#24 | Giving Up Rigid Goals for Tiny Experiments with Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Okay, I'm a little bit giddy about the conversation we're gonna have today because we're talking about living life as tiny joyful experiments. And I just feel like, like, I know my entire community, everyone feels this pressure right now to have a plan, to figure out like, am I doing the right thing? And I— my guest today, her work has been so elevating and freeing and inspiring, and I cannot wait for you to experience it. So Without further ado, my guest today is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, who is an award-winning neuroscientist and entrepreneur. She is a founder of Nest Labs, where her weekly newsletter, which I've been subscribing to for a long time, is read by more than 100,000 curious minds. She's done a lot of research in psychology and neuroscience on lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. And very excitingly, she has a new book coming out March 1st, and it's called Tiny Experiments. And it's all about how to live a more experimental life, how to turn uncertainty into curiosity. Just saying that makes me feel more relaxed. And how to really discover our path versus find the right path. She's previously worked at Google as an exec on the digital health side. She's written and her work's been featured in Rolling Stone and Financial Times. And most importantly, Anne-Laure, welcome to Reinventability.

That was an amazing introduction. Thank you so much for having me.

No, I'm so excited that you're here. I want to dive in on your personal story, which led you to this work around living life as joyful experiments. And I just want to tell you, I was reading this in your book. Your story really resonated with me. You were at Google, seemingly the perfect job. And if you're just listening, I'm making quotation marks, you know, perfect job on the outside. And then you kind of weren't feeling fulfilled, so you quit. But instead of taking a breath, you start a company. And I just want to tell you how much that resonates with me because I've done that so many times. I've started 4 different startups, and I think each one I started when I felt unfulfilled, but I didn't take a breath. I just started another thing. But then you're right, the company did not work out and it was liberating. So I want you to talk about that and share a little bit of your story because I have to tell you, when I read that, I was like, Ooh, for most people that would not be liberating. That would be scary. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that and how your personal journey evolved.

Yeah, I really think about that first part of my life and my career when, you know, you just mentioned working at Google, that perfect job with the quotation marks. I think about this chapter in my life as a very linear chapter in the sense that I was focused on being successful, a very traditional definition of success. I was working really hard. I was trying to get the promotion. I was trying to make money, I was really trying to, again, succeed from based on a very traditional definition of success. And I thought when I left my job at Google and that I started this company, this business, that finally I was doing my own thing. I was thinking for myself. I was figuring out what I wanted to do, but I hadn't realized at the time that I was actually so uncomfortable with not having a job, not having a role, not having a ready-made identity that instead of sitting with the discomfort, being in that liminal space where I didn't really know what I wanted to do next, I just jumped onto the, the next narrative, the next story, so I could feel like I was doing something. And it's really only just when that startup failed that for the first time in my life, I allowed myself to say, actually, I'm lost. I don't know what to do next. I don't have a plan. I don't know what I want to do. And And that's the liberating feeling that you just mentioned.

You know, and it's so interesting just listening to you. And I can like feel a lot of the listeners because I think this is such a common feeling. The thing that we often resist is the thing we really need to embrace, right? It's very scary to say, I don't know what I want. I don't know what's next. And yet, until we acknowledge that, we're going to kind of in a way keep repeating the same narrative. You know, you wrote something that I jotted down because it was so powerful. You said this question that you started to ask yourself, like, how is your life really? Like, and I just have to tell you, I was like, that is so powerful. So can you talk about that and how kind of embracing the not knowing and asking yourself that question kind of where the journey then led you?

Yeah, you know, when you have a conversation with someone and they tell you, how are you doing? And so what do we do? We just say, yeah, good. And you, right? We just, we don't really listen to the question. We don't actually try to look at the actual data in terms of inner data. How do we actually feel? How is our life? Right? We just say, yeah, good. And then we turn our attention to the other person in front of us. And we're also not really expecting them to give us an honest answer. It would be really strange to us if you said, hey, how are you doing today? And I would start saying, you know what, actually, Actually, I've been feeling quite anxious and this has been quite difficult and I don't think I have processed the grief of losing my cat a few months ago. You would feel like that's too much information. And this is really how society has been designed, right? Where we don't really have that, that space for asking ourselves, how are you doing? How am I doing? And to me, really having this moment in my career where And it was not by choice, right? It was just my startup actually failed. So for the first time, I found myself having the time, having the space to look inside. That was the beginning. That was the seed of a new chapter that was a lot more experimental, that was a lot less linear, and also that made a lot more space for uncertainty, for unknowing.

