A scientist’s guide to career and life pivots with Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff and "Tiny Experiments". How to move forward and build success when you don’t know the goal and don't have a plan.

What if there's never gonna be a perfect plan and total clarity?  

On today's episode Dr. Anne-Laure Le Cunff, the author of "Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World", shares how tiny experiments can transform our approach to life, work, and meaningful change without rigid goals or predetermined paths. Her experimental mindset offers a powerful alternative to traditional planning - designing low-risk experiments to uncover your path one step at a time.  

We will touch on:  

From shiny to misaligned. Anne-Laure shares how a great job and smart teammates still left her internally “off”, impacting health and relationships - so she stepped off the ladder.  

The risky jump (and reframe). A first startup “because that’s what you do” created avoidable financial stress. The second transition flipped the script: keep some income for safety and treat the next step as an experiment, not a bet-the-farm goal.  

A scientist’s lens on identity change. Before you “optimize,” observe: practice 24 hours of self-anthropology (field notes without judgement) to notice energy, curiosity, and friction points.  

Tiny Experiments in one line: “I will [action] for [duration].” Short, low-risk trials beat vague, year-long resolutions.  

Bring the team. Run a shared “lab cycle” (30 days). Success = new knowledge, not a binary win/lose.  

Mindful productivity > hustle. You’re not a calendar robot; protect moments and engineer creative windows with simple rituals (music, stretch, tea, micro-walks).  

Procrastination is a signal, not a sin. Use Head/Heart/Hand to diagnose: misaligned rationale, low emotional pull, or missing skills/tools/support - then fix the right thing.  

Generativity vs. Legacy. Aim to make a small, present-day impact you can see now; legacy may emerge as a by-product.  

... and so much more!  

Ready to design your first tiny experiment?  

Catch the full Change Wired episode with Anne-Laure Le Cunff and explore practical tools for mindful productivity, career transitions, and thriving in a goal-obsessed world.   

Links & resources mentioned  

• Anne-Laure’s bio & personal site: https://anne-laure.net  
• Ness Labs (newsletter & articles): https://nesslabs.com/newsletter  
• Book: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World
  Amazon 
  Target 
  Audible.com  
• Starter read on Mindful Productivity: “Mindful productivity: a sustainable way to work and think”   

Transcript

Introduction to Experimental Mindset

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey guys, hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina. I'm your host, your coach, your partner in change and just a fellow curious soul. Today I'm very thrilled to sit down with Dr Anlur Likhanov. Anlur started her work life at Google they say one of the best places to work at. And then Anlor did something very few people do. She stepped off the high status ladder. She trained as a neuroscientist at King's College London and built Nest Labs, a weekly newsletter serving more than 100,000 curious minds, and she then released a book that I believe is the foundational, essential reading for anyone who is struggling a bit living in this age of fast-paced change, trying to plan it, figure out the perfect scenario for their life and work. You know guys, maybe, just maybe, in this unfolding, evolving, fast-paced, changed future, there is no good plan. And Anne-Laure LeCunf wrote a book Tiny Experiments how to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. Her book might be the recipe you need to navigate this ever-evolving world.

Speaker 1 1:29

Our conversation is for you if you are in transition personally or leading people through one. We unpack on Laura's experimental mindset, which is about, instead of betting your career or your life on a single big goal or plan, you design tiny, low-risk experiments to figure it out, to uncover the path, one step at a time. You'll hear about Unlore's simple protocol for how to design those tiny, low-risk experiments and how to use this formula at work and in life to succeed, one step at a time. We'll talk about mindful productivity, which is about, rather than worshiping, the calendar and time blocks. Unlore shows how to manage your energy, your brain's function, your emotions instead, and why protecting moments that matter matters more than managing your time blocks. If you ever wondered also why you keep procrastinating, unlure has a recipe to deal with that as well. Had hard hand triple check-in turns I'm lazy into a solvable diagnostic that leads to action For Leaders and Lore shares a team-ready format for tiny experiments which lead to big goals Running 30-day lab cycle, for example, kicking it off together. Each person picks one experiment and then you debrief at the end of the month. Details are in the podcast.

Speaker 1 3:10

Success isn't a finish line. Success in this new, evolving era is discovering knowledge one step at a time and then applying testing and figuring out what works better as the future emerges. My favorite idea and reframe testing and figuring out what works better as the future emerges. My favorite idea and reframe guys was it was in the book and then I discussed it on the podcast, which Anur found also very interesting this idea, generativity and if you're not sure what generativity is, or generative drive as they call it in psychology, please look it up with your favorite AI agent.

