhD while starting Ness Labs. Think 'Hero's Journey': "Just like in the myths, life is made of cycles of being lost and finding ourselves again." After her failed startup, she "paid attention to the conversations that energized" her, did courses and workshops, and was generally "living my own Choose Your Own Adventure novel." She asked herself what experiment she could run in her own life and settled on 100 articles in 100 days. "I resisted the urge to clarify my end goal and solely focused on showing up [...] Slowly, a path emerged." Btw, the 'ness' in Ness Labs is for the suffix -ness such as in awareness, mindfulness, etc. "[T]hese tools will enrich your life with systematic curiosityâa conscious commitment to inhabit the space between what you know and what you don't, not with fear and anxiety but with interest and openness. [...] In this new model, your goals will be discovered, pursued, and adaptedânot in a vacuum, but in conversation with the larger world. You will ask big questions and design tiny experiments to find the answers [...] when you lean into your curiosity, uncertainty can be a state of expanded possibility, a space for metamorphosis."
PACT
1
my thought is 'so what?/that's good' to "many purported goals [...] may be merely justifications to keep themselves busy." mentioned: mimetic desire/Girard. ooh: "Fear of failure causes us to endlessly stop and start, resulting in an uneven path where we keep going back to our comfort zone before trying to progress again."âso relatable, especially with social goals đĽ "liminal spaceâan in-between territory where the old rules governing our choices no longer apply. Life is full of these moments, and the degree to which we learn to reap their lessons is the degree to which we grow and improve our lives. But our brain is uncomfortable in the in-betweens." Imagine a 2x2 of low/high ambition/curiosityâclockwise, it's experimental mindset, perfectionist mindset, cynic mindset, escapist mindset. / thru-out this book, the toolkit will help guide you in three mental shifts: 1. from response 1 (automatic) to response 2 (autonomous); 2. from fixed ladders to growth loops; 3. from outcome to process. on 2 "When we shift to a 'loop' mental model, the journey follows iterative cycles of experimentation, with each loop building on the last. Our task becomes to widen each loop by nurturing our creativity and leaning into promising tangents instead of dismissing them as distractions. on 3 "Our direction emerges organically as we systematically examine what captures our attention instead of fixating on an artificial scorecard."
2
"The search for purpose [...] merely replaces one kind of conformity with another." On 'the shackles of cognitive scripts, some John W Gardner wrote "As we mature we progressively narrow the scope and variety of our lives. Of all the interests we might pursue, we settle on a few. Of all the people with whom we might associate, we select a small number. We become caught in a web of fixed relationships. We develop set ways of doing things." psych has 'Cognitive Script Theory'. Examples: the sequel scriptâwhen we follow our past, aka continuation bias aka path dependence aka self-consistency fallacy 'I have always acted in a certain way therefore I must keep doing it'. Or...! the "epic script", when we "follow our passion"âjust another obsession with "purpose", and with stories rife with survivorship biasâ"By making you dream too big, the Epic script can keep you from performing small but meaningful experiments that could open unexpected doors. It may also lead you to opt for needlessly risky experiments when a smaller, safer version of the same experiment would have yielded sufficient data." Three questions to help you avoid scripts like these 1. Are you following your past or discovering your path?; 2. Are you following the crowd or discovering your tribe?; 3. Are you following your passion or discovering your curiosity? / Build an 'anthropology of your life' by taking 'field notes' some days. "Don't try to capture everything. Use your curiosity as a compass." Did you have a thought after reading something? Did you have a feeling after a conversation? Capture insights, energy levels and mood, 'encounters' broadly. Maybe add photos. Let categories emerge organically (eg 'things that give me joy' or 'things I want more of'), eg "Maybe every time you read about a specific topic, you wish you knew more about it." Look for "invisible gaps" tooâ"do you feel anything is missing? Do you feel a yearning toward something different?" Then reflect and go from observation to question to hypothesis.
