How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World with Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Hey everyone, it's Adrienne here. I want to take a moment to tell you all about my brand new book, Decisions that How to Make Decisions in a World of Endless Choice. So it is estimated that the average person now makes around 35,000 decisions each day. We are living in the age of abundance. We have more choice than ever before. So in my new book, Decisions that Matter, I explore how the choices we make, big and small, have the power to shape our lives. So whether you're stuck overthinking a career move, deciding whether to end a relationship, or simply navigating the overwhelming choices of modern life, then this book is here to help. It's full of practical strategies, personal stories, and some expert insights to show you how to make decisions with clarity and confidence. So if you're an overthinker, if you are indecisive, then this book is for you. Decisions that Matter is available now for pre order. So please do go and pre order. There's a link in the show notes and it is published publishing February 20th. Thank you so much for your support. Let's get in to the Podcast. Welcome to the Power Hour. I'm Adrienne Adamy, Wellness coach, keynote speaker and author. Each week I speak to a variety of guests from business founders to Olympic athletes, leading coaches, change makers and innovators to find out their daily habits, rules to live by, their lessons learned, as well as what motivates them. Personally, I'm on a mission to encourage and inspire, so I hope that the Power Hour podcast will help you to achieve your personal and professional goals. Welcome back to the Power Hour Podcast. Today I'm joined by an award winning entrepreneur, neuroscientist and world leading expert on mindful productivity and systematic curiosity, Anne Lure lecomph. Ann Lure has a breadth of experience and knowledge. She is the founder of Nest Labs where her popular weekly newsletter has over 100,000 subscribers who are eager to learn more about adaptability and curiosity. So today we have got so many things to talk about, including her new book, Tiny how to Live Freely in a Goal Obsessed World and la. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me Adrian.

As I said, lots of things to talk about. I was lucky enough to receive an early PDF copy of your new book. So as I was going through it I was just so many questions, so many thoughts. I was writing down so many notes. I've got them all in front of me. But before we dive into all of my notes and my questions right there in the title, Live Freely in a Goal Obsessed world. That's really where I want to start this conversation with this idea of being goal obsessed. Why so many of us, myself included maybe, are goal obsessed. I definitely think in my personal and professional life I have used goal setting, the science of goal setting and having a North Star to achieve lots of different things. But when I read that, I thought, there's more to it. So can you talk to us a little bit about that? Why are we living in a goal obsessed world and is this a blessing and a curse?

I'm so glad you're asking about this, because that was the inspiration for this book. I mostly wrote this book for my past self and to be honest, my present self as well, because I still do struggle with those questions. I'm very ambitious. I want to have a positive impact on the world. I want to feel like I'm waking up in the morning and working on something that actually makes sense, that is making a positive contribution. And because of that, I have lived most of my life and I've made most of my choices in my career based on what I call linear goals. And linear goals are goals that have a specific endpoint, a milestone, a definition of success, and whether you get there or you don't get there. But it has a very binary vision of what it looks like to be successful in life. Those types of goals are driving most of our decisions. They're really driving our lives.

Yes, I'm nodding along because I'm kind of thinking about it in the way that I described, you know, I'm that person. Anyone who's listened to this podcast for a long time will know that, you know, it's kind of maybe in each season of my life, I might be working on a professional goal. Then I might be turn my attentions towards a training goal. I might train for a new marathon. And exactly as you said, I have a date in the diary. I have three or four months to train. I get to the finish line, I've achieved something, and then I look to the next thing and then of course there is some merit in doing that. But I think that, as you rightly said, the binariness of the nature of did you achieve it or not? I think maybe the way I approach it sometimes is I'll give myself like a ballpark. I call it like the 80% rule. And as long as I'm 80% there, I'm like, okay, that's a quote. Success. But what about those goals that we don't achieve? What about those goals that we're not even 50% of the way there, or they just keep rolling on year after year. And you've had this goal for 10 years, but you've never got it. How do we start to think about those goals? And is that where the binary yes or no, hit or miss, is that where that comes in?

