Anne-Laure Le Cunff - The story of a Philomath who never stops creating!

Hello. Hello. Thanks for tuning into the Undefeated Underdogs, episode 4. I'm your host, Sharath, and today I have like a very special guest. She's a very good friend of mine, Anne-Laure. I think, Anne-Laure, you're the first person I met in real life. from the Twitterverse. So kind of like, you know, it's so personal to me bringing you on the episode on the podcast. Welcome, Anlar. How are you? How are things at your end?

I'm good, thank you. Yeah, I remember that was a few years ago. It's so good to see you again, even if it's not in person this time.

I know, right? Yeah, I think you came to Chicago and it was like a very— it was like very intimate, like, you know, conversation we had about kindness, productivity, and whatnot, which I want to dive into deeper into the conversation. But let me introduce Anne Lauer to folks who don't know her. Anne Lauer is a writer, creator. She's a founder, serial maker. Oh my God, she's a polymath. She has a lot of titles we can add. And she's also like a PhD researcher in neuroeducation, which I'm fascinated about. I don't know how you manage all things, but— and she founded this thing called Nest Labs, a studio where it provides content, coaching courses, and community to help makers put their minds at work. And I'm a big fan of her newsletter called Maker Mind, which she runs around like, what, 30K subscribers? And she provides these insightful articles she writes on productivity, on mental health, on how to manage things, how to keep up with things, and how to be more creative. So I'm a big fan of her work, just in general. And she's one of the first very few folks who supported me when I started my maker journey, like 3, 4 years back. And Laura, thanks for taking time. Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs podcast.

Thank you. It's great to be here. And I could say the same of you. You've been doing so many things. So I felt like this is going to be a good chat.

Yes, of course. Yeah, I do have— I definitely have some topics to cover, like maker mindset, your writing framework and what are the habits you're recently following and whatnot. So right off the bat, I want to dive deeper into the evolution of Nest Labs. I know it started like a side project for you years before, and now it's this beast. It has much more content. It has an amazing community of makers. And Talk me through the evolution of how you went from a simple idea, which I'm sure you created for yourself, to what it is right now.

A beast, a very small beast then, because it's still tiny, but it's definitely nothing that I expected to create when I got started at the beginning. As you said, it was a side project. I'm a big fan of experimenting, learning in public, kind of seeing everything as a little experiment, something that you can learn from. And the beginning of Nest Labs was no different to that. I had just started my studies again. I went back to school, to university to study neuroscience. Right. And I discovered something called the generation effect. which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it's basically, um, a principle that's been discovered and that shows that by creating your own version of something, you're going to both understand it and remember it better. Right. And that means that instead of just taking kind of like dumb notes about something that you're hearing, just recreating your own version of it is going to make you connect with it a lot better. So that's how I started my newsletter. Right. By starting writing regularly about what I was learning at school. And the newsletter format was really good for me because it created accountability. It meant that I committed to send it once a week, every Thursday in my case. So yeah, that's how it started. It was a very simple newsletter created by a neuroscience student. And it's grown a lot since then. I have 50,000 subscribers at the moment. And then I started this private community. Thank you.

Nice. Congrats.

Thank you so much. I started this private community that has about 2,000 people now because I wanted to also have a space where people could talk together between each other and not just having just me broadcasting information to them. So yes, that's how Nice Lab started.

And that's very interesting, right? Like, I keep hearing the same philosophy again and again and again, which is you have to build things from your curiosity and people will kind of guide you to like experiment a lot of new things which you never imagined before. That's what really happened with Nest Labs as well. Like, I'm sure you never thought of like starting a private community when you started like this very tiny newsletter. And so one follow-up question to that, like, what made you and who inspired you to like, you know, create your own thing? The reason I'm asking is I want to dive deeper into your mind of maker. And you've had like tons of like, you know, products shipped by yourself. Like there is, I don't know, Make and Shine. There is this amazing Chrome extension, Teeny Breaks, which I really love. I still have it. And so many others. Like recently you did something called Switchboard. So is there an inspiration for you? Like where do you look up to, like when it comes to like building products and building, you know, things like Nest Labs?

