Dr. Maya Shankar
Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who served as a Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as Chair of the White House Behavioral Science…
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Neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff was climbing the ranks at a big tech company, and had ambitious plans for her future—when a health scare made her rethink her relationship with control.
In this episode, Anne-Laure explains why we cling to plans, scripts, and to-do lists when life gets uncertain, and how we can learn to meet these moments with curiosity instead. She talks to Maya about how to develop a more experimental mindset and embrace new possibilities within the unknown.
Check out Anne-Laure’s latest book, “Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.” And if this episode resonated with you, check out a previous Slight Change episode, “When Productivity Becomes Pathological,” with Judith Joseph.
Also, A Slight Change of Plans wants to hear from you!
What helps you navigate moments of uncertainty? Maybe it was advice someone gave you, a mantra you now repeat, or something surprising you discovered in your own moment of transition. Share your reflections with us in a voice memo and tell us why those lessons have stayed with you.
You can email your voice memo to slightchange@pushkin.fm or leave us a voicemail at (646) 397-8557. You may be featured in an upcoming episode.
Pushkin.
00:20
Speaker 2
I'm not saying completely let go of control. That would be impossible and not desirable. The problem is when we cling to that control to the point where we start ignoring interesting options that maybe look a little bit riskier, when we don't allow ourselves to learn, to grow, to make mistakes, to connect with people who think a little bit differently. We're playing in a very, very tiny playground that doesn't really allow us to fulfill our potential.
00:47
Speaker 1
When uncertainty strikes, many of us respond by grasping for a plan, something, anything to help us feel more in control. But neuroscientist Anne-Laure Lecomte says we can learn to meet these moments with curiosity instead.
01:04
Speaker 2
It looks like running what I call tiny experiments. Instead of trying to escape that feeling of unknowing and being scared of it, if you could just sit down in that uncertainty for a little bit longer and allow yourself to explore. Instead of rushing to swim back to shore, you might discover something unexpected, something good.
01:28
Speaker 1
On today's episode, how to tiny experiment your way into a more fulfilling life. I'm Maya Shankar, a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is A Slight Change of Plans. a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. Anne-Laure was inspired to rethink her relationship with control after an experience in her mid-20s. At the time, she was climbing the ranks at a big tech company, making ambitious plans and following through on them.
02:10
Speaker 2
I would say yes to absolutely everything. You could come to me and say, hey, Anne-Laure, we have this deadline tomorrow. Can you give a hand tonight? And I would say, yes, absolutely. Let me cancel everything, my social plans with my friends and work all night to help you with this. And I wish I could tell you that I realized on my own that something was wrong at the time, but I didn't. It took a health scare for me to realize that my priorities were completely out of whack. I was getting ready to go to work, brushing my teeth in the morning, and I noticed in the mirror that my entire arm had turned purple. So I went to the hospital in Stanford. The doctor said, you need to have surgery as soon as possible. There's a blood clot in your arm that is threatening to travel to your lungs. And in that moment, instead of saying, oh, yeah, absolutely, let me drop everything and let's do the surgery. Instead, I said, oh, wait a second, let me check my calendar. And the reason why was because in that moment of uncertainty, all I wanted, all I wanted was to feel in control. And so I went back automatically in my mind to something that I felt like I could manage. Yeah. Yeah.
03:24
Speaker 1
By virtue of consulting your calendar, you're kind of tricking your brain into believing this is not that big a deal. I'm going to keep getting to live the ordinary life that I'm used to living where I go to work and I have my responsibilities and my tasks. It's almost a way of entering a state of denial of protecting yourself from the fact this could have been a life-changing health event. I could imagine for myself just wanting some feeling, a semblance of this is going to be a minor blip. This is not a big deal. I'm going to go back to work on Monday anyway. Was that part of it?
03:57
Speaker 2
Absolutely. It did not happen at a conscious level, but I completely agree with you that it was really a way to pretend that this was not going to be disruptive. Yes. That I was still going to follow the plan, that I was in control of my agenda, my schedule, that it was really just a matter of making some room this week. for taking care of this minor problem. I remember, and this is something I haven't really talked about before, but when my grandmother passed away of COVID, I got the call from my mom. And the first thing I did when I hung up was to go back to writing my newsletter. And this has haunted me for a long time. I was feeling like, oh, am I heartless for doing this? I only realized after reading more stories and reading research and hearing about more people experiencing this, that this is exactly, as you said, just a way to grasp for any kind of sense of control when we're in these moments of uncertainty.