Yeah, exactly. That's the issue, right? Is that with the binary yes or no, either you succeed or you don't succeed. The problem is that if you succeed, you're very often disappointed, realizing that happiness was not hiding just behind that milestone and you're still the same person you are, and you're now chasing the next goal or. Or you fail, and then you're also obviously disappointed. So it's really a recipe for disappointment. So that's why I advocate for focusing on the process and the data you're collecting along the way rather than the actual outcome. And this is what I call having an experimental mindset. Because if you think about a scientist, when they conduct an experiment, they don't look at the results and feel like, oh, my God, those are not the results I expected. This is a failure. I'm a failure. Right. Whatever the results they get, they look at the data and they ask, what can I learn from this? They feel like, oh, that's interesting. That was not what I expected. Is there anything I can extract, any information I can extract from this result that I can then take and apply to my next experiment? And this is really the mindset shift that allows you in life to still accomplish big things, to explore your ambitions, to explore your creativity, to be productive, to do positive, good things, exciting things in life without focusing too much on that binary outcome.

Sure. And so if someone's listening to this and thinking, oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense. The tiny experiments and the kind of experimental mindset, I love that. How can they start to actually implement it? How can they start to actually live this in their lives? Because I'm sure you'll hear this and many people will say, my life is so busy, I have all these things to do. My work, my career, my kids, all these things going on. And sometimes having a goal can kind of give them some clarity. But this idea of, well, stop and experiment and be more curious. And we hear that, we think, oh, that sounds amazing, but when and how do I actually do it?

Yeah, I absolutely hear you on the kind of the idea that having a goal can help you create this container, this structure where you feel like you're making sure that you're going to dedicate some amount of time and effort to something that you want to accomplish. And this is why I think experiments are great, because it's not really just about, oh, I'm just going to follow my curiosity and see where it leads me. Experiments are actually quite structured because you say, this is what I'm going to do, and I'm going to do it for this specific amount of time. I'm going to conduct this number of trials. This is what a scientist would say, right? We're going to conduct three or four or five trials. We're going to collect this data, and then we're going to analyze this data. So it's mostly a change in mindset, not in terms of you're still going to show up, it is still going to require a little bit of effort. But instead of judging the success of the activity based on whether you manage to have this very binary outcome, the only success you're aiming for is learning something new, whether about yourself or about the world. So how to do it? And that's why I called the book Tiny Experiments. It doesn't have to be big. You can go for something quite small. And you say, okay. Instead of saying, I'm going to run this big marathon, for example, you say, okay, for the next month, every Monday and every Thursday, I'm going to go and I'm going to run for 30 minutes. And after I'm done with these runs, I'm going to take a couple of notes, couple of bullet points, could be in your notes, on your phone, can be in a journal. And I'm going to write down how it felt, the kind of metrics that were useful to me, maybe where I was running, my energy levels, et cetera. And I'm just going to complete that experiment, and after those weeks, I can look back, analyze the data and see what worked for me, what didn't work for me. Do I want to keep going? Do I want to try something a little bit more ambitious? But there's no binary outcome here. And it can feel a little bit uncomfortable because we like those binary outcomes. They give us the illusion of progress and the illusion of certainty. But if you keep on conducting tiny experiments like this, you're going to look back in a year and two years and you're going to be amazed at the progress you made. And you're going to be so surprised because this is the kind of progress that you could not have predicted because it's not based on those linear goals that you have decided in advance.

Yes, and I really want to loop back to something you said that really stood out. It's very important, the illusion of certainty. Now, I talk about this a lot as somebody who I think maybe, maybe growing up and my younger self had some kind of radical self belief in my abilities and in how capable I was to kind of forge the life on my own terms. And I know that's not the case for everyone, but I think maybe I was just young and naive and I didn't have certainty, I didn't have all the answers, I didn't have a backup plan. But I definitely had this idea that like, okay, I can figure it out, but that was probably 20 years ago. And I'd say as I've got older and maybe had some more quote, unquote success in life and in work, I think it becomes more important. It almost feels like the stakes get higher and it's harder to have uncertainty, it's harder to have risk. And as much as possible, I think many of us seek certainty. Before I even start something, I want to figure it out. I want to know the next steps. I want to make a plan, I want to set goals. Why is uncertainty so important? Why is embracing uncertainty and understanding that the messy unknown can actually lead to good things?

