Transforming PRODUCTIVITY with Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Hello and welcome to Transforming Worlds. In this episode, we talk to Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She's an award-winning neuroscientist and entrepreneur. Anne-Laure is the founder of Nest Labs, where her weekly newsletter is read by more than 100,000 curious minds. Her research at King's College London focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her upcoming book, Tiny Experiments, is a transformative guide for living a more experiential life, turning uncertainty into curiosity and carving a path of self-discovery. Previously, she worked at Google as an executive on digital health projects. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Forbes, Financial Times, and Wired. Tune in for an amazing conversation about neuroscience, experiments, and the transformative power we hold to bring newness, and curiosity into our world.

So hello and welcome, Anne-Laure. How are you today? I'm good.

How are you doing?

Oh, I'm excited to be speaking with you and about the tiny experiments we're about to conduct with one another. So tell us, what is transforming in your world right now?

Everything. I, at a professional level, I just finished my PhD studies and I am now thinking about what I want to do next. I'm also publishing a book, my very first book. At a personal level, I just bought a house and moved in with my partner, who we used to be long distance with for 3 years. And, uh, I'm really trying to figure out how to navigate all of this and using all of the tools that I have created over the years to apply to my own life, really.

Wow. Now we're gonna learn from that. I am sure about that. And, um, If you look at, of course, you're in the process of redefining a lot of that, but how would you tell us that your work is and what is it about?

My work is about helping ambitious people achieve their goals without sacrificing their mental health.

And you're doing amazing work at that because you also have a newsletter with Ness Labs, which has a huge following precisely because people are looking for this. What would you say, like, from the perspective of your audience, is that, that which they are trying to transform?

I write for people who are very similar to me. There's something a little bit selfish really in the way I write, because very often when I start writing an article, it starts from a question that I am asking myself. And very often these questions are around my relationship to work, around productivity, around creativity. We spend a lot of our time working, and the questions I'm exploring are all about how can we make that time meaningful? How can we grow? How can we discover more about ourselves through that work that we're doing, through all of this time that we're spending producing work?

Most people, when they're in that space, very much like in transformation, are very, very uncomfortable with change and anything that makes them feel uncertain. And this is something that you talk about a lot. What would you say is kind of the key to dealing with uncertainty?

It's going to sound simple when I say it, but it's one of those things where conceptually we're okay with the idea, but it's hard to apply, and it's really embracing that uncertainty. The challenge is that our brain is wired to try and resolve uncertainty as quickly as possible. And that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, because when you're in the jungle and everything wants to kill you or make you their next meal, knowing as much as possible about what's going to happen about your environment, having as much information as possible, this is going to help you survive, right? But in today's society, things are changing all the time. Something that you think is true one day might not be true the day after. The environment is changing. The rules are changing. People are changing. And so clinging to this illusion of certainty is actually not serving you.

And would you say then, from your perspective as a neuroscientist, that our brains have to change in order to do that? Because that's not the way they're wired. But then how do we get from A to B?

Well, we're very fortunate as a species, as human beings, that we have a prefrontal cortex that is very developed compared to other animals. So we don't need to change our brains, but we can learn tools so we can actually use a higher level of cognition to make decisions. So it's really all about anytime you have an automatic response, a response of fear, a response of anxiety, a response of trying to avoid uncertainty as quickly as possible, to use this power that we have as human beings that is a bit different than from other animals to pause and to ask ourselves, wait, Look, is something going to kill me or eat me here? No. So what response do I actually want to have in this time of change?

Does this in any way kind of relate to the work of the great Daniel Kahneman about thinking fast and slow and system 1 and system 2?

Yeah, that's the way to put it. A lot of neuroscientists have explored this, and this is absolutely related to this work, being able to switch from that other system where you're able to actually go a little bit slower and make decisions that are driven by rational thinking rather than by your automatic responses.