You know, again, I just want to— like, my heart is jumping out as you're talking because I really can relate to that. I, about a decade ago, after having the fancy jobs and startups and all the McKinsey, Microsoft, like venture capital, like you name it, and as a refugee, like all the things, I completely burnt out. I mean, it was more than that. It was kind of a breakdown of being because I was so disconnected from myself. And I just want to share how much, how deeply that resonates, what you said, because it was so scary to be in that space, but it was the biggest gift that I've ever been given. Because for the first time, like you said, I started to ask myself, well, what do I really want to do? And the answers were scary because the answer was, I don't want to be a tech CEO. And that was the entire identity that I had. Um, but asking those questions brought me to doing what I do today, which is every day wake up giddy that I get to serve people in this way. So I'd love for talk about, you know, you talk about this embracing the uncertainty, right? And this idea of joyful experiments, that's scary. Uncertainty is scary. The human brain hates uncertainty. So can you talk about why? I know, but I'd love for you to share. And also, how do we shift out of that fear of uncertainty and into— I love when you say joyful experiments, because that's like turning the scary into the joy. Yes.

So why do we fear uncertainty? That makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Just think about our brains, which haven't really evolved much. They're pretty much the same that they were thousands of years ago when we were living in the jungle. The higher the uncertainty, the lower the amount of information you had, the less likely you were to survive. So, You wanted to know as much as possible about your environment. Who are the players? What kind of food is available? What kind of risks? What kind of threats? What is that noise in the bushes? You wanted to know as much as possible. And that made sense in an environment where your only objective really was to survive. You just wanted to survive. In today's world, we want a bit more than that, right? You don't want to just survive. You want to actually thrive. You want to grow, you want to learn, you want to evolve. And because of that, you have to bypass this fear of uncertainty. You have to reimagine it, reinvent it, and you have to really make use of those amazing abilities that we have as human beings of observing our own thoughts and own emotions, and then being able to make decisions and say, okay, I see you fear, but I'm not going to necessarily follow you blindly. And, um, this is why I recommend experimentation, this joyful experimentation, as a way to change your mindset, embracing a more experimental mindset. To me, this is a way to reconnect with uncertainty in a more positive way. The problem I find with a lot of advice that tells you to welcome uncertainty is that you read it and people say, yeah, welcome uncertainty, embrace uncertainty, and You're like, cool, sure, what does that even mean? I'm still feeling this anxiety, I'm still worried, what do I do? Am I just supposed to relax my shoulders and everything is going to be fine? That doesn't really work this way. Experimentation is a very practical, forward-driven approach to working with uncertainty. And instead of just staring at this fear and being paralyzed, you can look at the uncertainty and say, what can I learn from this? Is there an interesting research question that I could formulate from this place of not knowing. How can I see the fact that I don't know as an opportunity for growth, for exploration, for discovery? And because of that, you become an agent of exploration and of change. You're not just paralyzed. You can say, let's ask some questions, let's run some experiments, let's collect some data, and let's figure out what we want.