Speaker 1 3:48

So generativity versus legacy is all about making a difference right now, with the resources you have for the people that are around you, versus working on some lofty goal in the future that, by the way, might never happen and might mean nothing to anyone but you and might not even make you that happy once you arrive. Or building some legacy so people can remember you for generations after. Like seriously, in this time where everything changes so fast, you really think that's realistic. But anyhow, generativity versus legacy If you're interested in this discussion, it's going to be in the podcast as well. By the end of this episode you'll have a 24-hour self-anthropology exercise to notice what actually fuels you, what has the chance to work for you. You're going to have a blueprint for designing your first tiny experiment to try this week to figure out your personal professional path forward and a way to turn uncertainty into a safe, curious learning loop.

Speaker 1 4:58

All right, grab your notebook. Your favorite drink of choice Mine is skinny hot chocolate. If you want recipe, reach out and, without further ado, dive in our curious conversation with Anlor Lecanv. Read your biography. I'm like, oh, you started at Google and then Neuroscience and then becoming a bestselling author and you have your own entrepreneurial venture, nest Labs. A best-selling author and you have your own entrepreneurial venture, nest Labs. So yes, first welcome to the show and then please do tell our listeners how did it all happen and how did you end up having such a fascinating journey?

Speaker 2 5:37

Thanks so much for having me. I started my career at Google, first in London and then in San Francisco, and I really loved my job there. I worked really, really hard. I had an amazing team, very smart people working on cool products, until at some point I realized that, although from an external standpoint it all looked great, from an internal standpoint I was not feeling that excited about this journey and it was starting to have negative consequences in terms of my sense of priorities for my health and my relationship. So I left my job at Google and I'm not necessarily going to walk you through the entire story of my life, but at some point I decided to go back to university to retrain as a neuroscientist in my late 20s, and I am currently writing a newsletter called Nest Labs which I send to about 120,000 people every week, and I'm a researcher at King's College London where I do neuroscience.

Speaker 1 6:39

Yes, and recently you also wrote a book. That is quite a success and I'm such a fan, such again a one might say, a print them path, like. I guess it depends on how you look at it, but can you tell us maybe a little bit about those transitions, because a lot of people I also know from my experiences talking to people, clients, a lot of people are going through a lot of transitions and they're not sure you know if they should jump, they should quit the transition because of this exact fact. Right, it doesn't look logical and it doesn't look like they know what they're doing and they definitely doesn't feel like that. So how do people take the courage? Maybe tell more about your story and if you have any framework now that you can look back for people to maybe take a few first steps to jumpstart this transition.

Speaker 2 7:38

I'll give you two examples. So when I left my job at Google, I didn't have any good framework to do this, and so I just quit my job. I quit my job and I said I'm going to do the next logical thing that you're supposed to do when you're in Silicon Valley, which is start a startup. And I started a startup, for all of the wrong reasons, just because that's what you were supposed to, and so I found a co-founder. I worked really hard, we had an amazing mission and ultimately I realized that that wasn't again what I wanted to do, and I put myself also in a situation of financial risk by just quitting my job, not having a salary, and saying let me just raise money for this startup. So that's the way traditionally we're told to do these things. Society tells us that if you're passionate enough about an idea, you should just quit your job and go and do it, and I think this is very toxic and very dangerous, and for people like me who didn't know any better and who thought that way on your way to do things, you can actually put yourself in a very dangerous situation. So later on, when I went through another transition and I asked myself okay, I'm completely lost. I don't know what I want to do next, now that I'm not on this very traditional career ladder of being my next promotion at Google or building a startup. What do I want to do? What am I curious about? And so, for me, it was the brain.

Transitioning Without a Roadmap

Speaker 2 9:08

I had always been curious about why we think the way we think, why we feel the way we feel, and so when I went back to university to study neuroscience, I did it in a completely different way. So first, I continued working on the side, freelancing and consulting, so money would not be a strain and a source of pressure. And second, I really approached this new transition as an experiment. So, instead of having a very linear goal of being successful in the traditional sense of the term, like I did with my startup, I just said you know what? Let me just explore, let me find out. Is that something I like? Is that something I would see myself doing for the next few years? And if the answer is no, that's okay. That's not failure. That's just me figuring out more about myself and more about what I want my career to look like. So, completely different approach, a framework that is really based on an experimental mindset, where you're just trying to figure it out.

Speaker 1 10:16

Yes, thank you for sharing this. You know this, I guess, context of not knowing and also the tool that, yes, we don't actually that often know what we are doing before we're doing it before we walked away, right. And then the second part of it is allow or create some environment where you're not pressured to find the run-through, like try it away, but you can experiment right In your case and in the case of most people, like have some financial foundation through maybe not ideal work or not something fancy, but something that allows you to pay the bills and then go and explore and find your you know passion or whatever you call it, while you're not worried about you know your bills and trying to speed it up to figure it all out. I feel like that is such an important piece of figuring things out right. It's just giving yourself this like I don't know safer, I guess playground or sandbox to experiment.

