You don’t need a 5 year plan. You need to experiment. Outlawbrary #4 | Anne-Laure Le Cunff

In today's Outlawbrary, we're cracking open Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

I like the way you said that.

Which one, Outlawbrary, or you said both words?

You said Anne-Laure's name and you said out, that word that I coined that I can't say, so well done. Continue.

Anyway, this isn't your usual set a 5-year plan and tick the boxes kind of book. Instead, it's an invitation to ditch the pressure of big shiny goals and start running tiny experiments in your everyday life. Low-stakes tests that help you explore, learn, and move closer to the life that you actually want.

So Anne-Laure Le Cunff, I think that's how you say her beautiful name, uh, reminds us that curiosity is more powerful than clarity often, and that Freedom doesn't come from chasing the finish line, but from playing in the space in between, the liminal space, which we've talked about before. So if you've ever felt trapped by your own to-do list or wondered whether the goals you're chasing are really yours, we think you will love this book because we both certainly did and do, right, Shaila?

Absolutely. Okay, so I'm going to make a big statement. Are you ready for it?

I'm ready.

I might like this book more than 4,000 Weeks.

I know, but Oliver Burkeman didn't write this book.

Although, do you know what I noticed?

Yeah, he recommended it. He wrote a— yes, review for it. Yes, I did notice that.

And on the front of my copy anyway, it says profound, practical, and generous by Oliver Burkeman. Yeah. So yeah, I know that's a really big statement and she does actually reference Oliver in a few places in the, in the book, but this was your recommendation, Kate, and it was an excellent one, I have to say. And I just, I just have found it really inspiring. And as I was thinking a bit earlier about, am I going to make this statement about, I like this book more than 4,000 Weeks? I was thinking, well, let's think about that before we make big statements.

Big call. Big call from Shayla.

Big call. Big call. Um, to be honest with you, if they were sitting next to one another, I don't know really which one I'd pick up. I actually think that having read Four Thousand Weeks before this one is a good thing to do. Do you know what I mean? Cause I think that they, they really, there's lots of similar themes and that they're very complimentary to one another.

Yeah, they, they know they are. I can't remember how I came across this book and, but I know that Anne-Laure, you say it better because you speak French. Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

Yeah, I don't know how to say it either, but Anne-Laure. Yeah, I think, you know, with French you've got to have that sort of— my children can do it because they learned when they were young, but you've got to do that, you know, that's like right at the back of your throat that no English speaker can do unless they find that very difficult.

I found that very difficult in Italian as well. Yeah, the sound, it's sometimes I'll do it and sometimes I can't do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's pretty hard.

In any event, let's call, I'm going to call her the author.

Yes. Okay. Do that.

For me today, after the mishaps that I was involved in yesterday, um, that may or may not have involved a few Negronis that I, yeah, I'm not a drinker as I keep saying, I might have to revise that statement, but, uh, behaved in an irresponsible manner in the company of others yesterday.

Um, Not me. Hey, not me. You didn't, it wasn't with me.

No, I was in the company of people I can only describe as encouraging. So turned into a very irresponsible afternoon and it involved Negronis. And for some reason, well, I discovered the Negronis in Florence in Italy, right? I'd never had one before and they were quite delightful. And it seems to be like, I don't know, well, the rules don't apply when a Negroni is placed in front of me. And because that was quite a consumption of Negronis, and this morning I'm feeling very tired. Well, and more tired than I was yesterday when we decided we were both tired, we'll postpone the recording. So I'm not sure that was a great idea, but in any event, you can say author in those circumstances. I'll say the author, but also too, I think what came up was the R sound.

Yes.

Negroni. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can't. I suspect the more Negronis I have, the better I am at doing it. But in any event, that's not what we're here to talk about. I introduced it to you and I was just trying to remember where I saw it. And I think she does, she's got a TED Talk on this topic. And I think it might've been from seeing her TED Talk. Um, and yeah, it's very engaging. And then I, I think I bought the book after I'd sort of seen her TED Talk. So, but it is a brilliant book. I agree with you. It's kind of different, isn't it? So, so if you had to summarize these two books. 4,000 things. I think the key is we actually don't have as long as we think we do, so we better make sure that what we're doing is what we really want to be doing. And I guess she's sort of digging deeper into the, well, what are we, what are we going to be doing? Um, sort of.