3
A pact is "I will [action] for [duration]"âit's so simple. It's "a simple and repeatable activity that will inevitably bring you closer to achieving your authentic ambitions, regardless of" the result; it is "the fundamental building block of personal experimentation, a self-invitation to try something new and learn from the experience." A pact is purposeful, actionable, continuous, trackable (not nec. measurable); focuses on outputs not outcomeâ"you just need to show up". Example: "you cannot decide if you would like to live in a city by spending one afternoon there"âgood point! "A good experiment requires multiple trials to confirm that the results are not just due to chance." Keep your commitment realisticâa ten-day pact is a good starting point, or maybe one-month if you've done it before, or three-month to amplify an existing pattern. She gives an example of a one-year pact, and it makes me wonderâcan I make a general, useful one for finding a wife?âor just increasing my chances and suitability? What a pact is not a habitâit's a specific number of trials, and "can be useful before you decide on a new habit; not a performance metric; not a New Year's resolution; not a resource-intensive project. "In essence, a pact is a mini protocol for a personal experiment." Huh, a good example pact was five hours per weekend improving one's cooking skills. Ooh, types of curiosityâburning, feverish, and cold, calculatingâ"Your pact should sit in the in-between: warm curiosity".
ACT
4
"During the same decades that Your Life in Weeks was circulating, and often in the same circles, the obsession with personal productivity skyrocketed. Having combined time scarcity with an efficiency mindset, many [...] developed an anxious urge to pack as much as possible into each box". mentioned: Burkeman. Butâ"Let's be honest: Nobody really wants to live a productive life. We want to express ourselves, connect with others, and explore the world. Productivity is just a means to those ends". Contrast chronosâemphasis on time's fungibilityâwith kairosâemphasis on each moment's potential uniqueness. "Kairos moments [...] are what I call magic windows: those periods of creative flow that often occur when we are immersed in activities that capture our full attention, when we spend time with loved ones, or when we are engaged in self-reflection. If you've ever felt like an instant was suspended in time, as if your sphere of consciousness was immune to the world's chaos", that's itâ"when you feel like this moment, right now, is perfect". "It's a simple idea, that making the most of our time isn't about doing more but about being more: more present, more engaged, and more attuned to the quality of our experiences." So, focus on your energy â"heed and honor your body's signals". Learn to identify your best times for things, your 'magic windows'. Then, decide what belongs thereâlean into "the ebb and flow of your cognitive capacity, prompting you to evaluate constantly: [...] what is the most sensible task to undertake right now?" You also need to manage your emotionsâoften just moving your body, even stretching for a minuteâand so the full triple is: energy, executive function, emotions. Or: when's my magic window, what belongs in it, and how can I keep this window open? Ooh, and what's the best time for you for 'strategic work' (like weekly review)? Designing A Kairos Ritual: anything to ground yourselves, to quickly shift your mood, reconnect to your body, or give you a chance to check in with yourself, eg: making a cup of tea, listening to a favorite playlist, checking your intentions for the workday, walking in a slow circle, meditating or doing yoga.
5
Procrastinating can feel like a puzzle, especially when it's a voluntary activity; but "nstead of helping you solve the puzzle, the internet is teeming with resources to beat procrastination." [tangent, good quote: "Such a good morning's writing I'd planned, and wasted the cream of my brain on the telephone"âVirginia Woolf, 1920.] The Triple Check: head-heart-hand, is the task appropriate, exciting, doable. (Head check means, are you skeptical of the potential benefits of doing the task. For a heart/emotional issue, if you've gotta do it, try pairing with smth nice.) The "harmonious state aligned aliveness" is having all three: "Not only is it easy to get started, but it is also much easier to keep going." A Door to Discovery: "In addition to diagnosing why you are procrastinatingâhead, heart, or handâyou can take a moment to consider what you often find yourself doing when putting things off. Are you reading about a particular topic" etc.
6
Intentional imperfection "is accepting your limitations: you cannot expect to simultaneously excel at every target". "I once saw a parent post the following observation on Twitter [I bet it's tpot, but couldn't easily find the tweet]: "It's wild to see the baby struggling with challenges like 'you have to take your hand out of your mouth if you want to use your hand for other things' and realize many adults still struggle with slightly more sophisticated versions of the same problems." Huh, she had a year-pact to work on this book five hours per weekâbecause it's more flexible than hour a day. Adjust three ambition dials: 1 Identify perfectionist patternsâwrite down all your current commitments and 'what success would look like for each'; 2 Challenge your unrealistic targets; 3 Choose progress over perfection. For 1, into 2/3, the point is to check whether your commitments are already too much.