Speaker 2 11:23

Yeah, absolutely, and unfortunately that's not something we do. We haven't been taught to really approach those transitions in this way. It doesn't help also that our brains are very uncomfortable in uncertainty, and so whenever we find ourselves in those liminal spaces so that word that really means spaces of transition in between when we find ourselves in those liminal spaces we just want to get out of there as quickly as possible. You know we leave the table all of those amazing opportunities for growth and self-discovery. If only we allowed ourselves to sit with the uncertainty for a little bit longer.

Speaker 1 12:21

Yes, and, as you mentioned, to have this opportunity and allow our brain to sit in that uncertainty a little bit, maybe more comfortable, we need to at least not worry about you know our bills in every single day, whether we're going to be, I don't know, evicted from our apartments or not being able to take care of our family. And, speaking, you know that we are not taught, we're not given frameworks to approach our journey in any other way. I feel like your book is a great I don't know example or great toolkit to start having this framework or having different approaches, tools and methods to develop this different framework to approach our journey not as a goal achievement strategy, but more of an experimental way and trying our things out before we commit to anything. Do you know that your book has a subtitle? Well, the title is Tiny Experiments, but the subtitle is how to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World, which for me, actually, after reading this book, for me it's more about how to find your way when you don't know where you're going.

Speaker 1 13:25

Yes, and I feel like your book gives such a vast and different or very toolkit to again approach life journey without having to have a goal until you figure it out. Maybe you'll never figure it out, but instead like leaning into each day or each week or new thing that you're experimenting with exactly as experiment, not having to have all the answers right away, and I'd like you to maybe jump in here and talk about what I like the new word I guess I learned, generativity. It's like almost to the end to the book, but I feel like for me that's where it all came full circle, because generativity you you compare it to living a life for legacy, right, so could you define this term and talk to this difference that you defined in your book, like what it is to live life for legacy and what it is to live life for more, or in this mode of generativity?

Speaker 2 14:33

The difference between legacy and generativity is about the difference in between the kind of impact that you want to have.

Speaker 2 14:43

So with legacy, traditionally speaking, when we think about the legacy that we want to leave behind, we focus on the impact that we will have long-term after we're gone, after we're dead, and how we will be remembered.

Speaker 2 14:58

And this really stems from this fear that people will forget that we ever were here in the first place, and so, to kind of mitigate that fear, we try to do as much as possible to be remembered and have a beautiful eulogy when we pass away.

Speaker 2 15:16

In contrast, generativity is focused on the impact that you can have right now on the world that you inhabit in the present moment, with the fellow human beings that are on this planet with you right now, and it is really about trying to make a change, however small it is, on the people around you, something you can see right now, something you can tweak right now, something you can adapt right now, and so having this generative effect around you.

Speaker 2 15:48

What's really interesting is that you can actually end up having a legacy when you focus on generativity. That can happen, but that is not your main focus, it's not your base, trying to say hey, please don't forget me when I'm gone, right? It is based on the sense of almost generosity wanting to connect with other people, wanting to having an impact right now. If that ends up creating a legacy, that's great, but it shouldn't matter to you because, again, you'll be dead when that happens, so you won't be able to know whether it does or it doesn't. What really is important is the generativity in the present moment, while you're still here on this planet.

Speaker 1 16:28

Yes, it's such an important distinction and I must admit that I think, even till this point, predominantly I've been living for the legacy and I can't say that it's been the happiest part of my life. Yeah, I just have a feeling, Because what very often would happen is, when you're living for the legacy, you forget about now and in the now. That's when you experience life right. It's when you make memories, when you can impact other people, when you, when you can actually make a difference right Versus like the legacy, that is never guaranteed. Yeah, you might end up making it, but maybe not. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 17:09

I really like how you put it. Your legacy is never guaranteed, but if you focus on generativity and you keep on experimenting, you keep on iterating on your approach, you are going to see the difference that you're making.

Legacy vs. Generativity

Speaker 1 17:22

Yes, Can I also ask your opinion about? Well, you see, in the entrepreneurial especially arena, people talking about this mission and goal, like I don't know well, from Elon Musk to a lot of other people like you, it might look like this is the only way to make a meaningful difference, right? And somebody who says like, oh, you know, I had this vision when I was 13 years old and now I'm building that. But then, from my perspective, like, well, that's one person that we know of, right, and then there is, like the rest of us, who make the world go around, so to speak. What's your take on that? Is there other two approaches, or maybe different approaches for different people or different stages in life? How do you look at it?

