How Tiny Experiments Can Change Your Life with Anne Laure Le Cunff

My take is not that we shouldn't have a purpose, but that we should stop obsessing over finding it. Because if you ask people who have found their purpose how they found it, none of them found it by filling a worksheet or going to a workshop or obsessing over it.

Today we have the pleasure of having Anne-Laure Le Cunff on our podcast. She's the author of the bestselling book Tiny Experiments, which just came out this year. She's a neuroscientist and she's the founder of Nest Labs. She's also an entrepreneur and she was a former employee at Google. She has a popular newsletter with up to 100,000 subscribers and she's a world-leading expert on mindful productivity. So we're really looking forward to talking to her on today's podcast. I'd be interested to hear, so when you were at Google, like how many years did it take you to figure out that that's not what you wanted to do? And how do you make that decision to just drop your career and start a new career? Because I can't even fathom that, you know, in my mind, like, how could I drop being a nurse and just go into something else? So I'd love to hear how you came to that realization and pulled the trigger to do it.

Yeah, it actually took quite a few years because when I started at Google, it was really my dream job. It was my dream company. My team was amazing. I was working on projects that I thought were really interesting. And, um, it's a little bit like, uh, you know, this metaphor of the frog that you boil very slowly and it doesn't realize that it's dying. I was overworked, burned out. I was suffering from imposter syndrome. I was saying yes to absolutely everything because I was almost scared that someone would realize that I did not belong there and that they had made a mistake hiring me because it really felt like I was so lucky that I had this job. And because of that, I was accepting to work on any project. I was working long hours. I was canceling plans with friends to work on presentations. And, and if you asked me at the time how I felt, I would have told you, I'm so happy. This is great. I'm so lucky. This is my dream job. And, um, in my case, it took a health scare to realize that something was really wrong. So what happened is that one morning I was brushing my teeth and I noticed in the mirror that my arm had turned purple. And, uh, I went to the Google infirmary. We had that on campus in Mountain View. They looked at my arm and they said, you need to go to the hospital straight away. So I went to the Stanford Hospital. They looked at my arm and they said, we need to do surgery as quickly as possible. You have a blood clot in your arm that's threatening to travel to your lungs. And in that moment, my response was, let me check my calendar. And I literally opened my laptop there to check my, my calendar and to make sure that I would not schedule the surgery at a time that would disrupt any product launches I was working on. And in that moment, I had this almost like an out-of-body experience where you see yourself do something that makes no sense, as if it was someone else doing it. And that was for me the first trigger that made me reconsider whether my priorities made sense in life. And I would love to tell you that after this experience, I finally figured it out and then I did my own thing. And, but I actually went on following another script. So I quit my job at Google and I was so uncomfortable with not having the sense of identity around my work that instead of really asking myself what I was curious about, I did what everybody around me did in Silicon Valley when you quit your job at a big tech company, which was start a startup. Yeah. So that's what I did. And it's only when that startup failed that finally, finally I asked myself, what are you actually curious about? What is it you want to explore? Even if nobody was watching and even if you forgot about this validation you've been seeking for so long. Yeah.

So when you, when you changed, so when you quit Google and then you started to do a startup, like how, how'd you support yourself? I'm just Just thinking reality for people out there, like, you know, if I quit my job, you think about what income do I have coming in? And so did you have money saved up enough to do that or?

Yeah, so this is something that a lot of people, this is a misconception people have when they, I say I quit my job at Google, they think I had a million in the bank. So that made it a lot easier. But so I actually, I had a few tens of thousands saved at the time. So definitely enough to support myself for like 6 months to a year, but no more than that. And I freelanced as well at the same time, which I realized having worked at Google made it a lot easier to be able to then sell those skills to other people as a freelancer. But I did have to work while I was exploring what was next. And this is actually what I recommend people doing. I, I really have a pet peeve when it comes to advice that tells people, Quit your job, follow your dream. That's not something everybody can do. And, uh, and sometimes it doesn't even have to do with money, but you might be the primary caregiver for someone. You might not have all of the time to explore. And so I think taking a slower approach, like when I quit my job at Google, I didn't have to quit like that. I could have stayed a little bit longer and figured it out without quitting. So. I learned, I learned it the hard way. I ended up being fortunate in the sense that I was part of the small percentage of people who can just quit their job and then it works out. But that's not the advice I would give to people.

Yeah, it's crazy too to go back and think about your book. You expand a little bit more about when you had the blood clot, but to think how you put your health below other people's needs, you know, I mean, you were more worried about your coworkers, which we all do. I mean, I've been sick before and gone to work because you just can't. You got patients waiting on you, you got surgery scheduled. Kevin, you've been the same. You got people relying on you. It's amazing how we put our needs below others in situations like that.

Yeah, it's, uh, and we often do that. What's funny is that, well, if you saw a friend do this to themselves, you would tell them, you're crazy, why are you doing this? But somehow we have those lower standards when it comes to our own well-being.

Yeah, I think it's definitely shifted for the better, like with over the years of people. I think, you know, the idea of work-life balance didn't even used to exist and people understanding that you need to be healthy yourself to do good work and to operate well because when you don't, it almost, some people used to just like work themselves so hard that then until you're forced to take a break, which is obviously not ideal. So. I think even like we've had some other doctors on social media on and just like them trying to change residency in America for different residency, medical residencies of how hard, like long and of hours a lot of people used to work. I mean, now there's standards and regulations that aren't always precisely followed. It's capped at 80 hours a week, but you know, back in the day, like you could be working 120+ hours a week and That's just not, you can't be operating in an ideal fashion at that point. I mean, don't you think, dad?

Oh, definitely. 100%. Yeah.