Wow. So essentially you would say that kind of the key to dealing with that is our post-rational ability. So the reflective ability, also something that Kahneman speaks about and that we as designers use a lot, the concept of the experiencing self and the narrating self. So being in the situation, but also being able to remove yourself from the situation into a more meta position and think about what's really happening here and what do I want to do about that. But that— to do that, that requires a lot of connection with your authenticity, a lot of— I don't know, I think almost spiritual, soul-like clarity that many of us are disconnected from. So How do we bridge that gap?

Yes, thanks for asking this because this is indeed something that is, that can be quite difficult, and especially in today's world that is very fast-paced and where we're encouraged to just do, do, do, do the next thing, be productive, be effective, creating space for you to, to stop and observe what's happening outside and also inside. There's a word for this in psychology that can be very helpful in order to practice this. It's called metacognition. And metacognition just means thinking about thinking. It's this ability to not just think the thoughts or feel the emotions, but also look at the thoughts, observe them, really, as you mentioned, place yourself a little bit outside, like an outside observer, and look at them without self-blame or self-judgment and just ask yourself, huh, what's going on here? And based on that, starting to make decisions. And something that I think is really important that is sometimes ignored in the cognitive neuroscience literature is, as I mentioned, the role of emotions as well.

Yeah.

It's not just your thoughts. Your emotions are also very valid, important signals that you should take into account in order to make those decisions. So making space to pause, making space for self-reflection, making space for metacognition, and taking into account both your thoughts and your emotions.

Yeah, I think this is like, it has an exponential quality to it because I think most people don't realize that we have so many neurons in our gut and in our hearts as well, and that there is so much intelligence within us that we can tap into. So emotions are frequently related anatomically to our gut, right? Especially when it comes to fear reactions. Typically, this is where it's, it's coming from, this, this, this flighty quality of wanting to react instead of responding, right? But how might people bring this into practice through tiny experiments in their everyday? Because you can't just do it. There's no switch you can flip, right? So you have to start embracing this curiosity, embracing this uncertainty, as you, as you talk about. What are things people might do to tap into that wisdom and to that sort of other brains that we also have?

So it all starts with observation, just like a scientist. And I know this can also be challenging, especially for people who like doing things, who like taking action. We just want to find a solution straight away, but I really urge anyone listening or watching to this to take a little moment before starting their first experiment to just observe. And the way I like to think about it is to picture yourself as an anthropologist, but for your own life. So imagine that just like an anthropologist that's going and studying a new culture they know nothing about, you're doing the same with your own life. So you take your little notepad, little notebook, and you walk around and you look at everything and you ask, why are people doing things this way? Why do they care about this thing? Why did he communicate in this way? Why does this feel hard? Why does this feel easy? Why do they spend their days in this way? And when you start doing this, you will start noticing that a lot of the decisions that you're making in your life are based on default assumptions, on what is called cognitive scripts that are kind of driving what you feel like is the normal thing to do, and you're not even questioning it. So you start with this and looking at those observations, you will start seeing that there might be different ways of doing things. So for example, let's say you look at your calendar and you say, you see that you have a weekly meeting with your team. That's normal, right? Everybody does that. Everybody has a weekly meeting with their team. But if you put the hat of an anthropologist, and you look at your calendar with fresh eyes, you might question this. What, why are we doing that? When did we decide that that was the norm? That in this culture, this is what we do, right? And you might start asking, what might a tiny experiment look like here? What is something different we could do here? And this is the seed that really plants a new way, that creates a new way for you to develop an experimental mindset.

Wow. So super interesting to unpack for this podcast because in our audience, there are also many creatives and designers. And we tend to fit more the archetype of the architect that you talk about, as opposed to the anthropologist, meaning that we are taught a craft and we are taught a process and we tend to then develop heuristics, so shortcuts in simple English, for doing it in our own way, or because we start learning what works and what doesn't work for us and for the type of projects that we're doing. And Somewhere along the way, we, we forget to ask these questions. So could you for us kind of compare and contrast the architect and the anthropologist?