Speaker 2 18:15

Linear goals can actually work really well if you already have a very clear vision of what you want to achieve and where it is a matter of just working really hard to get there. And there are very few things in life like this. They do exist, but there are very few things like that in life. And so if there's something that you just want to achieve, I have a friend, for example, who he did how is it called? It's called the Enduroman. He basically I think it was running from London to the Channel Sea and then swimming across the Channel Sea and then biking from there to Paris. I you know, that kind of linear goal basically was first, him saying I'm going to do that and second, training, really, really, really hard to get there and there was a training plan. He just had to do it and his coach was just telling him this is what you do. You wake up every morning and for three months this is what your day is going to look like.

Speaker 2 19:22

So that's great for that kind of linear goal where there is a very binary definition of success. Either you do manage to get to Paris from London or you don't, right, but most things in life are not like that. There's no binary definition of success, there's no crossing a finish line, and we artificially create those finish lines in the way we think about success, when in reality, in life, success should be more about learning something new, the discovery process. If you do something and by the end of conducting this experiment you've generated new knowledge, that should be considered success.

Speaker 2 19:59

Second, in most cases in life, you actually don't really know exactly what you want or where you're going. You just have a general sense of direction, and this is what makes life fun and exciting and feel like an adventure. So I would say that it's not that linear goals are bad. It's just that we take this very specific mode of being and mode of doing and we try to apply it to everything in life. And I do think that in most situations in life and in most areas of your life where you want to grow and you don't know exactly what that looks like, it's better to go through cycles of experimentation rather than saying this is my goal, this is the finish line and this is where I want to go.

Speaker 1 20:45

Yeah, goal, this is the finish line and this is where I want to go. Yeah, yeah, like it sounds like such a common sense thing to say, but in yet our maybe, like the whole world is not built for that like. What I mean is, for example, in the workplace, right, most of the time, like, well, what it is you want to do, where do you see yourself in five years, right, what position do you want to do? Where do you see yourself in five years? What position do you want to apply for and how are you going to contribute that value in the next three, five years or 10 years?

Speaker 1 21:16

And very often people just invent stuff because they feel like they have to say something and then, after they might get it, they have to sort of leave that for the next few years, right, and very often feeling unhappy and burning out because now they have to, like, fulfill that, because they have expectations on them. But, that being said, you know, going back to more experimental way of approaching things, what are some of the practices that you found work for you and for all the people that you worked with, interacted with? What are some of the practices that can help people to start approaching their life in this way?

Speaker 2 21:58

So I know when people hear about developing an experimental mindset and running tiny experiments, they might get excited and they just want to start and design their first tiny experiment straight away. But I always tell them hold on for a second, because any good experiment always always starts with observation. This is how scientists design experiments. They just don't go and write random protocols right. They have a phase of observation where they just try to understand what is the current situation so they can design an interesting experiment around a hypothesis that actually makes sense. So this is what I recommend doing for anyone who's interested in experimenting and designing their first tiny experiment is to spend 24 hours just observing your own life, observing your own work. And I call this exercise self-anthropology, because it's really about pretending that you are an anthropologist, but with your own life and work as your topic of study. And the reason why I chose the anthropologist as a metaphor here is that the way an anthropologist works, the anthropologist as a metaphor here is that the way an anthropologist works, they go in the field, they bring their field notes and they just observe and they capture what they see. But there is no judgment, there is no problem solving at this stage. They're really just observing, so that for 24 hours and you can do that in the notes on your phone, you can do that anywhere that makes sense for you.

Speaker 2 23:29

And it's really about capturing little observations Like, oh, I really enjoyed that meeting. Or funny how anytime I talk to this colleague I feel really energized. Or, oh, anytime someone mentions this topic, I get curious and I want to learn more. Or the opposite right. Like, oh, I was stuck in that meeting and I just wanted to leave and I just wanted to go and hide in a corner. All of these are interesting observations and I guarantee that if you spend 24 hours doing this, this self-anthropology exercise, you will start noticing things that you've been doing in a kind of automatic way, on autopilot, where you've been just going through the motions. And this is where you can start planting the seed of an experiment, saying, okay, that's how I've been doing things, could I do them a little bit differently? Or, oh, I'm curious about this, could I experiment around that? And this is the first step to designing a tiny experiment. Observation first, capturing field notes.

Speaker 1 24:34

Yes, it makes so much sense right Before you can experiment. What are you going to experiment with? And instead of setting a goal, maybe like okay, let me see what I love doing. It reminds me also of when I study in my daily blog. I'm like what do I enjoy doing? Well, writing, and I really miss when I didn't have it. Maybe I should just make it a practice and see where that goes.