I think one of my biggest inspiration has been just the maker community in general. I remember a few years ago I discovered IndieHackers. And I was reading all of these amazing stories from solo founders who built those products just on their own. They only had their own curiosity, their passion, and their persistence. And that's it. And the stories, what I loved about the stories on IndieHackers is that it wasn't those glossy stories that you see in magazines. It was very transparent. Most of these founders, they probably had launched 10 failed side projects before they found the product that would be a success. And the reason why it ended up working out for them is because they kept on trying, they kept on experimenting, they kept on learning. And this whole learning cycle, this growth loop that they were maintaining over time was really the fuel that allowed them to succeed at some point. So that was a big inspiration for me. And I joined a few maker communities. So I was active on IndieHackers. I joined another one called MakerLog. I was very active on Product Hunt as well, where lots of people were shipping products. I wonder if that's not how we connected actually, or something adjacent to Product Hunt at the time, probably.

No, I think it's Product Hunt. I remember you were like shipping products back to back. And I'm like, at that time I was a lurker on Twitter and on Product Hunt. And I feel like you're one of the first few makers I followed like every day. Like, you know, what is she making? What is she like? What's her next move? And you kind of inspired me a lot and you were very scrappy. Yeah. And that also like kind of contagious for other makers. And you were like, let's ship it, let's ship, let's do things in public. So, I mean, like, there are so many lessons I learned from you personally about building things like launching on Product Hunt. And more importantly, I feel the core element that we both got connected is kindness, you know, which is— Which I want to like talk In this conversation, a lot many people undervalue it because they think it's complacency or whatever it is. It's not about that. It's about really being authentic to yourself and expressing, being kind to other people. And that's my philosophy of my entire life. And you displayed that socially on Twitter. and giving a shout out to like other folks. And I remember like, you know, we had like so many conversations around that. So to that question, to that topic, what's your philosophy behind being kind? You know, and is it like something you grew up from your mom? You talk a lot about your mom on Twitter. Is it something like you've— you took from her, or is it something that, you know, you've discovered on your own?

I don't know if that comes from my mom. My mom had, I don't know if it's necessarily kindness that she displayed to me when I grew up, but it was definitely generosity. She's a very generous person, whether it's with her time, with her energy, She's, you know, she loves helping people. She loves solving problems together. Uh, you know, one of the— it is still one of the ways I connect with her is just calling her and telling her I'm facing this problem. And I know sometimes I could solve it on my own, but it makes her so happy when I call her and I'm like, hey, what do you think about that? Right. Um, so I think this, this generosity, this willingness to help people is a part of it. But then when it comes to kindness itself, in a very selfish way, it just feels good. I always feel good after I've helped someone with something.

Right.

Um, I feel like it's one of these things where if you're feeling completely lost, if you don't know what to do next, if you don't know what your priorities should be, just find someone around you that needs help with something and Be kind to them, and it may not solve your current problems. It may not clarify where you should go next, but at least you'll go to bed that day feeling good.

I can't, you know, agree more with you because I feel one of the things I personally experience the same is kindness breeds confidence in a way. Because like you said, if you have nothing to do, you are like completely lost. You have like no clue what your next step is, the least that you can do is helping other person genuinely, authentically. And that dopamine hit instantly comes in, which will like— I don't know about a lot neuroscience, which you're expert in, but I feel there's something that happens in the mind that triggers, that compounds this confidence over time. And that's what I've experienced many times. And I do Even till today, I do the same. Like, you know, just genuinely appreciate other folks who are trying, who are like coming forward and doing the good things, right? Like, we have to— like, you have to cultivate that mindset. And I really appreciate you doing a lot many times for me and helped me. It's kind of like not just one way itself. It's kind of like you're selfish because you feel good. The other thing is you're you make other people feel good too. So it's kind of like a win-win situation. Love that. Love that. Let's talk about your productivity because you're one of the very few folks who kind of like rallied up on the topic productivity before anybody did. And you've wrote articles about it. You wrote like frameworks. What's your current productivity stack look like? And what's your current mindset? Did you discover any new habits or anything that makes you more productive and creative?