Yeah, I think so. She does. Well, I think it might be useful just to give a bit of, a bit of background maybe on her. So, so her story is, is that she was sort of in IT I use that kind of pretty broadly. I don't know exactly what she was doing, but she was working at Google, uh, was pretty successful at Google and left Google and then felt like she should do something else. And so she went and started a startup and then eventually she left that. And after that, she felt like she was really in a space where she wasn't quite sure what it was that she should do. And she found that a bit unsettling initially because of this idea that we should be going from one thing to the next, to the next. And so it was at that point that she entered into this experiment, I suppose, where she wanted to write an article a day or do some writing every day for 100 days. So 100 articles in 100 days. And that took her to places because she was curious about what she was writing about. And yeah, it was this sort of big experimentation. She then ended up becoming really interested in neuroscience and then went and studied neuroscience. And now she's a neuroscientist and she studies how different brains learn differently. And so this, I guess, is a book about what it is that she learned during that journey. But I guess also because she's a neuroscientist, she then has this, what I really enjoy, this very kind of scientific overlay to it. So that's the context that the book is written in. And so I think it's great from that personal experience as well that that she brings to it.

Yeah, I just love her, her sort of her main thing. Well, the thing that I took away from it— she says a lot more than this— is that linear goals are problematic, and actually we need to reframe goal setting as experimentation. And tiny experiments are good ones to do, hence the name of the book, because rather than sort of setting a goal and then moving towards it, That to actually just reframe sort of things that, oh, we get curious about something, experiment in small ways, low stakes ways, which reminds me very much of what Nick from the Push-Up Challenge was saying. Of course, that's exactly how he pursued that goal. And of course, well, he didn't pursue the goal. He started something that he was curious and interested in, and it started as just this challenge between friends and then ended up. Sort of being this huge thing. But he talked, didn't he, about how do you get there? Well, it was just a series of low-stakes experiments until— I mean, in the end it became higher stakes because I remember him saying that he took some equity out of his house to fund the next stage of expansion for the Push-Up Challenge. But I was struck by reading that, that, um, there were a lot of parallels to what Nick talked about.

Yeah. And so right at the beginning, she, um, She explains, I think it was after she'd left Google maybe, or maybe after she'd left the startup and people were asking her questions around like, you know, they'd see her, they hadn't seen her for a while, you know, Kate, how's it going? How's life? And she said, and I sort of reflected on that question and like really thought to myself, yeah, like how is life? And she said, and I don't think we often sit back and ask ourselves that. If it's outside of this very narrow lens of how are you going in your job? And that's kind of how people interpret that question often. And that's, I think, the way in which they were asking her that. So I really enjoyed her conversation about that, of that stepping back from, oh, people are asking me how my life is, which is actually a much bigger question than what is my job and what am I doing in my job? Yeah. So I really enjoyed that. And then I also really enjoyed how she then delved into these, and we've talked about this before on the podcast also with a lot of guests, but that uncertainty. And so these, you know, when you're sitting in that uncertainty and there's a quote in here that I marked. So she says, uncertainty has so much to teach us. We experience it not just in big life transitions, but in lesser moments of ambiguity, such as the messy middle of a project when we'd like to throw in the towel. When we find ourselves in these precarious moments, our automatic response is too often fear or anxiety. And so we rush towards a defined outcome to escape it, just as I did with my startup. And so then she goes on to then talk about we should focus on curiosity, which I just think is, again, like all of what we've spoken about and what we've heard from so many guests, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. And it is that deep, having gone through that period of experiment, well, experimentation and uncertainty in liminal space myself, not that long ago, it is, it's incredibly uncomfortable because, well, you don't know what's on the other side is, I guess, the big thing. And there's a lot of trust involved in thinking, no, something will come along. Something always does. And my goal here is not to pursue that, but actually to, to make the most of this time. To, you know, because it's, it's necessary. It's just deeply uncomfortable.