REACT
7
Creating Growth Loops: making progress requires trial and error. "The trial part of the loop involves taking action with limited information; it requires a willingness to step into the unknown and explore possibilities. The error part involves observing the results and making adjustments based on that data. If you don't do both, you don't grow." You need metacognitionâ"curiosity directed at your inner worldâyour thoughts, your emotions, your beliefs". And for that, you need "quiet natural pauses" (such as long walks) to subconsciously mull and to introspect. A Simple Metacognitive Tool: "Plus Minus Next is a versatile starter kit" that "binds action with reflection" and can take just a few minutes per week. (Tangent: "Dennettâone of my favorite philosophersâwrote that we should strive to make good mistakes. Good mistakes prompt us to reflect and refine our approach, which increases our momentum. They are the ones we learn from and that make us grow.")
8
"Picture this: You did it." The pact is complete. "If everything has been going well, you may be dreaming about all the ways you will build on your accomplishment." Beware, though: "culturally inflected ambition spurs us to raise the stakes, even if that's not what we really want." Decide: persist, pause, pivot. When assessing, consider both external signals (headâhow does it fit with current circumstances) and internal signals (heartâmotivation, emotions/feeling about it). On lowering commitments, a key feature of pacts: she once thought she was terrible at meditation, then tried for 15 minutes a day for 15 days and now meditates daily. "A pact isn't a destination. It's a path you walk to discover more about yourself and the world. Success and failure are fluid constructs, not fixed labels. If you simply keep going as is, it means you found an ideal grooveâamazing! If you decide to stop, it means this direction didn't feel goodânow you know! The only failure is to confuse mindless movement with mindful momentum. As long as you keep on adapting, learning, and growing, you are winning."
9
Acceptance of what you can't change is good, but only "active", not "resigned"âmeaning you look for a way to redirect your energy into more constructive actions. The Two-Step Reset: first process the subjective experienceâWhat am I feeling right now? for five minutes, written or voice-recorderâthen manage the objective consequencesâ"we have more agency than we think and can make smart decisions around when to pull the many levers at our disposal". As a Michael Singer put it: "I could see that the practice of surrender was actually done in two, very distinct steps: first, you let go of the personal reactions of like and dislike that form inside your mind and heart; and second, with the resultant sense of clarity, you simply look to see what is being asked of you by the situation unfolding in front of you." "Alan Watts once said of life, "It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played."
IMPACT
10
She talks a lot about 'scenes', like tpot (not by name), or Interintellect. "When you surround yourself with people who encourage you to experiment and grow, you will unlock new communities of practice and creative territories you couldn't have discovered on your own. Instead of being the result of solitary thinking, your ideas become woven into a narrative that people want to be a part of." The flow state is often social btw: "When you experience social flow, the energy of the group invigorates your own thinking and the shared focus sharpens your concentration. The group's flow pulls you deeper into your process. Beyond the increased focus, gatherings produce a profound sense of fulfillment. Social flow enhances not only the end result but the experience of getting there." An interesting comment đ¤ (should I move to a group house??) on the most rewarding relationshipsâ"Instead of feeling like building relationships is the 'dirty work' of otherwise exciting experiments [...] you will find that the relationships worth prioritizing won't distract you from your work at all. They'll improve your work", support it, inspire it. "Tapping into collective curiosity almost becomes an unfair advantage"âmmt of tpot. You can do this at three levels: you're plugging in, "apprentice"; ready to contribute, "artisan"; or ready to make your own, "architect". On the first: "Choose to invest in fewer relationships through deeper conversations, share your authentic self, ask thoughtful questions, and listen closely to understand the perspectives of others." On the second: "The key is to figure out how your own curiosity might serve others."âseems to overlap with first, but emphasis on helpful outputs. On the third (creating a new space), "Make it cozy" (and other tips). Earlier, she talked about the Ness Labs community and how a woman traveling felt comfy staying with her because "there was a lot of trust".