But, um, I think too, uh, when you were talking about Google, I think that definitely is a misconception. It's so easy before actually speaking to you. I think just reading the book of being like, oh, she was at Google. So it was fine for her, but that's not applicable to me. And I think it's just almost any steady job in general, no matter where you're working, I think you kind of get golden handcuffs. Obviously applies more to usually like higher salary things, but I think it applies to just almost any steady job where you have a job and you're getting that consistent income. And especially once you start to have like a significant other, family, or people relying on you, it becomes much, much harder to leave. It's a lot bigger of a risk. And I think that's kind of in just the premise of Tiny Experiments. Is you don't have to, it's not necessarily gotta be an all or nothing. You can take just the smallest step to like, hey, can I try this out? And I think we talk about this a lot too. It's kind of going with like Pareto's law of the 80/20 rule of just when you do stuff, I think a lot of people with diet or exercise, it is a big one of, hey, if I'm, if I'm not strictly adhering to this, I should just do nothing. Where if you can't, like this week I was really busy with work. It's autumn and tax season and So I couldn't necessarily go do like a hard run, but I just walked on the treadmill the other night while I was writing for like an hour and a half. And that's better than nothing, but it's so easy when you, especially when you're constantly trying to achieve and like, I need to do this, this, and that of really, and I think reading your book in this time period was helpful for that of just like, okay, I just do something, keep the habit chain going.

So I think people would love to hear about how you started Nest Labs, because I love the philosophy. I love the linear versus the experimental, and maybe you can fill people in on that because such a good— it's such a good thought that I actually have never really thought about. I have to say, till I read your book, so I'm thinking, wow, this is me. And it's like, it almost makes you want to think, God, I want to do something different now. It's like, because you really inspire, you know, you know, something different in your life, you know. So tell us about Nest Labs and how it came about.

Yeah, so you, you mentioned that linear mindset, and, uh, so the— in the book I explained that there 2 kinds of approach, approaches that you can have to success in life. There's the linear one where you have a very clear outcome in mind and you say, I'm going to achieve this. I'm going to achieve this milestone, which also comes with something that psychologists call the arrival fallacy, where very often you attach your happiness to this. You say, once I get there, I'll be happy. And there's a more experimental approach where instead of focusing on the outcome, you focus on just conducting an experiment. You say, let me try this. Let me show up. Let me try to be as consistent as possible with this thing I'm curious about. And let's see what the outcome is. And when it comes to the Nest Labs newsletter, that was really the shift for me. So if you have a linear mindset and you start a newsletter, you might say, I want to get to 30,000 subscribers by the end of the year. That's the linear mindset where you have this outcome, you have a clear vision, you create a plan, and then you work really, really hard to get there. With Nest Labs, what I did was that I decided to apply the, almost like the scientific method to creating something I was curious about. And I said, I'm just going to conduct an experiment. And what do you need to conduct an experiment? You need to first know what you're going to test and you need to decide on a trial period. You say, this is the action, this is the duration. And so for Nest Labs, I said, I'm going to write 100 articles. In 100 weekdays. And I know it sounds like a big experiment, but the reason why it wasn't so big is because I think not everybody would agree with me when it comes to what I define as an article. Some of them were very, very short and it didn't matter if it was just a few hundred words, very, very short. That counted as my article for the day. And another feature of experiments is that as a scientist, when you conduct them, you withhold judgment until you're done collecting the data. You just conduct the experiment, and at the end, you can analyze the data and decide whether that works for you or not. And that's what I did with Nest Labs as well, where with this newsletter, where I said, I'm just going to write those 100 articles, and when I'm done, I can decide whether— did I like that? Is that something I want to keep doing or not? Yeah.

And with those 100 articles, because I thought, like, one of my, my notes, because you were sharing those, that was, that was the the, the birth kind of in that slabs. I think the sharing part was like a huge part of it versus if you just did 100 articles in 100 days, uh, yourself. I think the sharing part is huge because it forces you to push it out.

How, how did you share 'em? Like what were you sharing?

I did it. So I did an, I created a little newsletter where every Thursday I sent the 5 articles I wrote over the past week. Oh, so that was the sharing. And I actually also, shared a lot on social media before the articles were ready. So I would post on, it used to be called Twitter at the time. I would post on, on Twitter and say, I'm writing an article about this, or I'm curious about this question. Does anyone have any resources or are there any questions that you would like to explore? And I think you're right. And in the book, I have a chapter about what I call learning in public. And that's what I was doing. It's really the idea that you can start sharing what you're curious about. Before you feel like you're the expert, before you feel like you know everything. And it's actually a lot more powerful to do that rather than having this sometimes overthinking and paralysis that a lot of people might have where they never get started because they feel like, who am I to share about this topic?

Yeah, that's my wife.

Well, I think it's, I mean, I think it's, uh, imposter syndrome sometimes too. Like, oh, there's other people, like, or there's someone, there's always someone more qualified to speak about things, but. Different advice or different things are applicable to different people. Cause I, social media, like there's so many people on social media, so there might be an expert. So like I'm really into running, the, the top runners, their thought sharing, those are really good for some people, but, but for the person just trying to get into running, that everyday mom who's running while balancing raising a family is, is pretty, it's probably more powerful for them. And I think, cause I almost think about it as like an experiment now when we think back on it, but just when we started my dad's social media 2 and 2 and a half years ago, or almost 3 years ago, of we just already had these other videos and educational stuff he was doing for his patients, and we just decided to put it on social media. And then now fast forward to where, uh, you can just kind of do things of like, how cool is it that we get to, uh, talk to the author, to the author of a book? And I think same, same with podcasting, of how cool is it that you just get to talk to other people who about these ideas and, and learn from them and then try to apply it. The most important step, try to apply it to your everyday life.