Yeah, it's really fascinating because when you know how our brains work, they're actually designed to reduce uncertainty as much as possible, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Just think about us in the jungle trying to survive. The more certainty you have, the more information you have, the more you know about your environment, about what maybe lurk in the shadows, the better it is and the higher your chances of survival. Right. And so this is great for survival, but in today's society, where things are changing all the time, where there are many new opportunities that keep on arising and new potential connections that you could make with people, new projects you could try, new ways to explore your creativity. When you're overly focused on certainty, when you're overly focused on pure survival, you're going to ignore all of those different alternative paths, all of those things that you could have been exploring, because you're really, you're focused on having this straight line in front of you where you know where you're going. So that's the reason why if, if you just want to survive, and I can, I really want to acknowledge this, is that it is a privilege to be in a position where you can start exploring those different paths. Right? It means that you're secure in other areas of your life. But very often people are actually secure enough, but they still keep on acting and behaving and thinking and making Decisions as if they were in survival mode. So really embracing uncertainty is about almost telling yourself, telling your brain, hey, we're okay, we're safe, there's nobody out there, like hiding in a bush waiting to eat us and kill us. Right. We're, we can explore, we can try new things, we can take risks, we can explore our creativity.

Yeah. And I think those fears. So maybe it used to be, as you described so wonderfully, being in the jungle, something's going to come and kill you. Maybe that's not the case. But in the modern world, those fears have maybe been replaced, but they're still real. So, for example, somebody thinking about, okay, a career change, should I leave my job? And they're looking at all these options and then maybe someone, they've had an interview somewhere else. These are kind of like real life problems where someone goes, but that's uncertain. I don't know the situation, I don't know organization. But here where I am is certain. So those kind of things. I think the additional fears now are things like, you know, if it doesn't work out, what do I do if I share online? Because we now live in this digital world, oh, I've just started this new role, or I've just moved country, or I've just. Whatever else we've announced to the world in this announcement culture, people are going to see that. And then what if it doesn't work out? And they see that it. They see that people kind of have visibility of my failures. So I think those fears of you, of uncertainty are still there, but they're just different. And I think, exactly as you said, if we can kind of understand that, okay, those things might happen. You know, it might not turn out exactly how you liked, or there might be challenges in the, in there, but you'll still figure it out. You won't, it won't be the end of your life. Hopefully. You know, it's not going to be, it's not going to be life or death. But we kind of approach it and treat it the same way.

Yeah, absolutely. And in the book, I talk about something uniquely human, something that we can do that other animals cannot do and that can be very, very useful here. And this ability is called metacognition. That just means thinking about, thinking. We're the only animal that is able to observe our own thoughts and emotions and then think about them. And this is very helpful in this case because we can observe the fear. We can look at it and ask ourselves, okay, how valid is this fear? And we should really do this without self blame or self judgment. It's really just about observing the fear, acknowledging it and understanding that it absolutely makes sense. Our brain is just trying to protect us and just trying to say, hey, we're very safe here. Why do we want to go and explore this different job? Why do we want to explore this different career, announce this new project or learn this new skill? But thanks to metacognition, thanks to this uniquely human ability, we can look at it and say, thank you, brain. I understand what you're trying to do here. I understand you're trying to protect me. But I do want to explore this new thing. I do want to see if I'm capable of getting out of my comfort zone and exploring this new skill or this new project. So really I think the key word here is being aware and being intentional with how we relate to our emotions, including fear. Being able to acknowledge those emotions, but also being able to work with them and still make decisions aligned with our ambitions and what we want to explore in our lives without letting the emotions guide everything in an automatic way.