Yeah.

You say we've talked about this many times before, but discomfort is uncomfortable. Like what? You heard it here first, right?

That's the quote from the episode.

Look, such wisdom. I just don't know.

It's the hangover quote of the day.

Roni, make me wise.

She uses a really good example of liminal space in the book. She talks about being on a plane.

Yeah.

But she says that when we're in that situation, when we're in that liminal space and we're uncertain, that we tend to fall back on cynicism, escapism, and perfectionism. And she said that's very natural. And again, because she is a neuroscientist, there's a level of, you know, when you hear a neuroscientist say that, you go, oh, okay, well, so the fact that I do feel like that is very normal. But she says that all of those things are shields, uh, that we use and actually that they block our growth. And so that we have to be able to recognize that when it is that we're doing it, and then again, step into that space that's curiosity and these little experiments rather than going, oh, I've got to do things perfectly, or actually if I do that, it won't work. So I thought that was a really interesting exploration of how it is that we respond in liminal space as well.

Yeah. And it's, it's true though, isn't it? I think she also said something about the danger is also importing views of success that are other people's. And I think that again, that's a, that's a really difficult one as well, because if you're not sure and if you're uncertain, those ideas that are presented give you certainty, right? And are attractive for that reason. It takes a lot of courage. And I think it takes also a conscious decision to sit in that liminal space.

Yeah.

It's really, really hard. It is. I loved, but I just loved her, again, her focus on curiosity as well. So, um, and I've heard Elizabeth Gilbert say that. So Elizabeth Gilbert has a book called Big Magic, and she also, much like our author Anne-Laure here, um, she also has the same things to say about purpose Or, and, and focusing. So focusing on, no, not purpose, passion. So it's like, oh, follow your passion. But, but our author here talks about the same sort of things. It's like, that's a bit limiting. Um, and this notion that we should somehow be finding our passion, like, how can you know it unless you've kind of experimented with it? And so, but the key word for her here is curiosity. But Elizabeth Gilbert has said the same thing in her book, that curiosity is a more freeing term to use because sometimes I think, yeah, if you don't know what your passion is, you feel like, or purpose, you're missing out. You should know it. But, but how would you know it? And why would you know it until you start experimenting with things that just call to you a bit and you can try it and you might go, oh, I kind of like this aspect of it. It's almost like that warmer, warmer, colder, colder game, you know, when you're when you were kids, that I think very few people are born with an inbuilt knowing about what their passion is, that you, you have to unearth it really rather than pursue it. Um, so I love that switch to the word curiosity rather than thinking about passion or purpose, which I think are often used interchangeably.

Yeah. Um, yeah, he did, he did talk about the fact that he feels— he, sorry, let me start that again.

Yeah, sorry, sorry, I wasn't talking about another—

I haven't had anything to drink yesterday, just so we're clear.

Like, I feel so, like, irresponsible.

You shouldn't.

It's not—

it's okay to have fun every now and then. Was—

it was fun. It was— we had a lot of fun.

There you go.

I'm tired today. And a little cranky.

Yeah, fair enough. So she talks about this sense of adventure that we're all born with, and I agree with you that we don't all easily identify what our passion is. I mean, I certainly don't know what my passion is, but what she does say is that we are actually all born with a sense of adventure. So when you see children, this is actually how children learn, is they try different things and then they go, nah, I don't like that game, I'll go and try this game, and if In fact, that's, that's how it is that they learn. But then she says it's actually beaten out of us. That as children get older, they're taught how to perform, they're taught what success looks like, they're taught how to present themselves in ways that conforms with those societal expectations. So she said it's like this slow process of it being beaten out of us. So I think that's really interesting that You know, we have at some stage all had this. And so hopefully we can all find our way back to it.

Yeah.