I actually love the, um, I actually love that you mentioned how things that work for some people might not work for other people, because I think this is also another part of why tiny experiments can be so helpful. People tend to forget that when they read or they hear about a research study that says that you need, for example, 7 hours of sleep or whatever it is that the study says, this is based on an average, right? There's a bit of a bell curve and you actually might be one of the outliers, or you might be at a period in your, at a time in your life with specific constraints that make it so that you might need less or more sleep. I'm using sleep as an example, but that's true for a lot of things. And it can actually be worth it instead of just trying to copy paste whatever you see other athletes doing or other experts doing, using that information as a starting point for an experiment and say, oh, interesting. So I saw on Instagram or I heard in a magazine that we need this amount of sleep. Let me try it for a week and let me see how that feels. Am I feeling more energized? Am I feeling tired? Oh, maybe I need a little bit more, a little bit less. And so there's really also, it really gives you a sense of agency over how you want to design your life when you're on, you're using that information as a starting point rather than something that necessarily applies to you because it applies to the majority.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think that that would segue in nice. I'd love to hear from you because you have kind of a section in your book talking about like kind of the ebbs and flows and your creative energy, like, like on a day, week, or seasonal slash yearly process. So do you kind of talk about that more? And how do you lean into that versus try to stay rigid on a set thing of like, I should always be doing this?

Yes, I, um, I talk about something I think is fascinating. Sahil has also actually written about that also, is our relationship to time. And, uh, something that I loved discovering was that The ancient Greeks had two words for time. The first one, which is the one we tend to use in, in English and in most Western societies, is chronos, the same as you find in chronometer, for example. And that's a quantitative definition of time. It's the time of seconds and minutes and hours. It's, uh, it's the type of time we use to book this in our calendars so we could have this conversation together. And it's, it's a very practical tool, but it's only part of the story when it comes to our relationship to time. They have a second word, Kairos, which is about the quality of time. And the quality of time is really more about the, your, your energy, your attention, the, the depth of each moment. And I argue that we've become overly focused on the Kronos definition of time at the expense of the Kairos definition of time, and that we would all benefit from paying a little bit more attention to how we feel and the quality of our time. Um, an example of a Kairos moment that I think we've all experienced is when, you know, when you have a conversation with a friend and after a while you look at your phone or your watch and you're like, what happened? Where has the time gone? And this is a Kairos moment. And it really shows that time is actually elastic. It can expand and contract depending on how deep the experience is. And it's not just a series of boxes that are equally sized. So what I highly recommend doing is actually paying attention to how your energy fluctuates throughout the day and throughout the week and designing experiments around that. So something I've done, for example, while I was writing the book is that at first I said, I'm going to block 1 hour every morning. And I'm going to work on the book over the course of the next few months. Very quickly, it was evident that that did not work for me because every time I finished that hour and I hadn't written anything that I liked, I would be in a terrible mood for the rest of the day. I kept on thinking about the fact that I had made no progress that day, and it then negatively impacted all of my productivity, creativity, all of that during the rest of the day. And so then I changed it and I said, actually, you know what, let me write for 5 hours a week, but it doesn't matter when those 5 hours are. And sometimes I would actually end up writing every morning, but sometimes I would also not touch the manuscript for the entire week. And then on Sunday, I would be typing furiously and, uh, and actually feeling really good doing it. And so that's really the idea of optimizing for Kairos is being in touch with how you feel. And within the window of flexibility that you have, because obviously we live in a chronos society, so you still have a calendar, but in those pockets of time you have where you can be flexible, trying to optimize for those Kairos moments.

Yeah, you took the schedule away and the expectations, but so many people live off of schedules, you know, that's the problem.

Yeah, well, they have their benefits until they don't. But I think that's very interesting is like you still found yourself writing in some mornings once you almost took away the pressure of like, I have to do this in the morning. Opens up the flexibility there. And I think too, a cool part from that section, I think that a lot of people, it's so popular now. It's just like your life in weeks, the visualization by Tim. I didn't even realize that was first Tim Urban who had put that like, wait, but why? Because also I read 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman a year or two ago. And it's just, it is so interesting to think about when it's that, and not every week has to be created equal because when you take the two concepts and kind of mesh them, okay, so each week it's not going to be created creative equal because yeah, there's sometimes when you're enjoying stuff, it just kind of flows by. So like, work's not necessarily a bad thing. Like if you're, if it's just really busy, but you're enjoying the work. And then, but then if, you know, some other things have to go, like you just can't do everything all the time. And I like, I like the idea about like imperfect, how'd you put it in the book? Imperfect imperfection.

Intentional imperfection.

Intentional imperfection. I, I like that, that a lot. I think it gives you some grace to have with yourself of, um, hearing about these different people like Shonda Rhimes and stuff of like, hey, like if I'm excelling really hard at like, right, like writing scripts for shows, then like my family life might be falling a little bit and vice versa. I think once people can, and you don't always see that as much as you see all like the positive things of people. I, accomplished everything this week or all this. So I think it's powerful to read and hear about that too, of like, okay, it's okay if I'm focusing on one project that something else slips a little bit and then you have to kind of pick and choose yourself.

I think an interesting thing in your book was that graph about finding your purpose and my God, how that has increased so recently. I mean, 700-fold, I think the graph. Yeah. So What do you think about finding your purpose? Because I do think people need— there has to be some purpose in your life. I mean, that's what motivates you to get up in the morning, to have a purpose. But what's your take on that?