Yes, absolutely. Metacognition. And like you said, being aware of how you feel about something and then that I guess layer deeper of understanding why, why do I feel like this about. About that. And you could do that right? Through journaling, you could do that through talking therapy. You know, there's lots of ways to approach that, I think.

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3 month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed Flow Hacker 35 gigabytes of network busy taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com. You Also quite early on in the book, you talk about three. Three mechanisms, these three isms that I wanted to discuss with you. So there's cynicism, escapism and perfectionism. Now perfectionism is something that I've talked about in detail on this podcast with, with different experts in the past. But I've never really considered the other two as in the same way. So I'd really like to kind of focus on those two with you right now. So maybe we'll start off with cynicism. You know the, the example I think of is when someone maybe comes to me for advice and I say okay because I'm quite a problem solving oriented person. So I'm not always the most self, I'm not always the most compassionate. How do you feel? I'm the person that says, okay, what are we going to do? Here's the plan. And sometimes you're met with kind of oh no, that will never work. Oh, I tried that once before, it didn't work. And this kind of, this shutdown straight away, a lack of enthusiasm and it used to, used to really infuriate me because I'd be like, come on, you've got to be open to this. But some people I think are naturally drawn much more towards cynicism. So could you talk to us about that? Why do some people innately, even the person listening to this might think, oh yeah, that's me thinking that'll never work. And maybe being cynical before they even start the experiment.

Yeah, it's really another protection mechanism that we have. So a useful way to think about it and where you can place those, including cynicism and perfectionism and escapism, is to think about them in terms of level of curiosity and ambition. And in the case of cynicism, because we feel like the world is a hostile place where nothing really good can happen to us and it just feels safer to not hope at all. It just feels safer to abandon both our curiosity and our ambitions to say there's no point trying, it's not going to work to just shut down any type of advice that might open a door to something that might work because we're so scared that we're going to be hurt if we start hoping and then it doesn't work out, that we feel like it's better to just not even start exploring that possibility of success for ourselves. So it's interesting because it does come from a desire to protect ourselves, but because of that we're really making ourselves miserable.

Yeah. And thank you. Because I think even listening to you say that with a more compassionate approach, which is actually a response to protection and fear because I'll be honest with you, Anla, I was thinking about my own mother. My own mother is somebody who, she has always had that attitude to life which is if someone suggests, oh well, this could help or this could, this could make the situation better, or have you thought about trying this? She's always shuts it, that will never work. And it almost this idea that she's exhausted all options and it kind of, it's frustrating. Obviously, if it's someone in your life that you care about. And I'm sure in professional settings, I'm sure it's the same. But I think hearing you say it like that, it's like actually understanding why does she have that reaction? Why does she every time shut it down and go, no, no, no. When it's almost like you said, it's making you, you can see it makes you miserable. And it's almost like you're choosing to stay in that difficult misery rather than being open to change. But I'm sure it's. Yeah, it's difficult to do that, especially for people who maybe have been living that way their whole lives.

Absolutely. And especially if they've had to go through a lot of challenges. That's the way we learn. And the more we have experienced trying new things and maybe it didn't work out, maybe we didn't get the support we needed, maybe things were for some time very difficult. And the more we start internalizing the idea that because it's always been like that, it will always be like that in the future as well, which is obviously not true. But it's very hard. And it does take a lot of self work to be able to break those patterns and to let go of those scripts and really start reimagining what is possible for us.

And so escapism, so I'm sure people will know the word, but how does this also relate as a mechanism?