I specifically write about what I call mindful productivity, because when I discovered the whole productivity field at the time, I just, I was shocked at most of the content that I was reading, a lot of it was become a productivity ninja or kind of like wake up at 5 AM, meditate for an hour, go for a run and journal for another hour before the kids are up. And

it's just—

Right. Nothing, none of that felt realistic. I also think that part of it was even toxic in some way, because if you read that kind of advice and you could not apply it to yourself, What would be your reaction? You would not blame the framework. You would think that you're not good enough. That's why you can't do it, creating this kind of vicious cycle of self-blame, which, as you can imagine, is absolutely not conducive to productivity. So I tried to figure out what's a different way to do it. And I didn't want to fall into the other camp. So there are also some people who say, you don't even need to be productive. Productivity is not something to try and seek. But I do think productivity is helpful because to me, being productive is also a lot— it's what allows me to do good work while still having time to do a bunch of other things on the side and to spend time with the people I love. So I do think personally, feeling productive is a good thing. So I try to figure out what's a way to be productive while taking care of your mental health. And this is really what mindful productivity is about. And it's really about cultivating this self-awareness of how you feel, of your thoughts while you're working, being Right. Being fully present in the moment, managing your time in a way that's human and not like if you were a robot where you're filling every single minute of your time, uh, trying to be hyper-focused, because that doesn't really work this way. And acknowledging the fact that you have limited amounts of energy every day. So you should probably not be trying to do too much. You should just try and optimize the way you're using those few hours of real productive work. that you can actually do. Right. So I don't have any rigid framework for it. And I'm not a big fan of those frameworks in any case, because I don't think they work. But what I tell people is to try and build their own little toolbox of things that are helpful for them. In my toolbox, for example, I have journaling, which is a massive pillar of my productivity and my mental health. This is where kind of like every day I debug how I feel, what I want to focus on, when I try to analyze any kind of patterns that are not serving me anymore and what I want to change. And then I have a weekly review that I call plus minus next, where in the first column I write everything that went well that week, second column, everything that didn't go well, and last column, what I want to focus on next. Nice. And these are mainly my main pillars with a little bit of time blocking. But as you can see, it's very, very simple, very flexible. And it's definitely not something where you would need to take like, um, uh, I don't know, like a 6-week course to understand because it's, uh, yeah, it's fairly simple.

I think like, I really love the, what you said, which is the mindful being very mindful and balancing mental health while you get the best out of yourself. I think a lot many people miss the balance and they only do either side of things. Either they are completely mindful, they don't get productive, or they're very productive and they just, like you said, they get lost in that hustle porn or just do a lot many things. And you've touched— I really like the journaling bit because I do the same. I do gratitude journaling, basically the plus, minus, next type of a thing. And you've also touched an interesting point, which is it's kind of like a self-evolution type of a thing when you're— and it's not like you can inspire from other people's playbooks and people's frameworks, but you have to build your own toolkit. I like that framework of being productive and maintaining mental health at the same time. I want to dive into the more tangible, more career-focused, which is your writing. You're an amazing writer. I've kind of like many times read many of your articles and you write very authentically, very very much like you're talking to a friend. So is there a process behind it? And what's your current mind frame— framework looks like when you write? Is it like more ideation first and then, you know, writing into deeper paragraphs? What's your writing framework?

When it comes to generating ideas, I do it all the time, literally all the time. I have a note on my phone and I will write ideas Several times a day, whether it's after listening to a podcast, after having a conversation with a friend, after reading a book. Um, there's something I still haven't done, but I, I'm, I discovered recently and I'm a bit jealous of, and I think it's Ali Abdaal. He has a waterproof notepad in his, uh, bathroom. So when he's in the shower. Yeah.

Right.