So, yeah, my take is not that we shouldn't have a purpose, but that we should stop obsessing over finding it. Because if you ask people who have found their purpose how they found it, none of them found it by filling a worksheet or going to a workshop or obsessing over it. Almost everyone who found their purpose found it through putting themselves out there, collaborating on different projects. Maybe someone reached out and say, hey, how about we work on this together? And they said, okay, I don't know. I've never done this before, but let's do it. And one morning they wake up and they realize that they're really excited to wake up in the morning and that they really enjoy the way they're spending their days and the people they're working with. And so to me, this is how you You find your purpose by following your curiosity, by connecting with other people, by taking some risks, calculated risks with your creativity and the way you work and trying new things and really trusting that if you keep on doing that, you will end up finding what your thing is. But if you force it, you're going to make yourself miserable.

Yeah. It's interesting how you talk about collaborating, cause I was reading how you, are just kind of putting out categories of people. But I mean, I'm definitely the perfectionist. And it's interesting because, you know, Kevin always said that I— you try to keep too much to yourself on social media. We should collaborate more with people. And I was very resistant against it. But then I read in your book how that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm isolating myself by this perfectionist personality. And I know so many eye-opening things in your book.

Yeah, it gives you— it gives us a I think that the reason why I've had this feedback a lot from readers that they enjoyed the book because they can tell that everything I write about are things I actually struggled with and some of them I'm actually still struggling with.

Yeah.

So, you know, when you're describing this sense of perfectionism where you might not want to collaborate on certain projects with other people because you want to feel in control.

Right.

That totally resonates with me. And to me, Having an experimental mindset is not about repressing those automatic responses. It's about noticing them and then almost shifting your perspective and your relationship to them to one of more like playfulness and saying, oh, hi perfectionism, you're back. What can we do to, to maybe have a little conversation and try to do something a little bit different today?

Yeah.

You know, because I think, I think you did a really good job of that in your book as well with using different stuff. Obviously you ask your newsletter subscribers to share stories and through Nest Labs, I think of just, uh, that then you can utilize. And I'm assuming those are just kind of top examples you picked. I'm assuming there's way more or they were joined together in some fashion, but I think that adds a lot more power. Of hearing real things. Because I think there's so many things when you watch stuff, it's always, it's not applicable to me. So the more you can show, like, it doesn't have to just be this. And I think that's important. Something I'd love to hear too and discuss is talking about perfectionism. I'm assuming as you wrote the book, because when you're writing the newsletter, it's just you, right? I'm assuming. And you're just writing it and you you push it out and it doesn't have to be perfect or polished. Um, not that a book does, but when you go through kind of editing and the initial manuscript from everything I know, obviously there's going to be rounds of feedback and lots of editing over time. So how was that process kind of taking into like the perfectionist thinking or other stuff, or what was that like?

Or keeping control.

Yes. Uh, that, that was difficult at the beginning. So something that was really surprising to me is how few of the skills that I had picked up writing the newsletter were transferable to writing the book. I thought, oh, you know, I've been writing hundreds of newsletters at this stage, so I knew a book would be challenging, but I didn't think it would be that challenging. It's almost like a completely different creativity muscle that you have to use connecting those ideas, keeping in mind what you said in chapter 2 when you're writing chapter 11 6 months later. So all of that was quite challenging. And, um, I really decided to apply all of the tools from the book to writing the book itself. So, I decided to learn in public. I actually had beta readers that I recruited from readers of the newsletter to read different manuscripts and give me feedback. I also decided to test ideas. So, even the title, actually, when I pitched this book to publishers, it was a different title and it was very apparent after a while that that title didn't work, didn't resonate with people. They didn't understand it at all. And so I had to go back to the drawing board and instead of overthinking it, I tested it. I created fake book covers with different titles and I put them on Facebook with little ads to see what people would click on, pretending that, you know, that it was available to buy. So I definitely had a lot of, um, it was there. I'm not, it was, there was a lot of creative anxiety around that fear of being judged. Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I did my best to manage those feelings by actually almost detaching myself as much as possible from the outcome. And every time I was facing this sense of uncertainty, this fear, asking myself, is there an experiment I can design here where I will see what the results are? And all of a sudden it's not about me anymore. It's about what is the data saying? And like data, I don't need spreadsheets necessarily, right? Just conversations with people, things I would learn, really applying that.

Would you write a chapter and then like put it out there for people to read and then get feedback from them?

Or no, I didn't do it chapter by chapter because it was actually a very messy process of writing the book where I would sometimes write half of a chapter, realize that I forgot, not that I forgot, but that there was something very important that I should mention in the chapter before I got to this. So I don't think it would've been a great experience for beta readers to get them chapter by chapter. And instead I finished a first, uh, full manuscript that I sent to a group of beta readers. And then I did another round a few months later with another version of the manuscript.

Mm-hmm. And how, how much did it change from like that first manuscript to like final version? Is it—

So much. Uh, it's not— I, I knew it would change, but I didn't think it would change that much. And, um, You know, you mentioned earlier how the, what was nice about the book is that it included the stories of, of people in my community. That is not something I had planned on doing at first. I hadn't even thought about it, which I know might seem strange now that you've read the final version.

Yeah.

But because I, I come from more of a scientific training background, in my mind I would've included scientific research and maybe some case studies, but it's only halfway through the book that I realized that I had been struggling with something missing and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. And I realized that it was actual real-world stories from the community. And so that was not in the book proposal. That was not part of what I had envisioned at first, but I think it made the book so much better.

Yeah. Yeah.

Did you, um, with your book, I don't know how it was published, but did you go on a tour, like where you go to talk about it and signings and things like that? Did you do that for a while? Are you still doing it?

Or?

Yes, I did that for a couple of months. I was in the US, so I'm based in London, but I was in the US for a couple of months. I was in New York. I was living in an Airstream from the '70s in Austin for a while. And, and it was amazing to get to meet people and have those conversations and people sharing how the tools in the book have been applied and changed their lives. So that was amazing. And I'm still doing it. I'm on the, I would say I'm on the tail end of it now because the book came out a few weeks ago.

Yeah.