So again, thinking about curiosity and ambition, so cynicism, you let go of both curiosity and ambition. In the case of escapism, you are curious, actually, you're open minded, you do want to try new things, but you don't really want to work too hard for them. So you tend to be attracted by opportunities to explore new experiences without wanting to push yourself too hard. That's escapism. And so those are the kind of people who will at this point in their lives. And I think this is also why it's very important that I do say in the book those are not fixed personality traits. And we might switch from one to the other depending on what protection mechanism resonates with us the most at a particular time in our lives. Right. But so when we're in that escapist mindset, we might want to go and travel all the time, partying all the time, or even shopping, like going on online shopping websites and buying a lot of things just as a way to have this little hit of dopamine, feeling good about ourselves, feeling like we're doing something new, that we're feeling alive, that life is interesting and full of experiences. But without wanting to work too hard.

Gosh, I feel like what you're describing was kind of me at the end of, end of last year. And I think even if you're a hard working person and you've, you know, had a project, for example, writing a book or, you know, I've been doing that, so obviously that's hard work. But there is that feeling sometimes and I think maybe even in our culture now, so many people that you speak to will say that they're exhausted, they're burnt out and all, they might feel like they've worked really hard. And this escapism piece, as you said, like, let me just go shopping online and buy some nice stuff. Let me watch something on TV or let me like exactly the travel thing, that is me. Anytime I've had a tough week, I will say to my husband, oh my gosh, let's just book some flights and let's just go and work remotely from somewhere. Because the idea that you're going to escape to and the weather doesn't help, but the idea that you're going to escape to this new place and yeah, have a cocktail and just relax, you can just forget that that pile of work is there. So I think even hard working people, and I think of myself as, you know, an ambitious hard working person, escapism is, I think I'm suppose in a small dose, it's not so bad, but I think it's creeping into our daily lives. Maybe something to consider there in terms of how we actually structure our lives in the first place.

Absolutely. And as I mentioned, that's why I was saying those are not personality traits and we can retreat to these whenever we need them depending on the current circumstances of our lives. And I think it's very important. What you noted is that in small doses there's no problem with a little bit of escapism from time to time. And it's really again, this keyword of awareness, being aware that right now you need a little bit of escapism because you've been working really, really hard. But just making sure that this is not your default. Also making sure that you're doing this with intention. You know that right now you need the break. You just want to turn your mind off for a little bit and do something that doesn't require a lot of effort. And it's fine, it's a little treat almost that you deserve because you've been working really hard. But if you start noticing in your life that this is a pattern that keeps on happening, that you always need to escape, because this is a very transparent word. It really means escape from something. So what are you escaping from? If you had this really big project, you're a bit burned out and tired and you need to escape for a little bit, that's okay. But if every week, every month, or every weekend, because this is the reality of a lot of people, every weekend they just want to escape, maybe there's something deeper to start thinking about in terms of how, as you say, their life is structured.

Gosh, lots to think about. This is kind of related to the uncertainty part that we talked about already. So let's say someone's trying to open their mindset to this experiential thing and they're like, okay, I'm going to try something a little bit different. They're inspired by the conversation and they start applying this. Obviously, it's inevitable that sometimes we make a choice or make a decision that is followed by doubt. And we go, actually, you know, last week I was feeling motivated, I was feeling inspired by allure, but now that was a bad idea. So when doubt props up, as it inevitably does, is that a signal that we need to pay attention to? Is that kind of like a seed that's worth revisiting? Or is it just, I think, you know, as a neuroscientist, is there something there that's just. Actually, that's just a mechanism for further exploration? How does. What role does doubt play?

Yes, I always say that doubt is just an opportunity for self discovery. And if you take it this way, then it's actually amazing. Whenever you feel like you have a doubt, you can look at it as a potential research question, just like a scientist. Oh, I thought A, but now maybe it's B. Or I was 100% sure that it would go this way, but then maybe I had a conversation with a friend who mentioned they went about it a different way. Or maybe I listened to this podcast and I learned about this new way of seeing the world and now it changes everything in terms of the priorities that I had. This is amazing. This means you're living life, you're learning, and you're growing. And so I would really try to reimagine your relationship with doubt and welcome it. Every time you have doubt, this is great. It means that you discovered something you were sure of and you're not so sure about anymore. That means you're growing.