But you're right. She also does talk about that idea of the, the kind of the find your purpose and find your passion. She says basically that, that's just rubbish and it's overused for exactly what you just, the reason you just said is, is that we actually need to experiment. Before we can even find those things. And she's, the other reason she said that was quite limiting, which I quite liked, was because if you somehow seem to have some grand passion or some grand purpose, then you just go, oh, well, this is what it is. And you don't experiment outside of that. And so it's just, you know, you're not actually really allowing yourself to grow. And, and she talks about how, you know, careers and lives can move in all sorts of directions and actually can be all sorts of things. So you might be one thing now, but in 10 years you're going to be something different, and another 5 years you're going to be something different, and that, that's actually fine. And I liked that idea as well, that even though you might feel like you're something now, you don't have to be necessarily next year.

No, and she talks about that, doesn't she, about the sequel, sequel script, is if we're looking for new things, if we're If we're trying to build on what we've already done, then we're going to be limited by the roles and identities that we've already assigned ourselves. So, um, I like that. So that's, and then we sort of tend to kind of cling, well, that's worked in the past. I've been ostensibly successful in that way. So I will stay in that role because it's what I know, but it's limiting. It limits our imagination because then we're building on it, but we're still, we're not getting brave and stepping out into the liminal space. So it's a very tempting thing to go, I want something different, but I'm going to build on what I've done already.

I wonder how that goes back to some of our discussions about transferable skills, because we do try so hard, don't we? When we, when we think that we want to do something different, everyone goes, okay, what's my transferable skills that I might be able to move to a different career? But If you think about what she's saying, and maybe this goes back to what Anna Black was saying when she came on as well, is it's around, you know, don't worry about that so much. Just like, what do you like? What do you want? What is it that those little kind of sparks that you've—

Yes. Well, and but the skills will be useful there too, right?

Yeah.

I think maybe that's the thing. It's just perhaps the starting point. So if you're focusing on your skills, that might be too limiting a way to think about it. Yes, I think you do have transferable skills, but so maybe you should think about what you want first rather than think, what, what skills do I have? What can I transfer into with these skills? It is just to make sure we're thinking about what we want. Yeah. And then fitting the skills into that rather than the other way around.

Yeah. And I think again, gee, we're talking a lot about all we've learned from our guests today. People are just going to think that. We just did this podcast to learn.

I just did it so I could hang out with you.

But I was going to say, you know, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, she, she came up with so many skills that she felt was useful to her writing career that had come from her legal career, but that's not what she started with. She started with, I just want to write. And then she realized that when she was writing, oh my goodness, all of these things that I had when I was a lawyer was actually useful.

Yeah.

So, I mean, that, that feels a bit revolutionary to me in some ways that maybe we should not have this kind of heavy focus on these transferable skills. And it is very much like, what, what, what sparks you? That is easier said than done, I think. But she's got quite a practical suggestion about how people can do that. So she talks about pretending to be an anthropologist because anthropologists go through life asking open-ended questions. So she says that you should, for a day or for a week or however long you feel like, is just be curious. And so to be an active observer in your own life. And so to note down things.

To self-anthropologize.

I think you should not.

That's not quite how it's said, but me a self-anthropologist, I can say, I can say that.

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.

Self-anthropologize.

Is that right? Hmm, maybe. I don't know.

Anyway, but that's the word she used. She came up with that, not me, but I love that. I think too, it's to be, to be curious about your own life, to collect data about your own life, perhaps without the sort of, an anthropologist kind of collects data. Isn't making decisions as they go. They're going to collect it and then sort of analyze it, right?

And she says, she says there's 3 steps that you can do as you're starting to unlearn some of those scripts. So she talks about asking yourself maybe the following questions so that you don't fall into the trap of, you know, that you're trying to go towards a goal rather than just learning. So she says to ask yourself, Are you following your past or discovering your path? Which I think is really nice.

That's nice.

Are you following the crowd or discovering your tribe? Hmm.

Although I don't like the word tribe. Do you know what? Like I feel like there's a little bit of, uh, racism. A little bit. Yeah, I do actually. So to me, I've stopped using that word, although I like, I like what it's, what it's trying to say. Community. Community or people. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So are you following the crowd or discovering your people?

Yeah. Yeah.

And the third one is, are you following your passion or discovering your curiosity?