Yes. So the architect tends to start from the top and going to the bottom. So you create structure, you say, this is where it goes. So for example, a way of organizing information for an architect would be to have folders where you say, this is this project, it's going to go in there. And I'm going to have my resources here. And it gives you a way to build a system within which you can create whatever it is that you want to create. When you're an anthropologist, and this is also an archetype that I called the gardener in my writing, it's more of a bottom-up approach. You just look at the way things are working, you follow your inspiration, you look at different connections, and you and see what emerges. What's interesting is that since I've written about those different archetypes, a misconception that a lot of people have is that you are either an architect or you are a gardener slash anthropologist. In reality, we can, we can switch between them depending on the projects, depending on the demands of our current situation and context and our priorities and our goals. They are situations in which it is very helpful to be an architect, to have that structure, to be very organized. In particular, when you're working with other people, for example, it's much easier to communicate and to agree on a timeline when we have this structure in place. But there are also times where it's better to let go of all of that structure and to go back to the soil, to the seeds, and see what could emerge here. Just forgetting about all of the rules and systems and structures that we have created for ourselves.

Yeah, I like that. I, I, I started very long ago working with what was called critical thinking and critical thinking tools. And one of the tools is called the 5 Whys. So you start asking why, like a toddler, until it's like you exhaust the why. And I think that this talk about situational archetypes is really interesting because we can be a kind of our own helpers, right?, right? So if we're in a situation and we're feeling stuck because we're getting too anthropological, like, you know, in design we use ethnographic tools as well. And so in ethnography, you also observe and you don't draw any conclusions until you're done observing. But at some point, you're like, it's enough, right? And understanding that kind of needs you to bring in your inner architect. And when you're structuring things and maybe you overstructure things, you need to bring in your inner gardener. So It seems like these roles are within us and can also be part of our tiny experiments to help us, you know, come into meetings. Like we sometimes come into Zoom with our AI note-taker. Maybe we can go into those meetings that are set by default into our calendars and say, okay, I'm going in as an architect, but I'm going to put my gardener to my right and my anthropologist to my left, and I'm going to bring them in to kind of help me I continue with this process of checking and rechecking and kind of regrounding because it's so hard to go against those defaults. Like your work seems almost countercultural for me at times. What is the feedback you're receiving on that, on the countercultural kind of rebellious, radical, different way of looking at things?

Well, the tagline of the book does say how to live freely in a goal-obsessed world. And, uh, I have gotten the feedback that it felt liberating for a lot of people to see that there was a different way of doing things. But yes, a lot of the questions that I get as well is, how do I implement those ideas in a world that was not designed for this way of working, of navigating challenges and uncertainty? And the answer that I give people is that is why I called it tiny experiments and not big experiments, because I do believe, and I've worked with thousands of students, that you can always find a little part of your life and of your work where you have that space for experimentation. And quite often, there are, yes, absolutely, some barriers and challenges in terms of what you can and cannot do in the work environments that you have, but there are also artificial barriers that we create for ourselves just because we're a bit scared what people might think, or am I going to quote unquote disturb the peace? And that's why we don't do it, right? So I really encourage people to try and find what is that tiny experiment that they can conduct where they can start seeing if they could do things differently. What happens very often when someone starts doing this is that the people around them start noticing and start asking questions. Why are you doing it this way? This is so strange. Oh, you know, I'm just experimenting. I just wanted to see what happened if I did differently. What do you mean experimenting? Well, I just said for a few weeks I'm going to do it this way and not that way, and then we'll see what happens. And then you can ask them, what about you? Is there something in your life or your work where you feel like maybe you could try a different way? And this way, again, very emergent. It's very different from trying to force other people to change, right? It's Really just showing by example, saying like, look, I'm doing my thing. And if you're interested and you want to try it as well, I'd be super happy to help.