I love that so much. And, um, you know, one of the I've done so many different things in my life and my career, and I think one of the things that has helped me is exactly what you're talking about. I've always just had a bias to action, right? So, instead of trying to figure things out, I just dive in. And often things did not work out, but you learn a lot, right? Like a lot of the companies I've started, they were like, "Oh, I just have this idea. Let's start a company," right? So, maybe I could have framed that experiment a little better. But I think what you're talking about is so powerful because I'm with you, you know, just do it or, you know, ignore the fear. It's not possible because it's our survival instinct. It is the strongest instinct that we have. Because if we're not, you know, like I like to say, our reptilian, the, the original brain, it just wants us not dead. And so just to say, you know, just do it, it still could be dead. So I love the focus, like framing things as I'm going to run an experiment. I'm going to take some action. What can I learn? So in your book, I was jotting down some notes. So you talk about these four 4 principles of joyful experiments. And I'd love for you to talk about them because I think they make this so practical, which I think makes uncertainty a lot less scary when we have kind of a path through it. So if you would talk about the 4 kind of core cornerstones or principles of what's a joyful experiment.

Yeah, I describe first a change of mindset. I talk about the mental shifts in the book. And it's really about going from this linear mindset to this experiential experimental mindset. You're making a change. So, that's one of the, the other one from, if you think about the mental model of how you navigate life and uncertainty, you go from the idea of climbing a ladder, which has very clear steps, and which is again, very linear, and that gives you a blueprint to success, to the mental model of cycles, cycles of experimentation. This has a lot of second-order effects are very positive on your life. Because if you're climbing a ladder, you keep on comparing yourself to each other or to other people who are also climbing their own ladder, right? And you can say, oh, they're higher than I am. Am I being fast enough? Am I doing the right thing? Right? If you get rid of that and instead you're in your own sandbox, you're going through your own cycles of experimentation, you're collecting your own data, asking your own questions. You can't really compare where you're at in the process. To where another person is. You're not even exploring the same things, right? So that's another change from the ladder to the loop and really changing this mental model. The other one is really the, the idea of control, the, this illusion of control, of trying to feel like— so basically you want to have a plan, you have a plan and you have a vision and you're going to be in control every step of the way. That other change that you want to have is letting go of that illusion of control, accepting that you're not in control. And that's actually a good thing because again, not having control means that you don't know what is going to happen. And when you're in control, that means that you might be successful, but only within the very narrow confines of what you are currently able to imagine. So you will be successful just in a way that you yourself today can imagine, that really limits the kind of success that you can have. What you want to have when you let go of control is that in 3, 4, or 5 years, you look back and you feel like, huh, I didn't even think this was possible. That was not even a path I would have been able to imagine, to picture at the time, right? Um, and so that's the last one, like, really like going from this idea of control and to this idea of letting go, but not in the floaty way, in a very generative way where, again, you are your own agent of change.

I love this. You, you've said this term a couple times, the agent of change, and I love that. I think it's so important because, um, one of the things about uncertainty that is scary is the perceived loss of control. But when you're running an experiment, you are in control. You're choosing to take certain actions, and that calms our brain. That makes us feel like, hey, I have control, we're okay. I love the shift of mindset from the ladder to the loop. I think that is incredibly powerful. So I'm also an artist, so the paintings behind me, it's my art. And it's something you could call it, it's an experiment that I started after I burnt out. I think it's a big part of me that I'd been ignoring because it didn't fit into the ladder. And one of the ways I like to think about our life is as a canvas, right? So we get to paint different pieces. So that's why I love this, the loop idea. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit, you know, there's a lot of people, and I used to be one, so I really relate to this, who maybe that's a, it's an exciting mindset shift to try and make, but it's very challenging still to not like have the plan because we get safety from the apparent safety, perceived safety from the plan. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some things that we can do when that fear of like, or it's not just fear, you know, our society like needs us to have a plan. Like, hey, what are you gonna be in 5 years, right? And I think it's very important to have a vision. Like I work with people a lot and I always think it's important to have a vision of the future self you wanna be, but it's fuzzy, it's a vision. So I just wonder if you would talk a little bit about kind of some things we can do when we get to this place of like, well, I wanna do this, I'm into this, but it still kind of feels irresponsible almost to not have a plan.