Hmm.

I really like that. And she, the other thing as part of that, so you and I talk about shoulds a lot. Lots of other people talk about shoulds and how not to forget. Follow the Shoulds. Again, with this lovely kind of technical neuroscience lens that she puts on everything, she calls them the cognitive scripts.

She's got a way with words.

Well, she sounds so much cleverer than us, doesn't she?

But I tell you what, I think I said this in the newsletter I sent out, listening to this book is a delight because she has a beautiful accent. She's got a beautiful way with words and even better, it's when she speaks them, it's in a gorgeous French accent.

So yeah, lovely. So I liked that, that there's a, you know, a bit of a technical name, I suppose, for the sort of ditch the shoulds. It's actually, these are cognitive scripts that we've developed as part of our learnings, and now we need to get rid of or rewrite those cognitive scripts, which I think is really nice.

And so how does she suggest you sort of do that? She's got some ideas. Well, one is reflect, reflect, reflect. Reflect, reflect, reflect. So sort of experiment, do something, then keep a note and self-anthropologize about what worked, what didn't, the pluses, the minuses, any tweaks you might make next time. So to treat it like an experiment. And then she also gives that formula, the, I will action this for this long length of time. So it's actually quite a simple little script to do, to go, okay, well, I think this might work. I'll give it 6 months or I'll give it 2 weeks or whatever it is, depending on what you're doing. And let's just run it up a flagpole, see if it flies. That's my quote, not hers, but basically what she's saying.

And I think, I think what you're talking about there is what she talks about as PACs.

Yes. Yes. Yep.

So, uh, yeah, she, so I, again, I feel like this book is quite practical. She talks a lot about the theory, but then she really, I think, is quite clear about if you want to do this sort of work, here's some ways in which you might find your way through it. So she talks about choosing pacts based on your curiosity, although it might just be useful to explain what it is that she calls a pact.

I've got a quote. A pact is a simple and repeatable activity that will inevitably bring you closer to achieving your authentic ambitions. Regardless of the actual result of each trial. It follows a simple format. I will action X for X amount of time.

Yeah. So it can be anything. And the thing one, so she describes when she wanted to write, well, when she decided she would write 100 articles in 100 days, that was, that was her first pact. And you can decide to do basically whatever you want, but it is about, but focusing on output rather than outcomes, I think is the key, isn't it? Yeah, very much. So she says—

what you can control rather than what you can't necessarily.

Yeah. So she says it follows a simple format. I will action X, whatever that is, for duration.

Yeah.

So that you're just building a block of experimentation that, yeah, that really then you can learn from whatever that experience is and you might decide to stop doing it afterwards. She didn't. That then built into what she then calls the Ness Labs, which was a newsletter, which became very successful and is still going on. And that was all just as part of what she learned from the Pact.

Yeah.

So, and she does talk about having to act, right? So, you know, she says you do the Pact, but then she said you do have to act. And she talks about how it is that we honor time without burning out and getting into this kind of, I've got to be productive, productive, productive, because I've only got X amount of weeks. And I really liked the way she talked about that. And she talked about how being a productive, in inverted commas, member of society has become seen as a moral imperative. Right. And that, you know, if you're not productive, then therefore you're not successful. And she talks about how we attach our self-worth to how productive we are. Yeah. That it's really difficult, basically, to step out of that because we're getting it from everywhere, really, from the moment— maybe, maybe from the moment that we go to school. We're probably getting it constantly from our parents even before then, but I think certainly from the moment that we go to school, that's embedded. So she said that's really hard to break out of. So I liked the way she, you know, she had some different ideas in there about how it is that you might be able to break out of that and stop thinking about, you know, productive as being the thing that you have to be all of the time.

Oh, that makes me feel better about engaging in irresponsible lunchtime day drinking yesterday. Cause I was like, oh, I had so much I was going to get done today and I've just completely had fun with Well, I think that's an imperative, right?