And, um, but I'm, I think I will keep on, I think it's so important. The books take so much time to write and so much energy. Yeah. I don't wanna have spent years working on it and then just moving on to the next project.

Yeah.

You gotta, you gotta keep, you gotta keep talking about it cause at different times it reaches different people. But I think, I thought it was so interesting. I think in the newsletter like 2 or 3 weeks ago, it's, well, first of all, it's interesting how much it shifted over the last multiple years of now, like book tours are just tons of podcasts usually. And I, I thought thought you had part of your newsletter like 3 weeks ago that was about talking about how you did 60 podcasts in 60 days and you applied the lessons of the book, like kind of treating it as a tiny experiment. I thought there was some great nuggets of advice in there of talking about how you wish you had done some of the bigger podcasts, like a little bit later on once you had some more experience. It's a different medium. So you talked about how, like, you knew how to— you wrote about the ideas and thinking through them, but then speaking through them is a little different. I think that applies to so many things. It's just like with interviews, like interview for some jobs you don't care about as much and then do an interview because you just gotta constantly polish those skills. But I thought, I mean, it's kind of meta here talking about podcasting on podcasting, but what was that like? I mean, yeah, you were living in the Jetstream thing in Austin and you said like one time it was brainstorming. So the audio, cause I'm always, I thought That was so interesting. I'd love to hear your thoughts of like what that was like and how you kind of got through that or just adjusted as you were getting through it. Cause that's a lot of, that's, that's hard to do for anyone. I think 60 podcasts in 60 days.

That was intense. And the reason why I wanted to share that in the newsletter and including everything that didn't go so well is because I wanted to be very transparent about the fact that sometimes experiments can be difficult. And the reason why you conduct an experiment is because you don't know how that's going to go. If you knew already, there would be no reason to run the experiment. And so in this case, I had so many assumptions that were wrong. I thought, oh great, Airstream, quite a bit of space actually compared to a hotel room and it will be comfortable. Well, something, you know, I'm not blaming myself because there was no way I could predict this, but everybody told me the weather would be amazing in Austin at this time of the year. And at some point the pipes froze. Because it was so cold. So, I had assumptions about the weather again. I couldn't have predicted that, but even about the, just the logistics of hosting, having the podcast there. I also, I, I didn't know how tiring it would be. I had done quite a few podcasts before, but I had never done back-to-back podcasts like I had to do for this little podcast tour. Now I know I would never do it again the way I did it. And, um, and I would probably have breaks. I would also probably start reaching out to people to do podcasts a little bit earlier so I can spread them out a little bit more.

Yeah, pre-record more.

Yeah, exactly. Instead, it's, it's pre-recorded. This is not live. There was no reason to try to do them all in 2 months like I did like that, which sounds so obvious now that I'm saying it, but again, I really had no idea how tiring it would be and they are— I strongly believe that they are experiences in life that you can only learn through actually doing and going through it and then knowing that this might not work for you and you will do it differently the next time around.

Yeah, but you were following your own philosophy. I mean, you know, you put it in your book and you followed it. So that's kind of cool.

Well, I think it seems probably a lot of things seem obvious once we're actually doing them. Like we all— we have these best laid plans and then it's like, I forgot the most obvious the most obvious thing or this or that. Um, with, with the, the podcasting too, I think another thing that I find interesting is, was it, uh, like weird, like talking about a lot of the same ideas constantly? Did you find some evolutions in your mind of like kind of how you thought about the ideas as you talked them out loud constantly over a 2-month span?

Yeah, so that's also where in my mind there were definitely different categories of interviewers because for some interviewers, I think they might be recording so many episodes all the time that they don't have time to actually read the book. And so the questions are quite surface level and they're the same. And I had that with some conversations and this is actually not a really fun experience either for me on the other end, because this is where I, hear myself repeating the same things over and over again. Um, so definitely there was a little bit of a, and I think that added to the tiredness sometimes.

Yeah.

You know, you talked about how sometimes it's not the volume of work that makes you tired, but it's also the lack of control and, or the quality of the work. And to me, I've had back-to-back podcasts where each conversation was amazing and different and I didn't feel as tired as when I had to repeat the same thing over and over again. So that's one aspect. And then with some of the other ones, and a lot of the other ones, I would really say 90% of them, what's amazing about having those conversations from a human being to another human being with my experiences and your experiences is that very often the questions are connected to whatever has been top of mind for them recently. And that could be something that happened in their work, in their life, or something they recently read. And because of that, it actually is a forcing mechanism for me to start thinking about different applications, different use cases. The only negative I would mention about this, which is not really a negative, but I've had times where people ask me a question and in my mind I'm like, oh, I wish I had included that in the book. This is such a good question. But obviously the book is out already.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think it is hard too. Like, you know, over the, past 10 or 11 years, my wife and I have done talks to hundreds and hundreds of high schools, and Kevin's been involved in a lot of it. They say a lot of the same things, and you always wonder, like, do they want to hear this? Because you think you're saying the same thing to the same people, but you have to remember it's a new audience that they've not heard this before. So to them, it's all new, but in your mind, it's like old. And I'm thinking, God, this is— we just say the same thing over and over, and it's like, do they even care? But then you have to remind yourself they've never heard it before, you know.

That's true. That's something I really admire with educators in a more traditional institutional setting. They have to show up every year and teach something that is very similar and show up with the same level of energy. And I really admire that.

And enthusiasm.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I think a lot of people do credit in that guy. We credit when you have those, especially like high school and before,, like, like 18 and younger, like, so grade school and all that. If you have really good teachers, almost everyone you talk to, they can remember like that, those one or two favorite teachers that were really enthusiastic or got them really into different subjects, uh, or, or topics. So I, it is super important and that's something I, I think I, I haven't even thought about it that way either of like they're just teaching the same materials over and over again year after year, but then they have to be enthused about it.