Yeah. And you also make a distinction in how, like, how we bring this about in our daily life between habits and rituals and routines. Can you unpeel that a bit?

Absolutely. At a fundamental level, the, as I classify them, the difference between habits, routines, and rituals is the level of intention you bring to the table when you're going to implement one of these. So a habit has a very low level of intention. They're automatic, and that can be good, like brushing your teeth in the morning. You just woke out of bed and you don't even think about it, or I would hope so, and you just brush your teeth. Or they can be bad, like smoking cigarettes, etc. Good or bad, automatic, which makes them very hard to change, right? A routine is something that is more intentional. And that means that you feel like that would be good for you and you want to do it in your life, but it does require for you a conscious effort to do it. In that bucket, I would put things like running, for example, or making your bed in the morning. For a lot of people, for some people it's a habit, but for a lot of people, making your bed in the morning is something where you need to say, let's do it. Getting up, let's make the bed in the morning. I know I'll feel better later if I do it. Those are routines. I don't know many people who just get up and put their shoes on and go and start running as a habit. There's always a little bit of conscious effort here, right? And then a ritual is the highest, highest level of intention. You really decide that you're going to bring your entire self to this practice, whatever it is. And you can elevate any routine to the level of ritual. So for example, you can just decide I'm going to write 5 quick bullet points in the morning. That's my journaling practice. Or you can say I'm going to sit down, I'm going to light a candle, I'm going to make myself a really nice cup of coffee. I'm going to tell the kids to not disturb me for 15 minutes. And I'm going to do this. This is my morning ritual. Journaling is my morning ritual. You could even have, you know, just putting your makeup on as a woman. Can be a ritual. If you say, I'm closing the door, same candles, music, this is my moment with myself, I'm going to be highly mindful and conscious when I do this, this becomes a ritual. Any routine can become a ritual, and it's all about the level of intentionality.

Which brings us back to the, to the point of emotion as well, because where does intentionality come from?

It's really about stopping the automatic responses that we have and creating this pause between the automatic response and the actual response that we want to have, the conscious one that we want to have. It's this little gap. That's the intention. It's creating this little gap.

Yeah, which is beautiful because, because this space is where we can regulate our emotions and we can build a relationship with ourselves and with the world. I remember some time ago I was doing some coaching practice and we started talking about trustworthiness as a general concept. And my coach said to me, you know, in developing your relationship with yourself, you also have to be trustworthy to yourself. It's not— you would not never accept a relationship with another person or another being if you can't trust them. So as you start, you know, going through the ladder that you just described and taking your habits into the other spaces, it's really about that consistency and that commitment and showing yourself that you stick to what you want to and you stick to your intention in order to make it happen because no one else is going to make our intentions happen for us. That's a certainty, which is why your book is really inspiring in that way. In this sense. Where did you get inspiration? Where do you go and look for things that might be useful to add to that, um, you know, tote bag of things that you could be doing and experiments you want to try out?

I have two main streams of inspiration I drink from. I'll say the first one, as a scientist obviously, is just scientific research. I read a lot of papers And every time I read a paper, I ask myself, what does that mean for us as humans in terms of how we should maybe think or deal with our emotions or navigate uncertainty? I always have the fact that because I write a newsletter and because I write for other people, I automatically think about how to translate that research into something practical that I can use and that other people can use. So that's one source of inspiration. And the other one is just conversations with people. And this is actually my favorite source of inspiration because when I read research papers, I tend to go in a direction that feels like this is something I understand. I will read one research paper, click on a reference, read another one, and it, it can lead to staying in one area of cognitive neuroscience that I'm fairly comfortable with. Whereas with conversations, Sometimes something comes up and I'm like, what, what are you talking about? What do you mean you feel this way when someone talks to you this way? What do you mean this is your instinctive reaction? I would have never thought about it this way. And this really bursts my bubble of academic research where it's very easy to stay in the little comfortable corner, right? And then I tend to go back to the research based on those conversations, seeing if there's anything in the science here that could be useful, but I would have never even explored that question if it wasn't for the conversation.