Yeah. Um, I feel like there are several aspects to it. The first one is that, um, there's an assumption that if you want to experiment, you have to go big. But the reason why I called my book Tiny Experiments is because your experiments can be quite small and they don't have to be in all areas of your life at the same time either. So I know some people, for example, who say, you know what, actually my my job is very secure, very stable. I like the team. I know what I'm doing. And maybe I'm at a stage where it's not that intellectually stimulating anymore because I could do it with my eyes closed. But actually, I don't feel like right now is a season in my life where that's what I want to experiment with. And I'm just going to keep it this way, but I'm going to experiment with maybe my health. I'm going to start experimenting with running. I'm going to, you know, go running several times a week, maybe working my way up to a marathon. I might experiment with, you know, you mentioned your art, for example, I might experiment with that. With my health, I might say, let me experiment with nutrition, my diet, what I cook, hosting more, or those kinds of things, right? And you can do those tiny experiments in those other areas of your life because you feel stable in an area, maybe that you just want to keep the same. So that's the first one. And the other one is that an assumption also that I hear people have sometimes when I talk about living a more experimental life is that I think it conjures the idea of this very floaty, let's see what happens kind of approach when it really isn't that. You still have a plan, but it's a research plan like a scientist. And so your research plan doesn't just formulate a hypothesis. You say, I feel like maybe I would like that kind of work. I feel like maybe I would enjoy creating that kind of art. I feel like maybe I would like to inject a few more opportunities to connect, social events or those kinds of things in my life. I feel like maybe, right? This is a hypothesis. And then you collect that data. So you say, I'm going to conduct the experiment. I am actually going to do the thing. But the big change, the big difference with when you have the classic linear plan is that you're not trying to get to a specific outcome or a specific result or milestone. You're just trying to collect all of the data, you're withholding judgment. And at the end, you can look back and see whether the hypothesis was correct or not. And it's completely fine for you to, let's say you conduct a running experiment where you say, okay, for the next month, I'm going to go and run 3 times a week. And at the end of the month, I'm going to have a look at the data, both the external data. Am I objectively healthier? Maybe my sleep is better and those kinds of things, but also the internal data. Did I like it? Was that enjoyable or not? Very important. And at the end of that month, I can decide, do I want to keep going with that experiment? Do I want to tweak it? Maybe that was a bit too intense. Let's just do twice a week. That's enough, right? Or I hate running. I hate running. That's not my thing. Yeah. And that's completely fine, right? And you know, you tried running. That's not your thing. You have the personal data now about yourself. But what works, what doesn't. And you can say, actually, you know, I do want to have some form of body movement in my life, but that's not going to be running. Let me run another experiment, dancing maybe. I don't know.

I think that's so— that resonates so much, you know, in— so I created this reinventability framework, right, to help people reinvent, because my view on reinvention, it's actually not becoming someone new. It's becoming more of who we are, right? Uncovering all these different parts. And one of the steps, the core step in the framework is once you envision something you might want is I call it act to learn, where you take actions, but the point of the action is gather information. And so the way you're talking about it is really powerful. In other words, we're changing our goal from accomplishing something specific to learning as much as possible. About something. Yes. And that is incredibly— it's actually liberating because I just want to learn. And I just want to tell you, um, so I just— my husband and I just came back from Mexico City, one of our favorite places in the world. We went there for Art Week. They host this International Art Week. And we went to this one artist pavilion where we met this artist, and she saw some of my art on my phone, and she said, oh, you have to exhibit here next year. And my fear was just, I mean, I'm not a professional artist, you know, all the things, uncertainty, fear, right? And I think it's, I'm just sharing this with you and the listeners. Like if I just look at it as an experiment, right? Maybe I wanna exhibit there next year. What actions do I wanna take? Well, I gotta do some research. I gotta start making my art. Maybe halfway through I say, actually, I don't wanna exhibit. I just wanna make more art. Or maybe halfway through I say, actually, this is getting more exciting. I think it just, shifting the goal from this one perfect outcome to learning as much as we can is— that's a— that's really, really powerful. Um, and I also love how— I wonder, I would love for you to talk a little bit about the tiny part. I think that's so important. Um, you know, I work with a lot of like great leaders and entrepreneurs who are in a place in their life where, kind of like you were in Google, maybe they've a little bit later in their career, but like everything is fine-ish, but they're not fulfilled. They're probably doing things on autopilot. And I think this idea of just running some tiny experiments is powerful because not sure if I want to quit this career of 20 years, right? Or it's stability. So would you talk a little bit about kind of how one might think of designing a tiny experiment?