Speaker 2 24:57

Exactly Observation first and then the second practice is the tiny experiment itself. And for that as well, I have a very simple approach. So, going back to how scientists design experiments because that's what tiny experiment is inspired from. A scientist, when writing a protocol, only needs two things the first one is what they're going to test and the second one is the trial period, and that's it. So it's the same with a tiny experiment you need to know what you're going to test, the action and for how long, the duration, Action and duration. And so a tiny experiment follows this very simple format.

Speaker 2 25:40

I will action for duration, and the book is called Tiny Experiments. Tiny because I highly recommend that the first time you do an experiment, you keep it tiny, keep it short. Don't go for a one-year experiment when you've never tried that thing before. So pick something, pick an action and do it for a specific duration, and you can do that for any area of your life or work. So you could say I will not bring my phone in my bedroom in the evening for five days. I will block the first hour in morning to journal and read and not check my emails. For five days. I will close my laptop by 6 pm every day for two weeks. I will action for duration and it works for literally anything you're curious about, anything you want to experiment with.

Speaker 1 26:38

You know, what I wanted to ask you here is again back to the workplace, because I also spend quite some time there like working with people. How can maybe leaders take this approach and apply it to their teams, like workplace, maybe entire organization, so people could also experiment with different stuff before figuring out where it is they want to go in the company, right, and so the leader has more chance to put people in places where they sort of come alive more easier and more engaged?

Speaker 2 27:13

Yeah, this reminds me of what we had at Google with the 20% projects, where people could use 20% of their time to experiment with something they were interested in, and people might know that that's how Gmail was born. It was born out of one of those 20% projects and so, in a very similar way, a leader can encourage their teams to run tiny experiments and you can actually do that together. So a way in doing it when working with organizations which is very simple and everybody loves it, is basically having a kickoff meeting and it's just like a lab meeting. Everybody comes together and you use the tools in the book to come up with your tiny experiment. Everybody comes up with their own action that makes sense for them, but the entire team has the same duration. So this is how it comes together. So then everybody on the team says, okay, I will, here's my action. You know I will. Maybe it will be an experiment in social media, in creative projects, or even the way you do outreach for sales. It can be literally anything you want to experiment with. I will.

Speaker 2 28:18

My action for this duration, and usually I tend to tell people that one month is good for a tiny experiment as a team, so you have time to really try it and then, just like in the lab, you have a debrief meeting and everybody comes and says I finished my experience, the duration is over and here's what I learned. The really important part here, as a leader, is to make it very clear to your team that there is no binary definition of success and failure. Here. You're not trying to achieve something, you're just trying to learn something new. So success is being able to join that debrief meeting and say, hey, I did that and this is what I learned. And if what you learned is, hey, everybody don't do this, it doesn't work, it's awful, that is also very useful information for the rest of the team. So as long as you have new knowledge to share with the team at the end of the experiment, that is success.

The Science of Self-Observation

Speaker 1 29:21

Yeah, I feel also that that is such a useful framework for a lot of leaders, especially now when so many things are uncertain and evolving rapidly right and leaders are afraid to commit to things. So don't commit right Like, run a bunch of experiments, like in whatever way and format it works, and that's how you'll get a lot more data than just committing to one thing and running for a year and then it doesn't work out because you know it's not based on anything or something evolved too fast. So, yeah, I feel like that is also so applicable not just to personal lives, where again also things are happening so fast, but also for organizations and leaders and innovation. And uh, yeah, it's such a useful framework. Uh, just wanted to emphasize that it's that can be useful not just in personal life, but also in the workplace and innovation of any kind.

Speaker 1 30:17

You also, you know, started talking about not having to have a definition for success as a key idea, and I believe that is also so important on a personal level to approach this as an experiment with no success or failure criteria, but as exploration, and then having the practice of reflection right and noting or capturing somehow your lessons so you have something to work with at the end of experiments. You know close to that idea. I think what I would like you to talk more about is mindful productivity, which you have, it seems like, the whole community about and which is something you're really passionate about. So can you explain to people what is the difference between mindful productivity Because I feel like it's very related and productivity as it's usually defined and maybe if it aligns there like talk about the different times, kinds of times and also procrastination. I love your idea of procrastination is not something negative but more something to learn from.