And he has shower thoughts. Like the literal definition of shower thoughts. He can write them down even if he's in the shower. And when I heard this, I can't remember, I think it was on the podcast I heard this. I was like, this is brilliant because that's the one time during the day where if I have an idea, there's a risk that it's going to be gone by the time I want to write it down. Right. But I, I try to be as proactive as possible. And I do know that if I don't write it down straight away, it's going to be gone. So this is something you'll see me do sometimes. I'll be talking to you and I'll just Uh, you'll say something and I'll, I'll interrupt you and I'll be like, oh, just one second. I'll take my phone out and write it down. Like, I need to write this down and then we can keep on talking about whatever we're talking about. So I write ideas all the time, which means that whenever I'm ready to write and I do block time in my calendar every morning, first thing, I write for an hour. Mm-hmm. I can just pull from that list and I just look at whatever feels most inspiring at that time. And because the list is very long, there's always going to be something. Right. And I usually write most of my articles in one sitting. So I do the research and I write the article and I publish it in one sitting. And so it's an interesting process because most of the articles I write about, I actually don't know anything about the topic before I write the article. And the article is the product of my learning. This is I learned through writing the article. And I love that process. It's very proactive. It's the generation effect again at play. It's literally just that that I'm doing. And I publish it and then I usually post it on Twitter. I get feedback. And this is part of why I love learning in public. I usually have lots of people telling me, oh, you know, I don't really agree with this bit or that part was unclear. Right. And because it's online, it's very easy. I can just go back and edit it afterwards. So most of my articles are then edited over the course of the next few weeks after they've been published. So that's my process.

Love that. Love that. Yeah, I really, I think it's so amazing what you said about Ali Abdaal's shower thoughts. You know, it can be its own market for people who write a lot. It can be a product, like a hardware product, you know, for folks who are listening, build it, you know, we both will buy it for sure. I love that. I love the ideation process. And you said you're going to write all the articles in one sitting. Most of them.

Yeah, not all of them, but most of them.

Most of them. So how do you end one article and jump into the other one? Which is, it's really hard to— when you create something, right? And it's really hard to put an end because you just love what you're doing. And sometimes the perfect— you kind of like switch your hats and there is a perfectionist in your persona that comes out and takes forever to complete it. So what's your— cadence looks like when it comes to, hey, I'm going to stop here and I want to like switch gears to something else?

Well, I work on lots of different projects. I have the blog where I write the articles, but I'm also doing a PhD and a few other bits and bobs. So in terms of time, I just have to stop sometimes just because I have other stuff to do. So this is a really good way of stopping. I just know that by a certain time I have to close this document and go and do something else. My goal is to get to a kind of like minimum viable article by the end of that time that I give myself. Love it. And then I rely on feedback from readers to get it to the next level. So as long as I write something that is digestible, that makes sense, and that delivers some value, to me, it's good enough to be published. And then with the feedback of the readers that I get, I usually get it to the next level and then it becomes a really good article. So I don't try, I never try to publish a perfect article the first time around. And I think it would obviously be very different If you were writing a book or something that goes in print. Right. In that case, I would probably put it in a Google document, put it online, get the feedback this way, and do a few rounds of feedback this way before I commit it to the printed page, because you can't then go back. But with a blog or anything online, it's easy to go back, edit, publish a new version. You can. You could even keep some sort of versioning so people can go back to the previous versions. I like that. So it's fine if the first version is not perfect, that's completely okay.

I really like the iteration model you just explained. And that's another benefit of doing things in public. Like you mentioned even before, you're kind of evolving your work and yourself by involving other folks. And with taking that feedback, taking that criticism and adding on top of what you're doing. And I think I still see a lot of people still sleeping on doing things in public. And I feel like maybe after this, after listening to you, they might trigger things to do things in public, especially writing articles and doing blogs. Let's talk about community building. Like you said, you were part of many communities before. You're very active on Product Hunt, and you're actually right now leading a private community. So what tips or what lessons you've learned being a community member and leading a community? What are some differences you're finding, and what are some new things you're doing for your private community that you want to share with