Yes, I'm very glad you're asking this because I talk about in the book, a concept I call it the maximalist brain. And it's our tendency to feel like whatever we do, it has to be big. And it doesn't have to be big, you can start very small. And that's especially the case for ambitious people, the kind of people who might tend to have those kinds of careers. And so they end up not experimenting at all, because they feel like it has to be something really big and really meaningful. So How to design a tiny experiment. I think it's helpful to go back to what an experiment is in the first place, because this entire method that I wrote about in the book is inspired by the scientific method. And if you go back to the most basic definition of the scientific method, it is really about testing something several times to see what happens. And that's really what it is. The several times part is so important. This is why all scientific experiments have repeated trials. And the other important part is to commit to the number of trials before you start the experiment. You don't go in the middle and say, actually, I'm going to stop collecting that data. I don't really like the look of it. In advance, you say, I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to finish collecting the data. And then, then only when I'm done, I'm going to analyze it and make a decision. So it's the same with a tiny experiment. I explain in the book that I call that a pact, and that's really a commitment to curiosity, a commitment to exploration. You make a pact with yourself and you say, I will insert an action for insert a duration. And so that could be, I'm just going to tell you my current pact. I have one at the moment because I've been spending a lot of time in front of my computer and I need to spend more time outside. So my current pact is I will walk for 20 minutes every day for the next 20 days. That's my current pact. And I did miss a day a couple of days ago, and that's completely fine, right? That will be part of what I will look back on and say, oh, actually I missed a day. What happened that day? That's also interesting, right? So that's how you design a tiny experiment. You pick something where you feel like it could help, but again, you're not quite sure. You just feel like it might be helpful. That's your hypothesis. And you say, I'm going to do that thing for that specific duration. And at the end of the tiny experiment, you can decide, do I want to keep going? Actually, walking was great. Do I want to tweak it, walking more, walking less? Or again, just like running earlier, hated it, I'm just going to stop.

I love that so much. I'm already thinking of tiny experiments. I'm going to turn my art exhibition into a tiny experiment instead because I definitely suffer from maximalist brain. Even though I spent 2 decades in startups running short sprints, it's still the brain wants to do that. I'd love if you could talk about— so, a lot of— let's go back to the example you gave or maybe how you felt at Google, right? Like, I like my work. It's great. I like my team. But, like, how is life really? Like, I'm starting to feel stagnant. What would you suggest in terms of the tiny experiments to run to explore possible other things you might want to do for your career? Because I'm just thinking of a lot of the people that I work with, that's actually, without calling it experiments, that's actually what we end up doing. But I'd love to hear your perspective. If you're not ready to make a change, right, but you know you want to reinvent in some way, how would you go about creating an experiment to help you explore something that you don't know?

Yes. So it all starts with observation. And I know, especially for people who are doers, they just want to get started designing the experiment straight away. You do need to understand what the current situation is. And so you do need to make space for just observing what your life and what your work looks like right now. And so an exercise that I recommend doing is just for 24 hours, pretend that you're an anthropologist, but instead of studying a new culture that you know nothing about, you're going to pretend that your topic of study is your own life and your own work. And pretend that you're this new anthropologist, you know nothing about this life, and you're literally with your notebook or your note-taking app on your Notes app on your phone, and you take notes for 24 hours and you ask yourself questions like, Why are we doing things the way we're doing them? Why do we care about this? Why is this important? What gives me energy? What drains my energy? What are ideas that every time they're mentioned by someone, I just light up? I just feel like I'm, I'm curious. I wanna learn more. Right? And you write down all of those little observations without judgment, without trying to make sense of them at this stage. You're really just observing. What your life and work looks like. When you're done after the 24 hours, you can sit down with your notes, and this is where you can start fishing for interesting patterns. And again, paying attention to what gives you energy. Those might be things that you might want more of in your life, uh, things that make you curious. This could be topics that you might want to explore. This could be people also. If you notice that every time you spend time with someone at work, you find it really amazing and that you always have all of those creative ideas when you're around them. Based on that, this is where you can start formulating the hypothesis. You can start saying, ah, maybe I would like working on a project with this person that I just, you know, we, we just randomly talk together within the grabbing coffee, but an actual work project could be fun. Um, or I noticed that in the morning I have very high energy, but it just gets completely destroyed by all of the meetings that I'm pulled into. What if for one month I block the first hour in my calendar and I tell everybody I'm not here, pretend I'm not here, and I use that time for reading, for research, for exploring without touching my email or anything like this? What if, what if, what if? It is really all about taking those observations and formulating a hypothesis, a research question, and then you can start experimenting.. And as you see, that doesn't mean overhauling your entire career or quitting your job. It's really about following your curiosity and seeing what could be interesting to explore.