Speaker 2 31:34

So the traditional definition of productivity is usually based on managing your time, and so you have your calendar, you have your to-do list and you're trying to be as efficient as possible. You have your to-do list and you're trying to be as efficient as possible. Mindful productivity considers that time is a resource sure, but it's not the most important resource. The most important resources that you have at your disposal are your energy, your executive function and managing your emotions. If you're able to manage those three kinds of resources effectively, this is what is going to make you feel more productive, be more productive, more performant, without sacrificing your mental health. And you asked me about the two different definitions of time, as well as procrastination. So I'm just going to start with the two definitions of time. In the book, I explain that the ancient Greeks actually had two words for time. One of them, chronos, is the one that gave us chronometer and a bunch of other words. This is where our society kind of defines their relationship to time around. It's a quantitative perspective of time where it's the time of minutes, of hours, of weeks, of years, and again, it's this idea that each block of time in your calendar is something you should be using effectively as possible in order to not waste any time. The other word they had, keros, is a qualitative definition of time. Kairos is a qualitative definition of time. It's the time of watching a beautiful sunset with a friend, or reading a bedtime story to your child, or losing yourself in a very deep conversation with a friend. And it really acknowledges the fact that time is elastic. It's not a series of identically sized boxes. It can expand, it can also feel very short, it can go very quick. And so mindful productivity, instead of managing time in a very rigid way, see it as something that you can. That's very malleable. And again, if you manage mindfully your energy, your executive function and your emotions, you're going to make the most of your time, not in a quantitative way, but in a quantitative way with a lot of depth to your experience, which, ultimately, is what you want out of life.

Speaker 2 34:01

And the last part of your question was around procrastination. So Also linked to this idea of mindful productivity is our relationship to procrastination. Again, traditionally what we've been taught is that if you're procrastinating, you're being lazy. You should use your willpower, you should push through and get the thing done. But procrastination is just a signal from your brain. It's your brain trying to tell you that something is not quite right. Signal from your brain. It's your brain trying to tell you that something is not quite right and so, instead of trying to push through and suffer in the process, you can look at it a little more like a scientist. You can get curious about it and you can say, hey, why am I procrastinating? What is my procrastination trying to tell me? In the book I have a very simple tool that I call the triple check that allows you to have this little conversation with your procrastination and essentially asking whether the problem is coming from a rational side of things, from an emotional side of things, or from a practical side of things.

Speaker 1 35:09

Yeah, so many things because I asked such a multifaceted question and that triple check. I actually really love this idea about that because, again, so many people struggle with procrastination to the point that they think that you know they're lazy or insufficient in some way. And I love this triple check because it allows you to just break down this feeling or not being able to do what you said to yourself you should be doing right. So it breaks it down and it allows to explore this different part of what we call procrastination and then allows you to uncover what's the reason and what's the best way to deal with that. Can you explain what's this triple check model for working with your procrastination?

Speaker 2 35:55

So essentially, what you want to ask is whether your procrastination is coming from the head, from the heart or from the hand.

Speaker 2 36:02

So if it's coming from the head, it means that at a rational level, you're not fully convinced you should be working on this task in the first place. That means that maybe that task has become outdated, or someone asked you to do it, but you don't think it makes sense based on the overall aims of the company. It's not aligned with your values. There might be a bunch of different reasons why this task just doesn't make sense, and you might not be conscious of that fact, but you still know that deep down and that's why you're procrastinating. If the problem is coming from the heart, it means that at an emotional level, you don't feel like this is going to be fun. This doesn't feel very exciting to do, and so there's resistance and you procrastinate. If the problem is coming from the hand, it means that at a practical level, you don't believe that you have the right skills or the right tools or the right support network in order to complete the task, and so you procrastinate. And the great thing about having this systematic approach to exploring why you're procrastinating is that then you can also be systematic in the way you figure out a solution to get unstuck and move forward. So if the problem is coming from the head, so you can go back to the drawing board, go back to the strategy, you can tell your team hey, I've been procrastinating on this thing for the past week and it's because I don't think this is the right approach. Can we maybe brainstorm together a better approach? Or maybe you figure out that you're not the right person to do it so you can delegate, or maybe just give it to AI to do, because you don't feel like you're the right person to do it and you want to free up that time to do something more creative. So that's if the problem is coming from the head.

Mindful Productivity and Procrastination

Speaker 2 37:48

If the problem is coming from the head, if the problem is coming from the heart, then make it fun, make it more enjoyable, and that might mean grabbing your favorite colleague, do a little co-working session, or going to your favorite coffee shop to do that thing. And if the problem is coming from the hand, then raise that hand, ask for help. So that could be coaching, that could be mentoring, that could be taking an online course, that could be just again grabbing a colleague and say, hey, it's my first time trying this thing. I know you've done this a thousand times. Do you mind walking me through it? And that's it. Ask for help. And so, as you can see, when you start getting curious about your own resistance, it removes the self-blame. It also removes that kind of need we put on ourselves, that pressure we put on ourselves to just push through and suffer and instead we get curious and we learn more about ourselves in the process.