I would say that the most important thing, even though that is going to sound obvious, but the most important thing is the people you invite into your community. And a lot of community builders make the mistake of thinking that the more people you have in the community, the more successful and engaged the community is going to be. Right. But you can have thousands and thousands of community members. And if none of them are active, you're just building a really, really big ghost town. So something I did for the Nest Labs community and for the few Telegram groups that I created and I'm moderating is that I'm curating at the beginning the first members because they are going to be the ones that set the tone of the community moving forwards, whether it's its atmosphere, its values, All of that is not going to be something that you can really create by having documentation and saying, this is how we behave in this community. This is good, obviously, just to avoid abuse and things like this. But for things that are deeper, like the actual kind of vibe of the community, this is not something you can artificially construct. It's really something that emerges from who is invited in the community and who is active in the community. So I would spend a lot of time thinking about who it is exactly that you want to be part of this community. That's the most, most important thing. And then the second important thing is that you need to nurture a community for it to stay active. Mm-hmm. And for that, you need to also figure out what's the kind of format for what is the kind of engagement model that you're going to use. If you really don't have a lot of time, for example, you may decide to create a quick Telegram group and you can post a few messages in it on the go and that's it and that's enough. People can ask quick questions, help each other, and you're going to deliver a lot of value. But then there are so many other ways of engaging your community, whether it's meetups on Zoom or meetups in person. It could be online forums, it could be Discord, Slack, it could be a Circle community. Right. You can pair people together a bit like Lunch Club. You can give people online courses in your community. There's a whole renaissance of learning communities at the moment. So all of these are great, but again, it goes back to who are the people you want to be in your community? Who do you wanna serve? And then try to match this inside of a Venn diagram with how much time and how much energy and how much money are you willing to commit and to invest into this community. If you find the overlap of these 2 things, then I think you can build a very successful community.

I absolutely love what you said about building a ghost town versus building a highly engaged community. That's, I really like the phrase of ghost town. A lot, many people think that quantity is more important than quality when it comes to community, which is like absolutely not true. People should focus on, even if there is a 10-people small group of highly engaged, highly value-first mindset-oriented folks, that's an amazing community. Love that. I feel it's great that you said about engagement model. And it's about self-awareness, like how much time you're dedicating to engage other folks and what are the other mechanisms you want to use. It's a lot about like self-reflection that answers a lot of questions about community building. I love that. Love that. I want to like ask a cliché question and I hope it's not cliché for you because, you know, you've took A lot many decisions in life. And I know personally, like you, and you're being very vocal about it on Twitter as well. Like, let's say, you know, you're leaving Google is one of the things, right? What's one decision you took in the last 5 years that changed the whole trajectory of your career?

I mean, you mentioned leaving Google, but that's probably the biggest one for me. I went from being an employee at a big company with a stable, well-paid job to starting my own business with all of the surprises that come with that, all of the, you know, this massive learning curve.

Right.

But also all of the friends that I made along the way. discovering this kind of little corner of Twitter where there's lots of makers and creators and curious minds. We're all trying to figure it out together.

I

think my life is very, very, very different today from what it would've been like if I had just stayed at Google.

I love that. And what's your advice for folks? And how did you get out of Google? Like what pushed you? that you want to like say, hey, these are the things you need to look when you want to like make a big decision?

I wouldn't do it the way I did it, to be honest, because the reason why I left Google at the time was because I could very clearly see in front of me the path to success I was supposed to take to get to a very specific point. So I knew if I was applying a very specific recipe and following the exact rules that were very public inside of the company. Everyone knew exactly what to do in a certain amount of years. And I could even, you know, guess the number of years I would be in a very specific role. And you could even know what kind of salary I would have, what kind of responsibilities I would have. And it really felt like someone spoiled the movie for me. I lost interest in it because I knew exactly how it was going to end already. Um, so that's the reason why I left and the how I left. I would recommend to do it a bit differently because once I realized that, I just quit. I had that realization and it was like, it was over the Christmas holiday and then I went back to work and I quit basically.

Wow. And it's like a cold, cold thing you did.