I love that. Um, do you have a suggestion for how long a tiny experiment— what's a good amount of time?

It's really more about the number of repetitions than it is about how long the experiment itself is. And so that's based on what experiment you're going to run. If you say, I want to experiment with a weekly newsletter. Obviously, you're not going to do that just for one week, right? And if that's helpful, you can kind of read a few interviews from other people and kind of see what kind of maybe traction that they had over a certain amount of time. And maybe you'll see, okay, that usually takes about 3 months for people to kind of start finding an audience and some readers. So I'm going to do a weekly newsletter for 3 months, for example. And if it's about going to bed at the same time every night, that that's a really nice experiment to do. Maybe 2 weeks is enough for this because that's something you're going to start doing daily. So really just choose a duration that makes sense for the nature of the experiment itself. And really fun, really meta, the duration is also something you can experiment with. And so if you feel like, ah, that was too short, I don't feel like I have enough data, I don't know if I like this yet. Well, let's just make it a little bit longer. That's okay too. So It's really about becoming the scientist of your own life. This is a phrase that I use in the book, and it's so important. This is the mindset. This is the experimental mindset, is seeing every area of doubt as an opportunity to experiment and learn something new.

That's so, again, like it's a complete mindset shift. You know, something I'm thinking about that you mentioned when I asked you about the duration, you talk about the maximalist brain. I think there's also the immediacy brain that we have, right? Where I need to know, like, I'm going to do this for 1 week and then I'm going to make a decision, right? It's like, I'm going to send 3 emails or I'm going to do this thing for 2. Okay, if it's not working, I think this is also, there's great, a little bit of discipline there to give yourself enough iterations, as you say, because it takes time for some things, right? And especially if you're doing something new, like when I started to paint, I mean, it wasn't that enjoyable for a while because I was trying to figure out, like, do I like oils or acrylics? And actually even now, like, I, I got really tired of the canvas, like the 2D. So I don't know if you can tell, the painting behind me actually has some foam pieces on it. It's 3D. So like the mouth and the nose and the eye, they're actually— but that was an experiment because I was like, okay, I'm really tired of the 2D surface. What can I do? What can I play with? Right? Foam. And so I think there's also power in just giving yourself enough time to not expecting yourself to Immediately, no, because I think that's the other thing we run into.

100%. I like that. And I do think that, again, it kind of also, it can help and it can be just an amazing opportunity to connect with other people, to also reach out to, in your case, other artists. For me, when I did a writing experiment, reaching out to other writers and just say, hey, I'm going to start this experiment and I'm not quite sure how long it should be based on your experience. You've been doing this for years. What are your thoughts? And really also internalizing the fact that you don't have to have all of the answers. You don't have to know exactly how to design your experiment from the get-go, especially if it's something you've never tried before. If it's something, you know, I've been writing for years and so I feel pretty confident when I design writing experiments now, but there are things that are completely new to me. And in those cases, it's fine to raise your hand and say, hi, I'm the newbie here. I don't know anything about this and I want to run an experiment. Can you help me with the parameters of the experiment and just tell me what you think? And the great thing is that maybe those parameters were good for that person, but they don't work for you. But at least you will have gone through that first loop, that first iteration. And then in the next iteration, you can tweak it and make it more your own and work better for you.