Yeah, yeah, for the triggers. And when you go into science, you have this concept that is called fail like a scientist. What does that mean?

Failing like a scientist is the most important part of having an experimental mindset. It's really the idea that as long as you learn something new, there is no such thing as failure. So just think about a scientist who is designing an experiment. They are going to ask a research question, they're going to collect their data, and then they're going to look at the results, right? Whatever the results, they're not going to blame themselves or judge themselves if the data is giving them an answer they didn't expect. They're not going to be like, oh, shame, I'm such a bad scientist, right? They're just going to look at the data and they're going to analyze it, and based on what they've find, they're going to use that new information, those new insights, to design their next experiment. Failing like a scientist is applying this mindset to your daily life and work. You can't fail, you're just collecting data. So whatever, you can look at it without self-blame, without self-judgment, learn whatever you need to learn from that experience, and use that for your next experiment.

Yeah, and ask questions to other people in your conversation so that you might trigger their own scientific endeavors as well. So this, the circle keeps, keeps going. Um, I think that this circular aspect is also very important to the work that you do and to the inspiration that you're bringing through your tiny experiments, is that these things keep feeding into themselves and into each other, and there is this kind of almost organic quality to growth as a concept and sort of, you know, learning as a concept, as opposed to the linearity we're all stuck in. But it's hard to deal with these two things because we live in a linear world. Although we are organic beings and we tend to kind of embrace this circular model of growth more naturally, how might we, like, bring those two together, particularly with topics like productivity and work and how much is enough and all of these, these things, how, like, it's really, really hard for people.

It does go back to this very important concept we discussed, which is intentionality. I'm not saying that you should completely get rid of linear goals because that would be impossible in today's society where a lot of the ways things are structured are around linear goals. So for example, if you're saving up money to buy a house, that's a very linear goal and there's really no way around it. Or maybe there is, and I would love to learn if someone comes up with a different way of, of doing it. But that's a very, traditionally speaking, a very linear goal. And then there are other areas of our lives that we are making linear in an artificial way. When you think about your career, for example, we might tend to make decisions based on what we did before because we wanted to make sense from the outside. We wanted to have a nice narrative. We are almost creating an artificial CV of our life where we say, oh, of course I did this project or I studied this, so now this is what I should be doing next. And sometimes the linear decision is the right one. That's okay. It's not that you, you don't have to be linear all the time. But it's about asking yourself that question. Is that linear path really the one that I want to follow for my next step? Or do I want to grow in a more organic way in this part of my life and in this part of my work? Do I want to go in a different direction? Do I want to experiment more? So again, creating that little space for intentionality and asking yourself those questions before you make any big decisions.

And in this context, how would you define transformation?

Transformation to me is just learning something new. It's going through those cycles of self-discovery. And whatever happens in this time of change, as long as through each cycle you discover something new, even a small thing about yourself, the way you think, the way you feel, that's transformation.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's really, I mean, transformation etymologically is also about a cross. So trans, through, across, and formation, structures, the way we do things, systems, etc. But it's still a lot of pioneering work as well, where we become indeed, as you said, the role models of how it also might be. And I think we've come into a world in 2025 in which we, you know, I would say homogeneous thinking global thinking has become kind of the norm, and it's these experiments that are gonna bring us out of that. From your multicultural background, how do you look at that? Are there examples of how you've done this even before you had a word for tiny experiments?