11
Learning In Public: pacts in public, ideally in communities that can help you. Benefits: early feedback, build network, clarify thinking, more-informed work. Ooh, todo!â"I made a pact to film myself every day for ten days and to share it online. There were no rules or restrictions regarding the topic or format. My first video, where I made my public pledge, was very uncomfortable. My voice was shaky and I kept nervously squeezing my fingers. But people left encouraging comments and tips, and then the second one was easier. One day, at the airport just before boarding my flight, I even managed to record a video in a public place for the first time in my life." Anyway: "Find opportunities to document and share that align with work you would be doing anyway [...] Rather than choosing between visibility and productivity, you can boost both simultaneously." One day "you will know learning in public is worth it when you experience your first beautiful moment of connection that came from something you shared."
12
Think generativity, not legacy. Keys for generative adventures: 1 Do the work firstâand increase luck by "choosing environments ripe with opportunity and connecting with a network of people who share your commitment"; 2 Grow lateral roots, namely broaden; 3 Prioritize impact over image, which I didn't quite get but I think she just means focus less on a career ladder; 4 Close the loop to open doors, namely share learnings for all your projects/experiments; 5 Play along the way, and frame experiments as 'just for fun' when possible. And remember "unpredictability is not a bug but a feature of a generative approach to life. By embracing the unknown and staying open to serendipity, you create space for unexpected opportunities to emergeâopportunities to learn, grow, and create value in ways you may not have initially imagined."
Conclusion
Some distilled principles: forget the finish line, "instead of chasing the next milestone, embrace the liminal"; unlearn your scripts, "consider unobvious paths"; turn doubts into experiments, w/ pacts; let go of the chronometer, focus on the unique quality of each moment make friends with procrastination, namely learn to use it as a meaningful signal; embrace imperfection; design growth loops; broaden the decision frame, namely persist pause or pivot and don't necessarily scale up; dance with disruption, ie relax and listen; seek fellow explorers, find "social flow by being an active participant in communities"; learn in public; let go of your legacy. And above all remember: "Success is the lifelong experiment of discovering what makes you feel most alive."
Experimentalist Toolkit
Also at /toolkit here, as noted at top of notes. You can start with the most interesting question right now, that roughly corresponds to a letter in 'PARI', and choose one of the tools there:
- Where can I start? Pact: commit to curiosity
- Think on the 'three mental shifts' which constitute an experimentalist mindset: from system 1 to system 2, from fixed ladders to growth loops, from outcome to process
- Take field notes for a day, to find curiosity and maybe help challenge c cognitive scripts
- Make a pact! ie a small experiment
- How can I maintain momentum? Act: practice mindful productivity
- Create a Kairos ritual to more often enter magic windows
- Do a Triple Check when procrastinatingâhead heart hand
- Embrace imperfection, partly by assessing your current commitments
- What can I do next? React: collaborate with uncertainty
- Use Plus Minus Next as the building block for metacognition
- When a pact concludes, use persist/pause/pivot, including internal signals (feelings)
- Dance with disruption by first processing the subjective experience, then assessing
- Who can I keep growing with? Impact: grow with the world?
- Find a curiosity circle to unlock social flow
- Learn in public
- Do generative work, by doing the work, growing lateral skills, increasing luck, closing loops
Bonus chapter (pdf): the Art of Mind Gardening
"During idle moments, Iâd scroll and scroll, passively consuming mindless content. An hour later, I couldnât tell you what Iâd read." So she made a change (2020). Much like gardens, our minds require consistent attention and, most importantly, intention. This realization was the birth of âmind gardeningââa proactive approach to cultivating our mental landscape. [...] Mind gardening is the process of building your own creative playground [...] Once youâve invested in a mind garden and made it your own, zombie-like scrolling fades away as you begin to actively sow seeds of curiosity. This process goes beyond mere consumption; itâs an act of creation. [...] Instead of letting them rot as if in a dumping ground, you will regularly revisit those notes and proactively seek connections between ideas to generate new ones." And so on.