Yeah, it's very— I have to tell you, this entire conversation is very freeing. And this is, I think, the real power of your work. And this is why I'm so excited for your book and for people to listen to this conversation and read it. Because I— and I wonder if you relate to this in your first chapter of Life— of like, I think that often we just get into, like, I call this an inner corset. Like, I wore it for so long, and so many of the clients I work with who are these amazing humans, multifaceted, but we get into this very tight, like, this is what I should be doing. This is— and I feel like your work and these mindset shifts, they're very liberating. They're very freeing. And I think that actually touches into what life is meant to be. I don't think we're meant to know all the answers. I think we're meant to experiment and evolve and learn. That's why I started this whole podcast is to encourage people to reinvent. And doesn't mean like you do it once, like you do it, but that's the main feeling I'm getting from this conversation. So I just want to share that with you. I think it's very important because every time in my life where without even calling it that, I experimented with something, even if I didn't pursue it, it added something. And I think that's the other thing, right? Even, you know, my father is a scientist, right? So I grew up with Like, even a failed experiment teaches you something.

Yes, 100%. It is really about reinventing also our relationship to failure and seeing it just as another opportunity to grow again. Now you know. That's what I always tell myself when something happens that is unexpected, when my hypothesis was not correct. I tell myself, oh, great, now you know. And so you can actually make a more informed decision as to what your next iteration is going to be. But again, without the illusion of having the perfect answer, without the illusion of control, just knowing a little bit more about myself, about my work, about the world, and then feeling ready for the next loop, for the next cycle of experimentation.

I think that's really powerful, and I think that You know, so much of what— where fear comes in is the fear of failure, right? I'm going to try a new career. I'm going to try a new thing. I could possibly fail, you know, and then we stay where we are. And I love what you just said, you know, and I spent 20 years in tech startups, right? And it was like, embrace failure. Failure is good. And that never sat right with me because failure sucks. Like, I never felt good. And I failed plenty. Failed projects, failed companies. But if we look at it as information, as data points, as something we get to learn, that completely reframes it. And I love what you just said, now you know. I put this, I don't know if I put this on X or somewhere else, but I wrote that because it just occurred to me, like, you never know until you try. Like, you literally can't know. You can hypothesize. You can and imagine. But the only way to know is if you do the thing. And I think that's a beautiful way to reframe our relationship with failure. It's good input.

Yes, exactly. It's all input and it's really focusing on getting that input instead of getting to a specific outcome.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I want to ask you a last question, last-ish question, because you wrote, you wrote, in your book about goals and how— and you've covered, you've touched this a little bit— and how, you know, we get, you know, there's this like set SMART goals and be really specific. And I just have to tell you, I've had a very skeptical relationship with goals for a long time. And for a long time, I judged myself for that because, you know, I came out, I ran tech companies, tech teams, like, what's wrong with me? And so when I was reading that part, I wanted to ask you to talk about it because I do feel that often, like, goals become a prison almost. So, I'd love for you to talk, and you've touched on it a little bit, but just can you talk about goal setting and how we can do it better? Because I just know a lot of people who are like, they set a goal and it's sometimes it's a should goal, like it's not really connected to them. So, maybe they didn't do the anthropology part. But often this goal becomes like this jail in a way. Um, and so I'd love for you to just talk about how we can think about goals in this context.