Yeah, that's really exciting. I like that approach. And so for anyone listening to this who maybe feels right now, you know, a few months into the year, obviously at the start of the year, often people do set big goals or small goals, but this is the kind of time where maybe there is doubt, maybe they're reflecting and thinking, okay, is this the right thing? How do I continue and keep the momentum and the motivation? And I think so much of the work that I look at and the advice that I see out there is really focused on big overhaul, you know, big change. So at the moment, I definitely think I see a lot of people kind of saying, whether it's in the space around manifestation and visualization, I'm not to say that either of those things are bad. I think they're tools that are really useful and I've used myself. But they never say, visualize the next step. They're always like, visualize the final big dream. And it always feels really big. And it feels kind of like you have to just overhaul your whole life. Whereas your explanation of tiny experiments, it doesn't feel like that at all. So why is it so important, I suppose for us to start small and if someone is feeling stuck and thinking, gosh, I've got to overhaul my whole life to have the life that I want, what is your advice to them?

Yeah, the big problem I have with the visualization in general is that you can only visualize what you think might be possible today based on who you are today. And so in a way which is kind of paradoxical, by having those big visions of what the future might be like, you're actually limiting the range of opportunities that could present themselves to you. Ideally, what you want is to create a life, to design a life where when you look back in a few years, you're in a place that you would have not even been able to imagine, you would have not been able to visualize because it's just so different, so amazing and so out of what you thought was possible for yourself that there was no way you could visualize it. So that's really one thing. And this is why I encourage people to maybe let go of this idea that you need to visualize this version of yourself in the future and instead really focus on a day to day basis. How can I live a life of curiosity? How can I live a life of connection? How can I live a life of exploration where at the end of each day, and this is success, at the end of each day, I have learned something new and that could be something about myself. Myself, that could be something about my relationships, that could be something about the way I work, about the things I'm curious about. That could be something about the world. But going to bed every day, feeling like you've grown in a way and that's it. And without knowing what is the direction, just knowing that you're growing, and then you will become the person that you're supposed to become, not necessarily the person you want to become. Which is great, because honestly, if I look back, the person I wanted to become when I was 20 might not be the person that I am today. And I think that's great. I actually like the person I've become today. So trying to think about it this way, that's, to me, the best argument for thinking small and for thinking next steps and what I can do today in the present moment versus projecting yourself in a future, that is a little bit of an illusion, if we're being honest.

Yeah. And I hadn't considered the first point you made, which really says, you're so right. You know, we all think we can visualize and imagine if we try really hard, anything. But actually, you're completely right. If somebody has never. I don't know, let's say you've never seen water and someone says, visualize yourself in water, you can't, because you don't know what it is. So I think that's a really good point. Is that in a way, like you said, paradoxically, we think we're living this abundant, limitless, visualized life, but it's limited and constrained by our own minds, which is. Yeah, that's something I'll take away and think about a lot, actually. Yeah.

And this is also why, by keeping on exploring, by keeping on connecting with people, learning new things, listening to podcasts, reading books, and living life, really, you keep on expanding the range of possibilities. You keep on expanding what you can visualize, what you're able to imagine, and that can only happen with this constant input of new experiences, of new experience. Experiments.

Yeah. And could you give us maybe a real, tangible example of a tiny experiment that either you yourself have done that's been transformational or maybe somebody else has that could. That you could share with us?