05:00
Speaker 1
You were living this very regimented, very structured life. How did the experience of going to the hospital that day, understanding your reflex was to check your calendar, change the way that you thought about your relationship, not just to your professional goals, but to your relationship with uncertainty?
05:20
Speaker 2
This was almost like an out-of-body experience for me. You know when you're... watching a movie and you see the main protagonist do something so stupid that you wish you could go and enter the movie and shake them and say, what are you doing? It makes no sense. That's how I felt in that moment because it looked absolutely ridiculous to be checking my calendar in this moment. And it made me reconsider my entire sense of priorities and maybe notice how out of whack they were when your to-do list is more important than your health. And I didn't straight away take any kind of action based on that realization, because the reality was that I had a really good job that paid really well with colleagues that I actually really liked. And so it wasn't as easy as just saying, let me quit this job and go and do something else. So I actually stayed in that role for a few more months, but Something had changed, something had shifted, and I could feel that I was not 100% present anymore in my work, that I felt like something was off. And it's only when I went back home for Christmas to visit my family and when someone asked me, hey, how's life, that I finally allowed myself to consider the question. It had to take someone else's a family member asking me that question for me to finally start listening to what I was already kind of convinced of, but not at a conscious level yet. And this is when I went back to work in January after the Christmas holiday, and I told my manager that I was going to quit.
07:07
Speaker 1
What did it feel like, and Laura, to not have a plan?
07:11
Speaker 2
I wish I could tell you I was the kind of super courageous person who just plunged into the unknown and embraced it. But that's absolutely not what happened.
07:22
Speaker 3
And you'd be so much more boring if that was your response. I wouldn't want to interview you right now. I'd be like, Ann-Laure, get out of here. I can't relate to you.
07:28
Speaker 2
Thanks. That's making me feel better. So what happened is that I left my corporate job and Straight away, I felt so uncomfortable with not knowing what was going to happen next, but also not having a clear job identity. Because I had spent the first half of my career being able to walk into any room and people would ask me, what do you do? And anytime I would explain what I was doing, people would be like, oh, wow, you must be so smart, right? And that made it so easy. All of a sudden, I didn't have that anymore. And so for the very first time in my adult life, I finally, finally allowed myself to admit that I was completely lost and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
08:18
Speaker 1
I really resonate with this identity shift, right? One of the reasons why, certainly in the context of our professional lives, we are so uncomfortable with any kind of disruption is that We lose a label that for so long signaled something about us in our capabilities and our aptitude and our motivation and our ambition. And I can imagine that being untethered from that was very, very scary and very disorienting.
08:44
Speaker 2
Yes, exactly. And this is something I don't think we're really prepared for when we quit a job or when we're in transition. There's also another body of research that I find absolutely fascinating coming from anthropology, and that's looking specifically at what they call liminal spaces, liminality, which really just means it comes from the Latin limin, and it means the in-between, the transition, being on the doorstep of change. And Being in liminal spaces is so uncomfortable that in most cultures all around the world, we have designed rituals to manage those times of transition. So think about when you're graduating or when you're engaged but not married yet. When you're expecting a child, most cultures have rituals for this. Yes, because those are times of celebration, but also because those are times of high uncertainty. And when you quit your job, there is actually not, you know, maybe you get the little card from your colleagues, but there's no real ritual around it. It's just you on your own. And so I don't think many of us are well equipped to navigate that transition.
09:52
Speaker 3
You say that when we're faced with uncertainty, we often.
09:56
Speaker 1
reach for something that will in some way way restore our sense of control.
10:02
Speaker 3
We create new routines. We plan. Why do we have this impulse?
10:07
Speaker 2
It basically stems from a sense of survival. We're just trying to stay safe. And so the more uncertainty there is, the more at risk we feel like we are. There is quite a bit of psychological and anthropological research looking at this. So some people are higher in what psychologists call intolerance to uncertainty. If you look at the general population, most of us don't really like it when we don't know what's going to happen. Our brain is trying to make a prediction and we're not quite sure what's going to happen. And that feels really uncomfortable.
10:41
Speaker 3
Right.