Yes, that's the, that's the issue with the traditional definition of goals, including SMART goals, the fact that they are specific, they're set in stone, and you're supposed to achieve them in a way that is measurable, that is also achievable. Why does it have to be achievable? Why do you only have to aim for things that are doable at this stage with your current skills? Why not push yourself to try something that actually feels a little bit daunting? And so just everything to me is wrong. But I go, I think I have several pages about this in the book, and I, I think there are so many things that are wrong with them. And instead, I really recommend having a different approach to goal setting that is, again, a lot more experimental. And where you, you design your goals in the knowing that the world is going to change, you are going to change, and that's completely okay. And the purpose of the goal is the discovery, the progress, the being in movement, the exploration, rather than getting to a destination that might not even exist, that might not even be the destination you actually want to get to. And also this issue of associating a bunch of other things you think you will unlock if you get to that destination, which is very rarely the case, right? I feel like those frameworks, the SMART goals and the traditional approach, they did make sense in a very specific, very narrow type of context, where you did have a lot of visibility over your career. That was decades ago. It's been a long time. It's not like that anymore, where you could say, I'm going to stay at this company and I'm going to just climb the ladder, get the promotions, acquire those specific skills, and it's all mapped out in front of you. And in those cases, it is actually useful to be able to codify what is the goal. And then you agree with your manager. Everybody knows what the goal is. Everybody knows how we're going to measure it and how to get there, right? But this is, you know, kind of like almost like an outdated artifact of a time that doesn't exist anymore. So that's why I don't like linear goals.

I'm— we're kindred spirits, Anne-Laure. You're verbalizing a lot of what I believe. One of the ways, and you said this in a different way, but one of the things I often think about is, I think you said this at the beginning, when we're here in our present moment, the person we're going to be, even after we take a few actions towards our goal, that's already a different person. Every action we take changes us. So that person a week from now, having taken some actions, may have different perspectives, different insights, different— and so that's why I always prefer to have a vision of something And I'm with you. I think too many realistic things, not enough bold vision, because it kind of pulls us forward. But again, with the lightness that it's not a goal I must achieve, but it's a vision that pulls me, that indicates what actions I want to take. But it's, as you say, like we change with the actions, with the experiments we run. And so it's kind of, you know, it's making me think of such a geeky comment, but I was in tech for 20 years and I was there when we went from waterfall, which is a development methodology where you plan out, here's the whole product, here's all the features, and you spend like 6 months planning it. And Anne-Laure, you're going to build this part, and Natalie, you're going to build— and you do this for like a year and a half, and then you release it into the world. And often, the customers are like, oh, that's not what I want. And then the world, software development world, switched to agile development, which is essentially a series of 2-week experiments, 2-week sprints, where you say, we're going to build this little thing, We're going to give it to the customers. We're going to learn, and then we're going to shift. And I remember being there during that switch and how difficult that was without having this concrete goal. But I think most companies now run on agile development because of everything you've talked about.

Yeah. And people in these companies are not running around like headless chickens, not knowing what they're supposed to do, right? You still have the sense of clarity as to your next steps, but you don't have the illusion of clarity as to what things are going to look like in 5 years, right? And you also, because you're very cognizant of this uncertainty, you're also a lot more willing to, in this case, talk to your customers, talk to your users and test things because you come from a place of saying, I actually don't know. So let's just test this, right? And it's the first thing, it's the same thing with tiny experiments in your personal and professional life, where you come from a place of, I'm not quite sure actually, and that's okay. So let's test this. Let's see what the data says.

That's so beautiful. Embracing uncertainty, not as a weakness, but as a point of strength in a way, like it empowers you to do all these different things. Um, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, thank you so much. I feel like I could talk to you for hours, but I want to be respectful of you and our— well, I think our listeners could listen to you for hours. I just want to tell you, I am so grateful to have connected with you, to have learned about your work, for this conversation. As I said to you before I think we started recording, one thing I really love about your work is both the neuroscience but the humanness of it. I think it's really powerful. So thank you so much for taking the time and for sharing your insights.

And thank you for creating that space for having those beautiful conversations. I'm very grateful. And yeah, I'm looking forward to everybody listening to the episode.

Ditto. And so we'll put the— as always, we put all the links to the book, everyone, in the show notes and all of the contact information. But I have, like I said, I'm about halfway through the book. It's so great. And I'm taking— I'm reading it on my a reader, but I'm taking tons of notes, so I know you will all love it. And thank you as always for tuning in. Um, and that's all we have for today. I will be with you next week, either in your ear or, um, on YouTube if you're watching. Thanks everyone.