Yeah, absolutely. I want to give you two examples, because I think it's very important to share an example where it really didn't work out in the way I expected it to as well. So one experiment that did work for me that was really helpful was at the beginning of last year, I decided to experiment with meditation. So meditation is something that I had tried so many times in my life, and it had never worked for me. You know the apps where they tell you Here are the 10 days of onboarding. Complete those 10 minutes per day for 10 days, and then you can start the program. I had never managed to go past, I think, three or four days. I just couldn't do it, couldn't sit still. Didn't work for me. So I designed an experiment where I said, I'm going to meditate for 15 minutes every day for 15 days, but I'm going to do it in public. So I announced it on my social media and I posted every day, and I said, I did it today. And I even had a Google Doc that was open to anyone where I put my notes. So instead of putting the notes in my phone, they were public. Also, I wrote a few bullet points, and it was stuff like, I felt really itchy today, and is that normal? And it's really hard to stay focused when I do this. And people would leave comments and give me advice and share podcasts and resources, and it was absolutely amazing. So I finished that experiment, and by the end of it, I'm not a perfect regular meditator. I don't meditate every day, but now it's part of my toolkit. And when I'm a bit anxious, this is something that now I do. I will sit down for 15 minutes, close my eyes, and meditate. So that was amazing. Another one I did was more around creativity. It was around YouTube. I had a lot of friends who had started YouTube channels, and I felt like, okay, let me try that too. That looks really fun. I'm going to create videos. So I designed a tiny experiment where I said, for the next six months, every week I will publish a video. And in that case, I actually completed the experiment. So you would say that's successful, right? I got quite a few subscribers. You would say that's successful. But I looked at the data, all of the data, including my notes, including my journals, and I realized that every time I had to sit down to record a video, I felt miserable. I was super anxious. I hated having to talk to a lifeless camera with zero feedback, zero conversation, just me talking to myself. And so when I finished that experiment, I decided to stop. I stopped YouTube because that is what an experimental mindset is about as well. It's not just about external signs of success. It's about, again, that metacognition aspect, looking at how you feel your emotions and honoring this, taking that into account as a source of data and as something you can use as a compass to make decisions in terms of what you want to work on in the future.

I love that example. So Much. And I think where you've talked about, you know, a scientific approach and approaching experiments like a scientist, it can sometimes, I can definitely lean into being quite a strategic person and I sometimes overlook the feeling element, you know, that you just described. How did I feel? I was like, you know, overwhelmed by it, miserable by it. Sometimes I think the success metric of especially I think for people who maybe they're quite competent at something, so therefore they do get that instant feedback that they're good at it. And other people are like, wow, you're really good at that thing. You should keep doing it. And I think maybe for parents, you know, I'm a parent and for many others, if you're listening to like the cues of how your child actually feels about the thing, regardless of whether they're good at it or not, let's say they're really good at maths or they're really good at swimming, they're really good at the piano. Obviously things have challenges, but I think if you're not doing, if you're not enjoying something for a very long time, not just like, you know, the one week they don't want to go, but for a long time. I think it's just so important to kind of acknowledge that that is just as important as the other success metrics because I think the way many of us approach that is kind of, well, you know, how do you feel? Do you like it? Do you not? It's kind of an, you know what I mean? It's like on the periphery of the decision making rather than being central to it.

Yeah, I think it's as you said, it's very important whether it's in parenting, parenting kids, but also when you think about it, it is about parenting yourself as well, really thinking about what are the factors that are important to me, what are the things that contribute to both my well being and my success. And also knowing that if you want to be successful in a sustainable way, most things in life that matter take time. So you're in a way because a lot of people think about self care versus productivity as two separate things. But by taking the time to look at all of that data, including how you're feeling, including your well being, including your mental health, you are actually more likely to be successful over the long term.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking now as you're talking about like different tiny experiments that I'm going to try and conduct for myself over the next few weeks and months, I think when it comes to physical training, I've kind of trained in the same way for years and years and years. You know, I've always enjoyed running, so I've always signed up for races. And actually at the start of this year, I was like, maybe I'm going to do something different. And I was talking to a friend who's a coach, and he was talking to me about strength training and all these things. And I kind of thought. And I. And I had maybe been thinking about it too much in this binary way, as I do, which was like that it almost becomes part of your. For me, anyway, things become part of my identity. So right now, you know, I'm a runner. I've been a runner for 15 years. I run marathons. That's my identity. So if I don't do that for a year and I suddenly start going to the gym and lifting weights, which I've never really done, it's this binary thing. Whereas, actually, I think based on this conversation, I'm going to take it much more as a tiny experiment and maybe I'm going to do four weeks, do some sessions, get the feedback and see, okay, how does this. How does this impact my energy levels? How does this impact my mood? Do I enjoy the sessions? You know, different. It's a different environment. You know, going into a gym with other people and I'm a social person versus running by myself in the cold. So tiny experiment for me to try over the next few weeks.