I really grew up in a family where everything felt a little bit experimental sometimes, because when you have an Algerian mom and a French dad, that have very different cultures, very different ways of communicating, you need to figure out ways to bridge those different worlds. And, um, this might not be seen as a really like a tiny experiment in the strict sense of the term I talk about in the book, but one personal example is just food at home. So for Christmas, for example, we would have the halal turkey because half of my family is Muslim, but also champagne and oysters because half of my family is French. And we would kind of experiment with what is the right order to serve those different dishes and those different drinks. And when do you have the mint tea? Is that before or after the chocolate cake? Uh, so we would every year try to figure out what is the perfect Christmas dinner in our family when there is no playbook for this that we can find from the outside and just copy and paste.

Which brings me to the question, did you then find a kind of mode of making that happen and kept that, or did it keep iterating every year?

We're still iterating. Uh, so I, I don't eat meat, for example, and I just discovered something called faux gras, which is a fake foie gras. And, uh, this year that's what we experimented with. We included that in the menu and we're trying different things. My sister lives in Korea every year. That's the thing, it's a tradition. She brings something very weird and different that we would have never tried before, and she brings that and we implement, we incorporate it into the Christmas menu. So it has become more of a mode of doing things, but it's easy in that environment that is very festive where everybody wants to do it. I do want to acknowledge that there are lots of areas in our lives where it's not necessarily as easy, where not everybody is so excited to to participate. So in this case, I think it was really nice for me to grow up in an environment where we did have this playground and this mentality and where it was encouraged to experiment in this way.

Right. It's a form of inquiry in the end, right? It's a form of collective inquiry into what those habits, routines, and rituals might be as a collective. So I sense that your newsletter will be talking about this shortly. Yes, even before the podcast is published, the episode. So if you look at success, right? So when we experiment, and particularly when we do this from a scientific point of view, we are taught that we have to define the key success factors and the key metrics before the experiment, because otherwise you will influence that. Like, for example, Let's take an everyday example. Say that I want to go on a diet and I want to weigh 50 kilos. I mean, that's impossible, but, you know, theoretically. And then I do my diet and I end up weighing 55 kilos, then I can change the metric and say, well, 55 was good enough, right? So in science, we're told you have to be clear about how you will measure and what you will do beforehand. Obviously, for tiny experiments, this is impossible, which brings us back to the contrast of How do you learn and how do you measure that you have learned across the process other than your newly gained perspective, newly gained wisdom, newly acquired practices that go back to the habits and routines and rituals? How does one incorporate this? Because I think there's a huge similarity with transformation, right? So transformation unfolds across time. And typically, when you look back, you can see how far you've come. But ahead of it, you can't know, because there is all this uncertainty, what will happen. So in, in your view as a neuroscientist, and in the, the role that tiny experiments can have for us, how might that work?

That's the difference between outcome-based processes and output-based ones. So when you say I'm going to do this diet and I'm going to get to 50 kilos. That's a specific outcome you're trying to get to, 50 kilos, right? That's your definition of success for this. Instead, what I advocate for, which is also based on the scientific method, is to say, I'm going to perform this action for this specific duration. So instead of saying, I am going to do this diet and I'm going to wait 50 kilos by the end of it, I say, I am going to follow this diet for 1 month, for example, and that's it. And then I can weigh myself at the end of the month and see where we are. The only thing I have to do is to decide in advance how long I'm going to perform this action for and show up, just show up and collect that data. And then at the end, we can decide whether it worked or not. What's very interesting with this approach too is that if in the course of the month you skip some days, you somehow don't manage to do it, you don't show up, you have a cheat day, etc., you also collect that data. That's just data. So you can say, you can write in your journal, on Sunday I had brunch with friends and completely forgot about the diet, that didn't happen, and you write it down. That's okay. At the end of the month, when you look back at all of the data that you collected, you can look at several things. First, the weight. Did you get to the 50? You know, actually, you don't even— you should not even worry about getting to 50 kilos. What weight are you at? And that's it. Yeah. So you just look at that. Second, all of those other metrics that we tend to not look at. How did it feel? Was it horrible or was it fun? Because if you did lose some weight but it was horrible, then maybe that's not the right diet for you. Maybe you should find something else and experiment with a different one. Second, anytime you missed the diet, so you didn't manage to, to follow through, what was going on here is very interesting as well. Was it because that day you were feeling a little bit anxious or depressed and then you were coping through food? Or was it because something really fun happened and your friends invited you to go and do something? You went to Disneyland and you had ice cream. Those are very different reasons for you to skip your diet that day, and that also gives you information as to whether this diet is for you or not. So that's the big difference. Instead of focusing on this specific milestone, this outcome that you want to get to, just focus on showing up, on collecting the data, and then you can make decisions based on that.