Speaker 1 38:47

I feel like once you understand the reason, as you said, you can work with that so much more productively and even sometimes, like a lot of people might say well, you know, I'm in my workplace. I can't really choose what or how I do things Sometimes, I just have to do them. Well, I would also say if you know the reason, at least then you can rationalize it to yourself. This is the situation, right, let's make it more enjoyable, I don't know. Put on some music and get through this stuff, because there is no you know way of avoiding it, and then we'll have to go through it anyhow, but at least we we know, like, why it is that we are procrastinating, not because we are bad people or something wrong with us, but because of of this other reason. So I felt like that was such also a powerful idea to explore your procrastination versus just trying to somehow fix it blindly. And I think the next, you know stop that I'd like to go is are there? Oh, that's the actually interesting part.

Speaker 1 39:50

You mentioned you, you know this energy management, managing your executive function and your emotions. Could you speak more to that? Because I feel like when we're trying to manage our time, we so often forget that how we manage those three things actually define, like what kind of quality we have in that time right, and many people just focus on the time or what to put on their calendar without thinking about like I'm in a good state for that or do I have enough energy to even enjoy that right. Could you speak more like how did you learn about that, maybe how you apply it in your life and what it is? How can people use it.

Speaker 2 40:32

I think, yeah, we've all experienced that. Right, you did such a good job, time blocking, and the time block is the moment of actually doing that work and you don't have any energy or you don't feel excited at all about working on this particular task. And so what's the use of blocking your time if you're not actually then able to use that time to do the thing you wanted to do? So that's why I think it's really important to get to know how your energy works, how your executive functions, how your emotions work, and so a little tool that I recommend using in the book is what I call a Kairos ritual, and it's a very simple way to reconnect with yourself, to open those magic windows of creative flow where your energy is going to be aligned with your executive function and with emotions, and those are very different for everyone, so you can experiment with figuring out what that is.

Speaker 2 41:26

For some people, it's just taking the time to make a really nice cup of tea before you start your work. For other people, it's a little stretch For me if I feel like I'm sitting in front of my computer trying to start something and it's just hard to get in there. I'm not talking about full-blown, week-long procrastination. Here. I'm just talking about this little resistance. I will have a playlist for this. I will put on some music, I will get up and I will dance for a couple of minutes in my living room, get my blood flow going, and then I'll get back to the task. And so it can be literally anything.

Speaker 2 42:02

You can try different things, but really knowing that being productive is not just about blocking time, sitting down and getting the thing done.

Speaker 2 42:10

We're not robots.

Speaker 2 42:11

It doesn't work like that and, in addition, so that was more at a micro level, but at a macro level, just taking notes, paying attention to what works and what doesn't for you.

Speaker 2 42:24

If you keep on using your ritual and you notice that every time you try to sit down to do something at the beginning of the afternoon and it's just so hard to get started every single time, and so your Kairos ritual is more of a band-aid that you put on the problem and not really fixing the underlying issue, then it might be worth experimenting with the way you organize your tasks, again based on that energy, executive function and emotion, so you might move that kind of tasks a bit earlier in the morning. Or if you're one of the people who have this sudden new surge of energy in the evening, and you can do that and you have free time at that moment. Maybe you want to move those tasks here. So keep on experimenting, keep on paying attention, know that something that worked for you for three years might stop working all of a sudden because you keep on changing, your body changes, your brain changes, your circumstances change and so, just like a scientist, keep on observing, keep on iterating, keep on running experiments and really listen to yourself.

Speaker 1 43:32

Yeah. So I love how, in the book again, you bring all these different ideas from neurobiology and how our brain operates at different times of the day and your energy cycles, but then also the more systematic approach to experiments and figuring things out. And then also, you know, the whole book is about how to, I guess, work with others to amplify all of those things you know, be better at experimenting and learning and shipping your work. We can't, you know, talk about the whole book, like it will take probably the whole day to break it all down. But could you maybe talk to this part of the book, to the social part, because I believe it's such a huge part of the book and we're such social creatures but we often don't talk about how you talked in the book and using it in a more strategic way to A figure things out and do you get better at learning and create amazing work. Could you speak to that?

Speaker 2 44:35

in whichever way works, yes, this temptation, when we want to be productive, to say I'm just going to do it on my own, this is going to be faster.

Speaker 2 44:44

But there's lots of research showing that, in the long run, we are actually more productive, more creative, if we collaborate with others, if we tap in that collective intelligence and that collective curiosity, and so I have a section of the book that is dedicated to those ideas.

Speaker 2 45:01

In particular, I talk about a research concept that I think is fascinating and that hasn't had as much kind of visibility, and other concepts. So most people, I think at this stage, know about flow states, getting in the flow, like when you're in the zone right, but most of the research that's been conducted and talked about is about individual flow states, when you get in the flow on your own. There is, however, research about social flow, so showing how, when you are surrounded with people who are also highly focused on a task for exploring, pushing themselves and trying to grow, this is going to have an impact on your own flow states as well, and so the encouragement really is to surround yourself with fellow experimentalists, fellow explorers, fellow adventurers, the kind of people who also like experimenting, taking those small risks, learning new things and then sharing them with others. As a leader as well, it is an encouragement to support your team in having this psychological safety where it is okay to experiment together, really creating that space for team experimentation.