10:42
Speaker 1
You gave us some examples already of ways in which our desire for control can manifest, especially when it comes to a career loss, a professional shift. What are other ways in which control surfaces in everyday life?
10:57
Speaker 2
This manifests in lots of micro ways in our daily lives. So it can be through just having a very tidy to-do list of what you're supposed to do throughout the day, which most of us know you never manage to stick to. But every morning it gives you the sense of control. It can be in sticking to careers that feel like they're based on skills that we already have instead of trying new things. It can be also in our relationships. So you see that in dating. When you date the same kind of person you have been dating before, even if we know it's not functional just because it reproduces patterns that we understand and where we can make predictions. And these are called cognitive scripts. Those are automated patterns of decision that we apply in times of uncertainty. And really, you can think of them as almost like pre-written pieces of software that we run so we can feel safe by sticking to known choices.
11:57
Speaker 1
When it comes to the need to be prepared, to have a plan, to have clarity, what from society... ends up reinforcing this wiring within ourselves.
12:11
Speaker 2
That's very interesting because that actually connects to the cognitive scripts that I just mentioned. So there are basically three big types of cognitive scripts. One of them is the SQL script. This is when you make decisions today based on decisions you made in the past. So you have This nice, consistent narrative where it makes sense. It follows those chapters in the right order and the story makes sense.
12:33
Speaker 3
Continuous narrative.
12:34
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yes, exactly. The one you're mentioning here is what I call the crowd pleaser script. And it's when you make decisions based on what you think will please other people around you. And the keyword here, very important here. is think. Because obviously you can't read their minds, right? But this is what you expect will make the people around you happy, whether that's your family, your partner, your friends, your colleagues. It's actually quite common with people from an immigrant background where maybe their family has invested a lot of time and energy in supporting them in the first phase of their life and career. And then they make decisions in the second or third part of their life's based on what they think will make it feel like all of this investment was worth it for the people in their lives. The last big bucket of scripts, the last category of scripts is called the epic scripts and kind of inspired by Hollywood movies. And this is when you make decisions based on what you think will be the most impressive. This is the idea that whatever you decide to do next needs to be impactful, needs to change the world. And anything less than that is failure. And that's a very common script in startup founders, entrepreneurial people who tend to put all of their eggs in the same basket, thinking that if that one thing works out, then their entire life will be successful. And it's also, I think, quite important to mention that sometimes it's okay to follow those scripts if you're doing it in an intentional way. Maybe you do actually want to take a specific kind of job because it would be something that, I don't know, your family would appreciate or your friends would appreciate. And maybe for a time, that's what you want to do. That's completely fine. Really, a lot of problems stem from the fact that we're quite often following those scripts without being aware of it.
14:25
Speaker 3
Aware of it. Yeah.
14:26
Speaker 1
Because maybe it is a stepping stone or maybe it's just a way of, you know, saying thanks to your dad who sacrificed for you or any number of other things. And along the same lines, and again, this is something that I so appreciated about Tiny Experiments. You say, look, Reaching for structure, seeking certainty, it's not always a bad thing. That's actually how we humans survive and it can serve us well. So tell me the benefits of trying to exert that control, but then also when it gets into that more aggressive control seeking, which is, you know, counterproductive.
14:58
Speaker 2
I think control can be really helpful more in having some form of scaffolding for a period of time based on whatever it is that you're trying to explore or to figure out at the moment. It lowers your stress response. It gives you a sense of agency. It can help you have a little bit more clarity also over your next steps. So that's completely fine. I'm not saying completely let go of control. That would be impossible and not desirable, actually. The problem is when we cling to that control to the point where we start ignoring interesting options that maybe look a little bit riskier, when we don't allow ourselves to learn, to grow, to make mistakes, maybe to connect with people who think a little bit differently or to consume content that is a little bit outside of our comfort zone. And in that way, we're really playing in a very, very tiny playground that doesn't really allow us to fulfill our potential.
15:53
Speaker 1
And so what is your... proposed alternative for us and Lore. So we're trying to meet the moment with a slightly looser grip on our need for control. How should we, what's a good framework for us to use in these moments?
16:08
Speaker 2
I love to think about it as developing an experimental mindset. So really engaging with uncertainty, a little bit more like a scientist. So when a scientist doesn't understand something, they think.