It's actually an imperative because, you know, you've got to have fun. If you had fun, if brought you some joy, then that's totally fine, I think. Um, and she says here, let's be honest, no one really wants to live a productive life. We want to express ourselves, connect with others, and explore the world. Productivity is just a means to those ends. It should certainly not come at the expense expense of actually living life. So that feels like she was speaking directly to you, Kate.

Yes, thank you, Anne-Laure. Yes, feeling a little, a little guilty.

I don't know how I'm gonna— there's so much conversation about this alcohol now. I don't know how I'm going to edit it out. So we're gonna have to—

no, I think you'll just— I just have to accept that this is going to be immortalized, that my, that my— this, at this aberration of a Friday afternoon Yes. It's like, well, Presbyterian in me, you know.

Guilt. Yeah.

It's like, oof. Well, and it's like, you're off having a wee drink with your friends. You shouldn't have been doing that. Oh, that's a terrible Scottish accent.

On a Friday at lunchtime.

I was sort of trying to do my grandmother there, but that's a terrible, terrible—

There was, there was one other little story that she included in their book, which was about the The Chinese farmer. Oh, I'll say it really as fast as I can. So there was a Chinese farmer and he got up one morning and his horse had run away and his neighbor came over and said, oh, it's just terrible that your horse has run away. And the Chinese farmer said, huh, maybe.

Oh yeah.

The next day got up and the horse had come back and it also brought several wild horses with it. So he now had 4 horses instead of 1. And the neighbor came over and said, oh, so great that you've now got 4 horses. And the farmer said, maybe. And so the next day, the farmer's son got up and started to break in the horses and he fell off and he broke his leg. And the neighbor came over and said, oh no, it's just terrible that your son's broken his leg. And the farmer said, maybe. And then the next day, because there was a war, the government came around and took all of the men who were capable and well. And of course didn't take the farmer's son because he had a broken leg. And so of course you could keep going on and on and on with this whole story, but it's essentially, I think, a really lovely way of helping us to experiment without this idea about what outcomes are good and what outcomes are bad. And she, yeah, she talks about growth loops, you know, what it is that it means to fail in inverted commas, that that's not really a thing. That actually we just learn and then we pivot a little bit. But I really liked that. And I think it's an old Chinese parable, which is, it kind of doesn't matter where the people are from, but the point is, is that I've told quite a few people that story and there's been a few things that happened over the past couple of weeks. And I told my son that story when something happened to his car. And it's a really nice way, I think, of approaching life. Right.

You just don't know what, and, but it's like that classic thing about when a door shuts, right? We tend to go, but I want that. Um, and, but actually sometimes that is just directing you to something better. And I do tend to believe that again. I think I've quoted this before and I'm pretty sure it's the Dalai Lama that said it, but, um, sometimes not getting what you want is a marvelous stroke of luck. And it's true because if you had gotten that, you would have gone down that path and you wouldn't have sought out what is ultimately better.

The next thing.

Yeah, better, you know, and for you or for, or it's the next stage in, you know, the growth you're meant to sort of engage in or whatever it is. But, and maybe that is, you know, just kind of self-soothing.

Maybe.

Maybe, but even look, but even if, but I genuinely believe that to be the case. And I think it's probably, even if it is just kind of namby-pamby, woo-woo, whatever, it's still a better way to go through life because if a door's shut, a door's shut, right?

Yeah.

And it means you can't go through it. So I do believe that things are generally done for you, not to you. And, um, I think that is true, but even if it's not, it makes for a happier life when you—

it's reassuring, right?

When you see the things that haven't worked out and you think, well, you know what, actually just means that's not for me and something better is going to come along. And yeah, so even if you're just fooling yourself, that's a great way to live, right?

I agree. I agree.

Yeah.

And so on page 235, she's got this lovely conclusion with all of the key topics out of the book, which I think is really nice to kind of revisit. And then the rest of the book is Yes, such a scientist. Exactly. And then the rest of the book is filled with, well, there's some toolkits, which again, I think is really useful, like some actual practical tools about how it is, what sort of questions you should ask yourself, how it is that you can commit to curiosity. So how it is that you manage that uncertainty and then the impact that then comes from that. So, and then the rest of the book is also filled with like many, many, many pages of references, which again, very scientific and which I really like.