Okay, so would you say that this is almost precognitive? Meaning the behavioral scientists and the behavioral economists, you know, the big ones like, like Dana Riehle, for example, who talks about how we are ultimately completely irrational beings, tell us that, you know, the process of learning will happen anyway, but we have to account for the fact that in hindsight, we will make things make sense, which you referred to already, right? So, In hindsight, we're all perfectly rational and we do things for all the good reasons, whereas reality is a bit more nuanced and we are much more led by our impulses and our emotions than we care to admit. So how do we, how do we bring this and kind of create this coherence in managing for the output, as you said, and saying, okay, I'm going to put these constraints on myself. I'm going to stick to those constraints, and within those boundaries, am I allowed to be perfectly irrational, to quote Ariely?

Yes. So the idea is still to try to be as rational as possible here because you're starting from the idea that you think this should be good for you. You're just not 100% sure. It's a hypothesis at this stage, right? And that's the big difference between saying, I'm going to build this habit and I'm going to conduct this experiment. If you decide to start a new habit, you start from the assumption that this habit is good for you. If you say, I'm going to drink, I'm going to drink 2 liters of water every day, or I'm going to go to bed at the same time every day, you're fairly convinced that this is good for you and you're trying to build a habit. With an experiment, it's a hypothesis. You feel like, oh, maybe this diet might be good for me. 'Let's have a try.' Yeah. And so you're going to try and give that diet a good chance, right? So you're going to really try to stick to it. You're going to really do your best, and then you're going to make a decision at the end. So this is a bit more of a, a nuanced perspective on this, where what it says is that we are beings that are trying our best to be rational, and sometimes we might make decisions for irrational reasons. There are lots of things that can be at play. Like, something we don't talk about enough, for example, is the role of our hormones in our decisions. And it might be that you really want to stick to that diet, but your hormones are out of whack that day, and you end up eating more than what you wanted to. Sure, irrational, but also you could argue it was really hard to make the choice that you would have wanted to make at a rational level in those particular conditions, right? So that's why it really removes all of these questions from the equation, and it's really about showing up, collecting the data, and at the end, in a very rational way, even if not every single decision was rational in the middle, you can look back at the data and analyze it in a rational way.

Yeah, yeah. So it seems like in, in design, we talk about action and reflection, right? And it's very important that we do both. So there is no reflection without action, and there is no action without reflection. You need both. And it seems like what you're saying is, as you— as the space unfolds, explore. Once you are done within that frame of time that you've defined, analyze, study, learn, reflect, and go into the metacognition that you referred earlier.

Exactly. This is exactly— actually, I describe it like that in some other of my writings. So Thank you. This is exactly that, action and reflection paired together, and you need both in order to learn and to progress.

I use the metaphor in a book I wrote 10 years ago that is called Change Ahead. I use the metaphor of rowing. So if you only row with one side, you go in circles. You need to row one and the other, one and the other, and then you keep moving forward. You keep progressing, you keep learning. Hopefully you keep enjoying as well, right? So that's That's the, uh, the idea. Do you also look for learnings in nature, for example, or in technology?