16:20
Speaker 3
Oh, well, great.
16:23
Speaker 2
Here's an opportunity to learn. Here's an opportunity for discovery. And in that same way, anytime we face uncertainty in our lives, we can train ourselves to respond with curiosity instead of control. When you're optimizing for control, you're planning for a specific outcome. Whereas when you're optimizing for curiosity, you're planning to explore a specific hypothesis or, you know, like a research question almost. Yeah. That means that... Whatever the outcome, you will feel successful because your only goal is to learn something new. And so this is why when I talk about developing an experimental mindset, it's not about just letting go, doing whatever you want and seeing what happens, right? There is still... a sense of agency. There is still a sense of wanting to be the master of your own life, but not in the sense that you pretend to control any kind of outcome, in the sense that you can control the direction of your curiosity.
17:29
Speaker 1
I'm having a moment because for those who listen to the show or read my book, they know that I was an aspiring concert violinist, and then I had a career-ending injury. And this was right before college. And now all of a sudden I'm freaking out as a 17-year-old thinking, what the heck am I going to study? And my dad gave me really valuable advice that summer, which was, you know, Maya, you've been playing the violin since you were six years old. Take off the blinders and explore as much as you possibly can. But just like you said, he said, Do it without an end goal in mind.
18:03
Speaker 3
Be experimental. Don't foreclose options too quickly.
18:07
Speaker 1
And in my mind, what that translated to was don't do this just trying to figure out what your major is going to be. And I'm so grateful that he told me to have this exploratory mindset because I didn't even know what cognitive science was. I would never have opened the book called The Language Instinct, which is my first cognitive science book where I learned about the remarkable organ that is our brains. If I had gone in to that summer thinking, I need to find a major, I would have gone to familiar subjects like history or literature or biology. And so I think that this is so empowering and I'm just feeling that personal resonance.
18:45
Speaker 2
This is beautiful. And I wish more people got that advice when they find themselves in those situations where something happens and all of a sudden they need to figure out their new next steps. And instead of trying to get out of that new liminal space as quickly as possible. If someone could tell them, hey, you know, if you could just sit in that uncertainty for a little bit longer and allow yourself to explore instead of rushing to swim back to shore, you might discover something unexpected, something good, something very generative. Unfortunately, I think a lot of parents, and I can completely understand it, also project their fear of uncertainty on their children. And it comes from a really good place, but might actually encourage them to do the opposite of what your dad told you, right? Might tell them, hey, you know what? Your semester is starting in September or October. You don't have a lot of time. Be focused and try and figure out a new major as quickly as possible. And in that way, by trying to be helpful, they're actually reducing the number of possibilities that a kid might explore.
19:48
Speaker 3
Yes, exactly.
19:49
Speaker 2
I don't know if this study exists, but I would love to ask a bunch of people who feel quite happy and fulfilled in the career how they got there. And my hypothesis, my prediction is that most of them, if they answer honestly, will tell you, I had no idea this is where I would end up.
20:08
Speaker 3
Totally.
20:08
Speaker 2
But I opened this book or I had this conversation with this person or I went to this event and then someone told me, hey, do you want to come and help me with this project? Do you want to come and visit this institution? Do you want to whatever? And they said yes. And that opened a door, which opened then another door. And now they find themselves in a career that they really enjoy. But that was not based on having a perfect tenure plan. Absolutely.
20:36
Speaker 1
What does it look like in practice to bring this experimental mindset into our daily lives, to start to think like a scientist?
20:45
Speaker 2
It looks like. running what I call tiny experiments. And it's very, very simple. You only need to do two things. And it's very similar to designing a research protocol as a scientist. When a scientist wants to explore a research question, they only need to know two things. First, what they want to test. And second, the trial period. Same for a tiny experiment in your daily life. You just need to ask yourself, what is the action I want to try and for what duration? And the reason why I call them tiny experiments is because I highly recommend starting with something quite small. So don't say, I will try this thing for the next six months or the next year. Just maybe start with one week or two weeks or three weeks. See what happens. And then based on that, decide what you want to do next. Yes.
21:33
Speaker 1
Give me an example, a concrete example of what that could look like in practice.