Speaker 1 46:16

Yes, you know the flow, states and experimentations, like having more ideas together that we would have individually.

Collective Intelligence and Social Flow

Speaker 1 46:24

It's such a powerful idea and I also think you know that you talk about that in the book that group genius, so to speak, can be used for accountability where we individually, so to speak, fail to do something right. We do so much more with others and for others when we are seen than we do by ourselves. And then also this idea that you also talk about in the book about collective genius how by just being exposed to other people, having conversations and learning together to working together, your work becomes so much richer. And you mention in the book how scientists make discoveries together and how they build on each other's knowledge and solved problems together. Can you maybe share a few stories from your life Somehow I didn't ask so much about your journey, but I feel like people can relate to that so much more when you used also collective intelligence or genius for your work or to get things done, to work on your business and other ideas. Could you tell a little bit about how you use it in your personal life?

Speaker 2 47:37

My entire work is based on learning in public. I'm very transparent with everything I do and I have benefited so much from the collective intelligence of the Nest Labs community. So the newsletter itself is a very transparent process. I post about things that I'm thinking about writing about. I get feedback. I encourage people to respond to the newsletter and let me know what they think. I incorporate some of the ideas.

Speaker 2 48:05

My book itself, tiny Experiments, was a very collaborative process, so I had polls in my newsletter where people voted on the title. I also shared the book covers. We had 21 options for the cover that I shared with the Nestlabs community and where everybody provided their ideas and feedback. I did workshops while writing the book so I could actually test the ideas in real time instead of writing it on my own.

Speaker 2 48:34

And the reason why I'm sharing this example is because writing a book is quintessentially the kind of like the ultimate kind of creative project where you would expect an author to do it on their own. You know we have this. We have romanticized this idea of the writer in a cabin in the woods just writing on their own. But even for something that is considered the result of individual creativity, like a book you can actually tap into collective intelligence and curiosity by learning in public and really harnessing the those ideas, this creativity and all of those different perspectives to craft a better book yeah, plus, if you ask people, there's bigger chance than people would read what you write because it resonates with them more.

Speaker 1 49:25

Right, and I think we just don't talk so much about that. But one book I remember, the Martian right. It was first a blog and I think everyone was voting on different chapters or something else, and then it got into this very popular movie and then many authors actually these days switch to this model of first writing a blog and then sending it to a selected group of readers and then asking their opinions and then testing all the book covers and the titles etc. With people and then it becomes success Whereas, like so many people think it just yes, like you said, a writer sit in a cabin and just came up like from the universe with all this stuff, wrote it and then shipped it and it was a success, which I feel is so damaging to just then people trying to actually do something on their own and not always succeeding, and they think that they're just not capable of that.

Speaker 1 50:24

Yeah, absolutely the the to. You know, be conscious of your time and respectful to your time. I know, again, you have a lot of projects to get to. I'd like to wrap it up and maybe ask you, as a conclusion, to share some ideas, or an idea that I haven't asked you about but you feel like is so important and listeners on this podcast should definitely know about from this conversation I think I'll just leave the listeners with a little question to think about.

Speaker 2 51:00

So, based on our entire conversation, everything we discussed today, what would be your first tiny experiment?

Speaker 1 51:09

such a great question. Yeah, like what may be part of your I don't know interest or curiosity, right, as you said. Like might be your part of your field notes, like what you get curious about. Just lean into that and maybe design an experiment. Yeah, such a great question. And the last question where would you like listeners to go to? What work they need to check out? Maybe your Nest Labs or book or something else? What would you like listeners to? Where would you like listeners to go to and check out?

Speaker 2 51:41

You can go to nestlabscom if you want to subscribe to my newsletter. I send it every single week and I discuss a lot of the topics that we explored today together. My book Tiny Experiments is available anywhere books are sold, and I'm also on social media, mostly these days on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Speaker 1 51:58

Yeah, and I love to thank all of your social media. I love the book I highly recommend it and the newsletters amazing resources and again, I feel like that is such a needed resource in our time today, when literally very few people know where it's all going right and we are all going to be going through so many more transitions and changes without the knowledge like where are we going to end up and not having the goal and destination. So I highly encourage our listeners to go check out the book, the Nest Labs newsletter and your social media and, yes, start a tiny experiment and see where it leads. So thank you so much, anlur, for being such an amazing podcast guest and sharing all of your experiments and wisdom that came out of it. Thanks for having me.