Yeah, me too. Me too. I think that's great. I do agree with you. Um, I think I— look, I'm, as you know, Oliver Berkman is my literary crush. I adore him. I adore everything he writes. And, uh, he's great to listen to too. He has a wonderful clipped British English accent. Um, and so But no, this book I think is a really powerful book. I think if you liked Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, you'll like this book too. But this is more, this has got a more scientific basis to it because she has a neuroscience background. And, uh, I know I loved this book. I really did. I feel like I'm Margaret and David here. David, rest in peace. I know he passed away recently, but you know, from the movie show. David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, when she'd go, well, I loved it. David, what about you? I hated it. They always used to disagree. But, but Shayla, I know you loved this. You put it above.

I loved it.

I can't go that far, but I loved it too. I thought it was a really good read. And I think it's a lot of, um, I've internalized a lot of it. That's how I know when a book is really good, because, you know, I read a lot, and then sometimes I'll kind of forget the nuts and bolts, or sort of the meat of the book, and sort of might reread it or not. But there's certain things that have stayed with me and that have already kind of been thinking about how I can implement. I think that is to me the key of a book that's really resonated with me.

Yeah, I agree. Well, certainly the Chinese parable really resonated with me, and I've used it on numerous occasions and read this book I don't know, a couple of months ago or a month ago or whatever, and I loved it then, but then I went back to it in preparation for this episode and I thought, oh my goodness, this is going to have pride of place on my table so that I can pick it up at any moment. And I think the thing I would like to investigate here is, is it possible for us to just love two authors without being unfaithful to one?

Do we have to choose?

I think not.

Can we not just have our collective?

Yes, I think that, I think that's a good way of going about things.

So we've obviously invited Oliver Berkman to join our collective.

Yes.

Our of prized authors. Maybe we extend the invitation to Anne-Laure Le Cunff as well. So it's first amongst equals. Oh no, no, no, no. Hang on. That's not what I want to say. Everyone's an equal. Oh, but Birkin's first amongst equals in my book. But no, but everyone's just equal in this collective, this prize collective of outlaw brary authors.

Everyone brings something slightly to the table.

We don't do, we don't do gold, silver, and bronze here. No, sir. No, we, everyone is on.

Everyone is welcome. Yeah. When we have our, you know, big outlaw brary event. They will all be there contributing to the conversation. So there you go. So that's Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

We apologize if we've said your name wrong, Anne-Laure, but you're more likely to get it right than I am because, uh, I did French in year 9 and 10 and then that's been it for me. You are an active French learner.

That makes it worse in some ways, because if I've got it wrong, then, you know, it's just embarrassing. Anyway, get your hands on a copy. We will put a link in the newsletter and on the website if you're interested. Uh, great book.

Yep, highly recommend.

We shall let you go and recover, Kate.

Thanks so much.

Have a great week.

And yes, Shelley, do we have another Outlaw Brewery chosen.

We do have an outlaw Brary book chosen. It's called Conquer Your Imposter.

Yep.

Dismantle the fear that undermines your success. Unlock your true potential. Free yourself from imposter syndrome for good. Now, no one has—

that's quite a claim.

Well, exactly. Again, we chatted about this the other week, and I think we said that 70% of the population have imposter syndrome, and we're keen to meet anyone from the other 30%. No one's No one's messaged us about that. So I don't know. I still, I'm not sure that they exist. So anyway, I saw this book and I thought that sounds really good. Let's have a read of it. It's got some good 5-star reviews. So again, we'll pop this in the newsletter and on the website if you want to read it and then chat along with us in the next Outlawbrary.

Yep. Yes, absolutely. Sounds good. All right. Thanks so much.

Thanks for joining us.

Yep.

As always, have a great week.

You too. You too. I'm sorry, you're saying have a great week to everyone who's listening or to me? Because I was like, you too, Shayla. But I'm like, wait, no, yes, everybody have a great week. And Shayla, may you also have a good week.

Thank you, Kate. And you.

Thank you, Shayla.

Bye.

See you, everyone.