So as a nurse, I have to ask you, so what's your most exciting aspect that you like about the brain?

Oh, I mean, I'm obviously obsessed with studying the how, why, and how. We're curious. And my academic research is actually at the ADHD Research Lab at King's College London. And something I just started studying right now, which actually might be the the basis for my next book, we'll see very, very early, is regulated versus dysregulated curiosity and how a lot of people who have, who are highly curious and you see that as a trait in ADHD also actually have a hard time directing their curiosity towards things that are meaningful to them. And so they're both hyper-curious, but also there's this sense of dysregulation, lack of control over it. And so what does that look like in the brain? And there's recent research showing that you have the very similar neural pathways that get activated in curiosity and impulsivity. And so that's the aspect I'm going to start talking about.

So is that like on a PET scan, like you find people are really curious and is it the prefrontal cortex lighting up or what part of the brain lights up or do they know?

Yeah, mostly all of the dopamine reward pathways that get activated. And so So that tells us, and again, it's very early, but that there is, in that paper that I love, they call curiosity an impulse to know. So there's this impulsivity where you can almost, you can't control it. And which is also how a lot of the patients with ADHD we work with describe it, where they say that they almost feel like they don't have control over it.

I wonder if, um, so you're, cause you're saying impulsivity, I wonder if people who've had brain damage, like frontal lobe brain damage, become more curious? Ooh. Because often they do with impulsivity, you know, obviously I see people all the time with frontal lobe injuries and especially bilateral, I mean both sides, and they'll become very impulsive and you know that personality changes. But I wonder if curiosity is one of those things I've never really, I haven't noticed it, but maybe I'm sure a family member would notice. Yeah. They become very curious about things.

Yes. Oh yeah. I kind of want to look it up. I would be very surprised if there is any literature around this specifically because even in my area there's very little right now, but This is a good question.

I think what's, what's tough with some of that is like curiosity is like tough to define. Like, how do you define that? Like, maybe there is like, we're in part of your work of first you have to make some type of scale or, or system of defining or quantifying curiosity, which can be a tough, tough thing.

Yeah. You have different scales and you also have some cognitive tasks actually where it's all about wanting to open a box or not, to see what's inside or not. And so you can actually design cognitive tasks around it. But they are actually— that was part of a literature review I did a while ago, just trying to define curiosity. And it's just, it's almost hilarious how nobody agrees in academia, and there are tons of different definitions.

Well, like you said, because there's a fine line. Like curiosity could be, if you did it with an animal, chimpanzee, it might lead towards reward. Like they want the reward, so they're curious to open that box. Because they got a reward. So yeah, they all tie in. It would be hard to pick it apart, I think, you know.

Yeah, that's why it's really all about in those kind of studies deciding, defining what is the type of curiosity you're looking at, right? And, and saying that's the specific— really, like, um, yeah, just defining what it is, operationalizing it in a way that is very clear, because if not, there's no way to know what you're actually measuring. Yeah. All right.

I think too, talking about curiosity here, because I think a lot of people always talk about and write about, as when we're kids, we're always, we're extremely curious about the world. We're constantly asking why, where the world's very fun and exciting. And somehow just as we get older, that naturally goes away for most of us. I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? And like, obviously the tiny experiments and What are other ways you think to kind of keep— because I'm assuming here, but I'm assuming curiosity is a huge factor in life. I think you would think, right, of curiosity. It makes life more fun. And how do you constantly try to— not constantly, but how do you try to just keep growing that curiosity muscle again or bring back that childlike wonder?

Yes, it's really about intentionally at first making space for it because the demands of our modern society, most jobs actually, they reward showing that you know what you're doing, that you're the expert. People are being paid for the, the answers they can provide, not for necessarily for the questions they ask. So I think it starts with being very intentional and deciding for yourself that this is actually something you want. Just like someone might say, might decide they want to get fit, they want to eat better, they want to whatever it is. If you want to have more curiosity in your life, then saying that's actually something I want. And once you've decided that, making space for it. And so that can be through what we discussed, experimentation, just conducting tiny experiments. Another thing that I really like doing is having a curiosity hour where I block in my calendar a bit of time where I can literally read anything, listen to anything, watch any video, fall into a Wikipedia rabbit hole if I want to, and that's okay. And it doesn't have to link to anything I'm working on. It doesn't have to be productive. And it's really just about being curious in this moment and seeing what questions come up. And so at first, if you don't have the mental space or the time or the energy to do more than that, I would say just trying to find a little bit of time in your week where you can just be curious. That's a great way to get started again.

Well, it's interesting. You watch our grandson Archie, he's 2 and a half, but I, I watch him run around the house. So he's busy. He's busy all the time, so he'll go over to Blox and play with them, but then something comes up on TV and then he'll stop and he watches the TV for a minute and then, then he'll lose interest and go back to something else. But they're always doing something like they're on the move. There's no sedentary aspect to it. And I wonder, I don't know, I wonder how that plays into when you become an adult. Because we're not running around doing all different things. We're at a job doing a focused thing. And he has— there's not a focus for him. It's just here, here, outside, here. You know, so much stuff coming in.

Stimulation. Well, it's a good point though, too. I think a lot of times we are, we're paid and we're rewarded for having answers or getting stuff done. You're not rewarded for saying like, hey, like I'm curious about this. Like, but that's also how like almost not almost, but like how a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses are started. They're like, well, isn't there a better way to do this? It's almost leaning into that curiosity. Yeah. What if we didn't? Or some of the both, like, uh, kind of huge, uh, psychology experiments or, uh, experiments in general, scientific experiments of like, hey, what if this isn't the case? What if there's another way of doing this? So I think that's always, it might start like with a, a simple question and then there's way deeper layers of like actually figuring it out. But it's like starting with that, having the openness and even the idea of like, let me challenge that thought. Like, it doesn't have to be this way.