Yes. Yeah. I was young and inexperienced. I would recommend to, and I didn't even know the concept of side projects at the time. It's something I discovered after I left Google. But if I had known what a side project was, that's what I would have done. And that's what I would recommend people doing. If you have doubts about your current job, your current career, instead of just cold quitting the way I did. And it ended up turning— it was fine for me in the end.

Right.

But it was a very risky, unnecessarily risky move on my part. I would recommend starting a side project, see if you like it, see what you find interesting, maybe start a second side project, then a third one, and just start playing and experimenting. Launch it on Product Hunt, share your learnings on Twitter, make friends, and see if there's something that sticks. And most makers who ended up leaving their full-time job to then work on one of the side projects and make it their main thing, they'll all tell you that you can feel it. When there's something that you're working on and you feel like that's the thing, it's calling you and you need to spend all of your time on it. Then, then and only then, it may be time to quit your job, but you don't need to make it something really risky and really scary. There are other ways to go about it.

I love that. And I think I kind of lived by that advice. I still am working 9 to 5 right now, but I still have a lot of side projects like this podcast, you know, and that's like the best advice one can give. Don't just cold quit or don't just leave everything what you're doing. Don't jeopardize your mental health there, worrying about how to pay bills and worrying about day-to-day things. Instead of that, I feel like how what you said is really true. Balance time, find time to bring these ideas to life and see how it goes and take it really lightly. And a lot of people, you've been very vocal about this as well. Everybody wants to get their overnight success in their first attempt. Like, boom, I launched something, You know, it should like, it should become the only thing. And it takes like a hell lot of time and you have to be really patient and you have to like a lot of, have a lot of fun with it, right? I love that. I do have a segment called Rapid Fire 5, which is, I just like, I love to ask all the guests 5 questions, like, you know, it's going to bring the fun side of you. Not just fun side, but more importantly, like what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. So I'll start with asking, what's your favorite article you read recently that you want to highlight or give a shout out to?

I just read— I don't have his name. I just read an article that was basically a speech. What's his name? I don't have his name. That was, uh, it's a mathematician who was a student at some point or a colleague of Richard Feynman and, uh, who was explaining that Feynman always had with him a set of 12 favorite problems. And, um, and that every time he heard something, he basically started seeing the world through the filter of these problems. Every time he was hearing something at work, he was comparing that with one of his problems and wondering, ooh, is that helping with this problem? Is that related or not? And I really like that. And so, yeah, I've been this morning before we recorded that podcast, I've been trying to figure out what are my 12 problems.

Oh, wow. That's nice. We'll definitely add that in the, in the show notes. Who are you following on Twitter right now that you really admire? Like any recent Twitter account that you've been like, you know, that you can say they are killing it?

I really like what Visa is doing. Visa can, I think it's Visa can be at Visa can be his Twitter account. But I absolutely love the way he's using Twitter as a little playground for public thinking and experimentation. Every time we chat together on Twitter, it's very interesting and thought-provoking. provoking. And to me, he's a really good example of what good things can happen when you start learning in public.

Nice. Love that. We'll definitely give him a shout out. I think I know Visa. He's a writer too. He did like an amazing, you know, threads, which definitely we're going to include it. A book that's one of your favorites. You're very very into books as well. I saw you summarizing a lot of books. One of the things I really love about Atomic Habits, which you summarized in a great way. What's one book that you recommend for everybody that you meet?

I have so many, but I'll go with a recent one. I read a few months ago a book called How We Learn. by Stanislas Dehaene. And it's, so he's a neuroscientist, but the book is written for absolutely anyone. You don't need to have any kind of neuroscientific background to understand it. And it's talking about learning from childhood to adulthood. It talks about all of the things around neuroplasticity, the best ways to learn, what works, what doesn't, what is actually backed by science and what is bullshit. And it's very, very well written. It's a short read. And if you really want to understand how your brain learns and how to make the most of it without falling prey to any kind of the, you know, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense on the internet. So if you want a really good source that you can trust, this is a good book about learning.

Definitely going to like adding to my wishlist for sure. Thanks for the recommendation. What's a recent bad habit That you replaced with a good habit?