Yes, I'm always inspired by nature in the sense that it does change all the time, or you could say nature is change. This is the very nature of what everything is. And, uh, it's a really good reminder for me whenever I'm also a little bit too— as a neuroscientist, this is obviously a risk that we have— being a little bit too in my head, a little bit too in the cognition. Going in nature for me is also a way to remind myself of all of the other forces at play, of the fact that I'm not in control of everything, that things are changing whether I want it or not, and that of course I can design systems that are helping me navigate the world in a way that feels a little bit more comfortable, but that Ultimately, I have very little control over where the world is going. So this can be a really good reminder. And then when it comes to technology, I see it more as a tool rather than the source of inspiration. I'm very pro-technology in terms of using it for us to do our best work, augment our cognition, not necessarily replace it. And, uh, and I'm always excited like a little kid when I find a new tool, a new app that might help me do something in a slightly different way. And I love experimenting with new technology.

Yeah, I think that technology certainly has a, has a role in, in keeping us to the task, right? Because in many ways, and, and at least for a few decades still, technology is highly rational. You know, it's just gonna follow the algorithm and it's just gonna follow the instruction you gave it, whereas we're not that good at that. That's fairly proven by experience, at least for me. So let's imagine a world in which people start doing tiny experiments and more and more start becoming role models to one another in the experimentation, not necessarily in the outcome of the experiments, but the fact that we are continuously learning, we're continuously curious, we're never failing, all of these things that we've discussed. What might society look like then if we forward maybe 20 or 50 years?

Well, this would be a society where people are celebrated for asking interesting questions rather than having all of the answers. This would also be a society where making mistakes is embraced as being part of the process. And in general, I think it would be a society that is more creative, more productive, but in a mindful way. And, uh, a society that is just healthier, both mentally and physically, when we're happy to keep on experimenting, to not stick to rigid rules, to listen to different signals, to have those conversations and to learn together.

Yeah, beautiful. I look forward to that, especially because you talk about freedom and mental health as two sides of a continuum. And we're having this enormous mental health crisis right now. So really getting to that level of freedom feels highly inspiring, but also very utopic. How do you— what would you say to the people critiquing this, saying, oh, but that's just wishful thinking?

Yeah, I think being cynical is the worst thing that we can do when it comes to having our species progress. And I think when you look back on history, very often it is the utopists that created new things that allowed us to fly and airplanes, et cetera. So yes, it is very hard to imagine that we could live in a society that works like that, that is so free and so healthy. But if that's not what we're aiming for, we'll definitely never get there.

Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. That speaks to my heart. I really believe in possibility and as a sort of creative and as a designer, I keep pushing for that, but it sometimes feels like there is so much noise out there about things that cannot be or things that should stay the way they are, whereas actually progress and And our own evolution depends on our capacity to experiment and do and be and try different things and be playful with it as well. So where can people find your work?

Two places. The first one is if they're interested in reading my newsletter, which I send every week, you can go to naslabs.com.

Yes.

And it has a little form where you can sign up. And if you're interested in reading the book, Tiny You can just look it up anywhere books are sold.

Okay, we will add those two to the, um, to the show notes. Um, is there something else you want to share with us before I ask you our last question?

No, I think I can't come up with anything.

Good. Then it means we've covered what is important to you, and that's what is important to us because that's how we learn. So my last question refers to, to methodology that I developed, uh, 10, 12 years ago. Which is called The Quest for Questions. And it's very similar to, to what we've been describing. And that's like, when you look into the future, when you look in that which you're trying to achieve and design and create, of course having the answer is an impossibility because you don't know. So as you go through life, as you go through your experiments, it's really important to start thinking, what is the question I will have at the end of this? So what is the What's the question that keeps you busy looking forward? What's the next question you have? Now you've written Tiny Experiments, you've brought this into the world. What is your question?

How can we be more curious?

Oh, that is beautiful. I love it. It's so wonderful how questions are space openers. Thanks for opening that space for us and thanks for sharing it with us. For sharing your wisdom with us today. It's been a real joy speaking to you.

Thank you so much for creating that space for us to have this conversation.