Yeah, exactly. And when you see some of the most innovative companies got started by making space for, for that non-productive, a bit scattered, but ultimately, again, innovative way of doing things. So Google, for example, when I used to work there, they had the 20% projects. And that was something where you could literally raise your hand and say, I'm curious about this. I have no idea if this is going to work or not, but I'm going to spend 20% of my time working on this. And Gmail came out of that. Not many people know that, but Gmail came out as a 20% project. And so it's, uh, I don't even think it is incompatible with a more traditional work setting. I do obviously want, you know, want to acknowledge the fact that a lot of projects have to follow a more linear approach. You have deadlines, you have deliverables, and that's fine. But you can always try and carve out a little bit of time for that undirected exploration that can actually be very fruitful.

But yeah, so I've heard of that with Google, of the 20% of employees working on stuff that they're interested in. You know, we've got all these really, really bright and intelligent people. So it's fostering entrepreneurship. Like, what are your ideas? And I don't know if this was a 20% project, but I know, I know I've heard like their moonshot things they work on too. So like Waymo. Is really cool. And we got to do, we did something with Waymo, like a video with them. Do you know what Waymo is?

Yes.

Yeah.

I tried it for the first time last year. It's amazing.

Oh, I'm sorry. But no, so Waymo, like it was so cool to actually go in them and stuff. So my, we did a video with them about like the power of potential of Waymo because my brother died in a drunk driving accident when he was 18. So, it was really cool to see like the path, like how far we've come with like autonomous vehicles. And that is launched out of like stuff where it has to be like a long-term project. And it takes something like a parent company like Google/Alphabet to like fund some of these things over the long term. Cause it takes a long time to come to fruition of how long they've been working on that. And then now it's finally like they're expanding to multiple more cities this year. And it's really cool to see like those projects come to fruition. I don't know, when you're riding in a Waymo, it's so cool because it's so much better than I thought it was. And that was a moment last year of like, it feels like the future is here when you're doing that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it started small also because when I was still working at Google, they actually had bought some parking lots that were not that far. I can't remember exactly where they were. And at the time, when you think about it, all they were focused on was for those cars to be able to go around the parking lot. Without bumping anything. And now they're actually on the road, on the streets, taking people from point A to point B, which is absolutely amazing.

Yeah, we had, I mean, we rode in, we had no problems with them. Little bumps here and there, you know, the car wouldn't unlock right away or something, but so many people are against that. And I just think it's the future. It just makes sense. Yeah. What's in the future for Nest Labs, for you and Nest Labs? Like what's on the horizon? Anything exciting?

I actually don't know, and that's how I want to keep it for now. And, uh, there's, there's definitely a temptation to start thinking about what's next, but I really want to give myself the space to really see what emerges. And so I'm taking the next month off-ish. I will still be checking emails, but saying no to any big projects. And I will be journaling. I booked a few days in the countryside with my family. And trying to reflect and see what I might want to work on next. So I don't know yet.

Do you have brothers and sisters?

Yes, we're 4.

4? Is it— where are you in the order? Like, what are you?

I'm the second one. I have a big half-brother who's like 10 or 12 years older than me. And then there's me, my little sister, and my little brother who are younger.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah. And do you all live in London or do you live somewhere else?

No, we're all over the place. My sister lives in Seoul in Korea.

Wow.

She's been there for the past 10 years. She's fluent in Korean. My little brother is in Austria and my big brother is in Belgium.

Wow. So you guys are all over the place.

Yeah.

Because I was thinking about that too. So you grew up in Paris and then when did you move to United States? Was it when you joined Google or I might have missed, I might be forgetting here. Did you go to college in the United States?

No, I went to college in France, and I first moved to the US for a 6-month internship with a wine exporter, a French wine exporter, when I could barely speak English. I was 21, and it was very funny because at the time I didn't understand why I got the job. My English was so bad. And then once I got there, I realized that they were hiring for that. They were looking for young people who had a very thick French accent because they had realized that it helped with the sales. And so my job was to go around in wine stores in New York and I would talk about the wine and say, this is a very nice bottle from Bordeaux. Um, and so that was my first time in the US and this is where I learned English. I really used those 6 months to, I worked really, really hard to, you know, I kept asking people, how do you pronounce this? How do you say this? And, uh, and this is when I then applied for a job at Google and I interviewed and then I started working there later.

What was it, what was it like for you? Because I think that's a huge thing of being in the United States versus, um, in France, like culturally it's, it's so different.

It's so different, but at the same time, New York, at least, which I know is not the United States, felt like home very quickly. I think because a lot of people are not from there. And, uh, I, when I landed, I, I arrived in the US, they lost my suitcase. So I arrived with nothing in the US and I was at a bus stop, completely lost, no idea where I should go. And a stranger came to me and asked if I needed any help and then took the bus and walked me to my hotel. And just that experience with— to me, that would not happen in France. Nobody would talk to you on the street if you were just standing there. And so I'm very, very grateful that I got to experience the US first in New York. It was an amazing experience.

Yeah.

Remember when we were in London? I mean, Paris, Kevin? Because to me, it was kind of like Paris was like an old New York City, like it's old world, but it was very hustle and bustle. And I remember walking to a little coffee shop in the morning and there was garbage trucks out just like you would see anywhere else. And, you know, it's a city. It's an old city.

No, I think—

No, I know. But it just seemed very much like it was different than I thought it would be. It wasn't like going to Rome and having old, you know, cobbled streets and things like that.