I quit drinking, so I guess that's like a good one. And I would call it like, I don't know if it was a habit, but it was definitely something that I was using way too often to manage my stress. Long day of work, feeling a bit tense, I would go and have a drink, which a lot of people do. And I completely understand because it's so deeply ingrained in our society. Just having a drink and go and associating that with relaxing after work. And I quit drinking earlier this year and I've replaced it with tea and maybe too much coffee sometimes. Uh, but it's not, it's not absolutely perfect, but it's really impacted my mental clarity in a really good way. I can feel like I'm thinking better, I'm feeling better, I'm also sleeping better. So that's been a really good change in terms of lifestyle for me.

Love that. And maybe like a follow-up question there. How did you do that? Like you kind of get these cravings, right? When you kind of replace a bad habit with a good one, how'd you manage? Is that, is there a methodology that you follow or at least you borrow from someone else?

It's not something that people, like anyone would be able to apply straight away. So I don't know how helpful that's going to be, but for me it was after participating in an ayahuasca ceremony that I quit drinking. So I know this is something that is not legal in many countries. Mm-hmm. So I don't think that anyone can just go and, and do that. But, uh, I've heard of lots of people who've managed to do it with a lot of journaling, with therapy, uh, replacing it also with things that are a little bit healthier. Sometimes, unfortunately, it can also require hanging out with different people who don't necessarily associate spending time together with necessarily drinking. I'm absolutely not an expert on this. There's lots of different ways to do it. And I know it can be really hard because we're socially pressured to consume alcohol as a way to spend time together. Sure. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I think, I think probably like the hardest step is probably just deciding that you want to do it in the first place. And then it's the same as with everything. everything. Just experiment, reflect on that, take notes, try to see what works, what doesn't, break the patterns that you don't think are working and, and try something new until you figure out what exactly works for you.

Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I think it's that taking that identity of like, not, I'm not a drinker, or I'm not whatever that bad habit you have, I feel that is really more important. And then followed by, like you said, having accountability partners. And there are many other ways. So last question in the segment, rapid-fire 5. What's one writing tip you want to give for people who are just getting started? By the way, I didn't announce this publicly, but I'm thinking to write again, bring the long-form content in me. I write threads, but so I'm starting a Substack. So what advice you give me and people like me who are just like, you know, building that habit of writing?

I would say write every day and publish every week. That's it. That's literally the only piece of advice I have to give you. Don't miss— it's okay if you miss a day of writing, but don't miss a week of publishing. As long as you do this. And I've had times where for my weekly newsletter, I would wake up in the morning and be like, oh shit, it's Thursday, I have to send something today. But because I committed to it, I wrote every week. And I think for a lot of online writers, the only difference between the ones who succeed and the ones who don't is who is still writing every week a year after they started. Right. It's very few people. Most people quit.

Right.

So just don't quit on yourself. Keep showing up, write every day, publish every week, and you'll see After a year, you look back at your very first articles and you'll cringe because you'll feel like they're very bad. And that's a good thing. It just means that you've become a better writer in the meantime.

Love that. I love that advice. I'm definitely going to take it up on my end to publish once a week, but write like, you know, one of the days in the week. So, and, and Laura, thank you so much for for taking time. This has been amazing. I always love our conversations. And do you want to like close out by calling out or giving a shout out anything that you're working on, where people can find you on Twitter?

Sure. I'm on Twitter, but my handle is way too complicated. So I will let you put it in the show notes if people want to click on it. And if people want to follow my work, the best way to connect with me is to go to newsletter.nestlabs.com. And that's where you can sign up to Make Your Mind, which I send every week with tips on mindful productivity and creativity.

You guys definitely do sign up. I'm one of the subscribers. I love what Anne and Lars have been creating since like, what, 3, 4 years? Thank you, Anne, so much for having this conversation with me. It's You're such a lovely, kindful, thoughtful person, you know, on the internet, in my Twitter circle, and loved, loved, loved this conversation. Thank you for hopping in.

Thanks so much for having me.

Absolutely.