Yes. And the great thing is that if you think about it like a scientist, like that, exactly as you described, you really remove the idea of success and failure because you're just going to learn something new by the end of the four weeks. If you learn that you hated it, that, that was horrible. You don't like going to the gym. Yes. You're a runner. You know what, actually, isn't that really nice to have this confirmation and feel like, actually I found my thing, it's running. And that's okay. I don't need to go to a gym. I don't need to add this thing. And if after the. At the end of the four weeks, you loved it and it was a lot of fun, then you've managed to discover something new and you've added more depth and more diversity to the range of experiences that you have in life. So whatever the outcome, there's no failure, you learn something new.

Yes. Thank you so much. So if anyone's listening and they're thinking, oh, my gosh, this sounds great, I want to find more things like this and more of your work. Other than the book, which of course is out on the 4th of March. Where can people find more of you and your work?

The best way to follow my work is to go on nestlabs.com and subscribe to my newsletter. I send it every single week. And I talk about a lot of the topics that we discussed together today. Mindful productivity, ambition for curious people, experimenting with your life and all of those kind of things.

Well, I, for one, I'm going to be subscribing today because I love newsletters. And what I tend to do is like when they come in during the week, if I'm busy, I just star, star, star. And then at the weekend, oh my gosh, it's my favorite thing now is to sit down, go to my star, find the newsletters that I want to read. They feel like personal, but also kind of like going to a magazine or a newspaper, but they feel more personal. So that's something I'm really enjoying. If you're not a newsletter letter person, newsletter subscriber, I highly encourage you to do it because you'll look forward to checking your inbox. It won't just be work requests and people needing things from you. Okay, so my final part of the show, I ask every single one of my guests to talk to me a little bit about their power hour. Now, of course, over the years, we've heard lots of different things and there isn't a right or wrong or a success or failure, but typically it's the first hour of each day. So I would love to know, what does the first hour of your day include and what time does your day start?

I wake up fairly early, usually around 6am Because I go to bed early and I make myself a cup of coffee and then I sit down with my journal. And I journal every single morning and I don't do it for a set amount of time. This is why I like waking up early also, because Sometimes it's just 10 minutes and I'm done. Sometimes I need an entire hour to just write and explore everything that's been on my mind. And after that, I will stretch for a little bit sometimes dance in my living room, put some music on, do a little bit of body movement, something to get me to feel awake and to feel connected to my body. Because a lot of my work is in my head. I'm a neuroscientist, right? So I spend a lot of time in front of my screen, writing, researching and writing. So to me, this embodied practice in the morning is very important. And that's my first hour of the day. A bit of journaling to connect to my thoughts and emotions and a bit of body movement and then I can start working. Great.

Sounds wonderful. And nice. And early because I'm also in that early crew. Early to bed Key point early to bed, early to rise. Not one of the kind of stay up late and get up early. So it's really nice to hear that. And thank you so much for joining for sharing so much with us today. I've really, really enjoyed this conversation.

Thank you so so much. This was amazing.

Thanks as always. I will be back next week with another episode, but if you have enjoyed this show then make sure you share it with somebody else. We will leave a link in the show notes if you so that you can get a copy of Ann Lewa's book Tiny how to Live Freely in a Goal Obsessed World. I'll be back next week. See you.

It's the Kia Season of New Traditions sales event, so don't just hang your own lights, venture out and look for the northern lights, drink cocoa on the beach or be a drive by karaoke caroler. Because every new Kia comes with a 10 year 100,000 mile limited powertrain warranty so you can take holidays to places they've never been. See your local Kia dealer or visit kia.com to learn more Kia movement that inspires. See Kia Dealer for warranty details.

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