It was just, you know, it's old world, but it was modern. It's just like, it's like London too. Like London's not far. Some of these big cities, they all kind of— you have tons of different people from a lot of places. I think like London and New York City are so similar because they're both financial hubs of the world and it's go, go, go on a lot of stuff. But it's also very interesting, the difference of London versus the United States of like what people do, like socializing. Like a lot of people go to the pubs right after work on different things and it's not open as late versus the United States. I feel like people all go out really late at night.

Seems like they eat so much healthier in London too. I thought the food was very healthy compared to our country.

This is something I've noticed every time I visit the US. I can tell that my body is not really happy with the food. And I think it's because we're spoiled. We have really good, very strong, very strict regulations in Europe when it comes to additives, when it comes to MGOs and all of that. And so I, yeah, in the US, I feel like, which is kind of sad, but you kind of have to go to Whole Foods or places like these if you want to make sure that your food is organic, whereas that's kind of the default in Europe.

Oh, it definitely makes such a difference too, because there's different parts of the United States, like as you go out more west where, you know, there's a lot more healthy options, I think, like the stuff that's around, like if you're in Colorado or California or places like that, there's a lot more focus on sustainability, healthy foods, healthy lifestyle, not just not healthy lifestyle as much, I guess, but it is like that, but I think that's everywhere, but it's much more, takes much more concerted effort if you live in a place people call them food deserts of trying to get, like, have local or organic produce. And it makes a huge difference. You feel better. That's why a lot of times, like, I like cooking. It gets really busy at times and it's hard to do, but cooking at home is so much better. I always just, to me, it's more of a luxury cooking at home, taking the time to make your meal because when you eat out, like, I feel like a lot of times they use so much different stuff that your body doesn't feel good after.

They do it because they want to make it taste good. So that's why. Yeah, they use all the oils and stuff and then like my stuff.

Like, I feel like my brain after that, you have that fog versus when you eat clean.

I actually interviewed Ron Finley for my book. Uh, he is called the Gary LaGardener, and he started this entire movement when he realized that he had to drive several miles in order to be able to buy fresh produce. And when I interviewed him, it really blew my mind. As for my European brain, it was really hard for me to imagine that you would have to drive for so long. Just to buy fresh produce.

Yeah, I thought it was really interesting with him too of just starting out by doing it like right in that curb space or by the sidewalk. And then of course, you know, the city regulation. Yeah. That's, that reading that part was really funny as an American because that's so true. There's, whenever you're doing anything, there's so many different places. There's these things called HOAs even, or it's the city. Where you do anything and then there's someone who will bring up the regulations and not want you to do it, even though that's like, I don't look, it's only a net positive thing to be using that versus just money.

But it's an incredible story that it actually happened, that they would allow other people to do it. I could see him doing it, but then to let other people do it, you know, is really almost hard to believe.

I think it's fascinating too, what can start Like he's an example too. When you just kind of do things, you don't, that doesn't, the main focus there doesn't have to, I think that's what's key too, is that not key, but when you just do something and it's kind of a side project or you don't have like this being successful, like your identity tied to that, like gives you a lot more freedom and exploration to try to do that. And it can turn into something that might also benefit your main business or main thing you're doing, which is really cool. Yeah.

Yeah, well, he did it with the intent of nobody watching, you know.

Yes. Yeah. And, and allowing yourself to, to try these things, even if they don't fit or align with whatever you were working on, or you're currently working on, because I think that's another trap, just linked to what you just mentioned, doing it as if nobody was watching is that we might wonder, I'm, I'm a surgeon, I'm a lawyer, I'm a whatever it is that your identity is, what are people going to think if I start this weird gardening project, or if I start this other thing. And so, and I think there is actually a lot of power and possibilities in doing these things that have nothing to do with what you're currently working on.

But then you get back to peer pressure, you know, like, what do people think? And how will they react? It's just like getting on social media and, you know, the negative comments start coming in. And then it, you know, crushes a lot of people because they don't want to deal with people criticizing them, you know, and Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of things.

And I, I think just doing things is so important. I bet it was extremely hard, not extremely hard maybe, but I bet it was hard probably to go back to school. You talked about it, but you were probably late 20s at that point, or maybe 30 when you went and got a neuroscience degree. Like some people would be like, what are you doing? You're going to school now? I think, I think with a lot of these things, it is peer pressure, whether we, we, we all think we're immune, like we're free thinking and but there's a lot of pressures on us all the time and we're conforming without fully understanding it. Maybe.

Yeah, 100%. And this is why, again, I think it's never really about getting rid of that automatic response that we have. This is completely normal. We're social animals. And if you think about our ancestors from an evolutionary perspective, being rejected by the group meant death. And so for us, It's normal. Our brain haven't evolved that much. We want to be accepted. We want to feel like we belong. And that means that we might feel scared to try new things that might not be accepted by other people around us, where we're not going to be part of the tribe anymore. And so I think it's important to just first acknowledge that that response is completely natural. There's nothing bad about this response, but then once you've had this response, also knowing that you have this agency, you have this ability To say, okay, I noticed that this is the response that I have, but if this is something I'm sufficiently curious about, excited about, I'm still going to make space for it. And what does that look like to explore this idea or this project in a way that is small enough that it is just, as you said, it's just an experiment, it's just a side project, it might not work out, and that's okay. I just wanna give it a try.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate having you on. It was awesome talking to you. And for everyone watching or listening, her book is called Tiny Experiments. Obviously, we'll put this in the show notes. And is there anything else you'd want to leave people with before we end?

I guess just a question based on our conversation and everything we explored, what might be a first tiny experiment that you might want to explore. Yep.

So think about your tiny experiment that you could explore today. And if you enjoyed any of this, this is just barely touching the surface of everything that's in Anne-Laure's book. It's a really great book and definitely check it out. So yeah.

Thank you so much. It's got me thinking about my experiment.