21:38
Speaker 2
In my case, I have experimented with I will meditate for 15 minutes every day for 15 days or I will take a walk around the block every day for 10 days. I have also used it to study new topics. So last year I had a herbalism session. experiment where I said I will study one new plant every week for 12 weeks and so for 12 weeks every week I picked something so nettle or dandelion and I would get obsessed with it make tea make soup make creams and ointments and really get to know the plant intimately and So you can really experiment with anything, even if you're interested in a new career. I've seen people say, I will reach out to one expert in an area I'm interested in every Monday for X number of weeks. And one example I love is this guy from my community who had become so busy with work that he had lost touch with friends. And I think we've all experienced that, you know, the longer you wait and you're not giving any news, the more awkward it is and you keep on thinking about it, right? Absolutely. We've all been there. And he decided to run a tiny experiment where he said, I will reach out to one friend every week for, and I can't remember how many weeks that was. But what's more important about the experiment is that it was not really about the outcome. It was about him taking that small action and just sending one little message every week to a friend and just saying, hey, what's up? It's been a while. Yeah. The result of the experiment, which would surprise no one but him, was that his friends were really happy to hear from him. And it was just a lovely way to get in touch again. And nobody was angry at him for being silent for so long. Yeah.
23:28
Speaker 1
And look, If they had been angry at him, or in another context, if the experiment doesn't go well, you can stop it at any time. You've only committed to doing this for, say, 10 days or 10 times.
23:39
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And what's great is that now you know. You know which friends are happy to reconnect and which friends would rather not reconnect. And that's completely okay. And you can now spend your energy deepening the relationship with the friends who are actually happy to reconnect with you without thinking too much about the ones who have moved on.
23:58
Speaker 1
I love when you talk about how to think about this tiny experiments mindset. You say, no targets, no success metrics, just the courage to be curious for a moment and to step outside of the story you've been telling yourself about who you need to be. Can you reflect on that a little bit?
24:16
Speaker 2
You know, we've talked a lot about our relationship to uncertainty and how natural it is for us to seek control when we find ourselves in those spaces of uncertainty. And this is why I really wanted to insist on not having any kind of metrics. not having any kind of strict plan because this is really where our mind goes automatically. And especially when you talk about running experiments, you would be surprised to hear the number of people who email me and ask me if I have a tracker or a dashboard that I can give them that they can use to track their experiments. And I tell them, no, this is not what you need. You just need to go and do the thing and see how you feel. And that's it. And instead of trying to escape that feeling of unknowing and being scared of it, really almost being playful, having fun with it, asking yourself, what could I learn? What could I discover? Whether that's about yourself, about your work or about the world.
25:17
Speaker 1
After the break, Ann Lohr shares practical ways to bring this experimental mindset into our lives. We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. Ann Lohr's tiny experiments led her to an unexpected and delightful new place. a career in neuroscience, where she now studies the science of curiosity. I wanted to learn what it can actually look like to embrace an experimental mindset in daily life and some common traps to avoid when the itch to control starts to creep back in. Her first piece of advice is to reimagine our relationship with time.
26:11
Speaker 2
What I found really, really helpful when I was doing research on the topic was discovering the way the ancient Greeks were thinking about time. So they actually had two words for time, not one. The first one, which is the one we inherited, was chronos. And this is what you see in chronology, chronometer. It's a quantitative definition of time.
26:32
Speaker 1
Yes.
26:33
Speaker 2
This is the time of seconds, of minutes, of hours, which is really helpful. We would not be... having this conversation right now if we didn't agree to meet at a certain time. But now, now in this conversation, we actually lost track of time. We're in a different type of time that the ancient Greeks called kairos, not chronos. And if chronos is a quantitative definition of time, keros is a qualitative definition of time. So it's not the time of seconds and minutes and hours. It's the time of having a beautiful conversation with someone, the time of reading a bedtime story to your child. The time of watching a sunset with a friend or appreciating a really good meal. It's the kind of time where you completely forget about the clock, where you're so immersed in the present moment that it could be one minute or two hours. You have no idea.
27:24
Speaker 1
How does that relate to the way that we think about structuring our day, the way that we think about new goal setting, right?
27:35
Speaker 2
So in the case of toxic productivity, you're optimizing for Kronos, where you're trying to make the most of every single minute, even if that means canceling plans with friends or not taking care of your health or not sleeping enough. You're trying to be as productive as possible at the cost of everything else. In the case of mindful productivity, you're optimizing for the depth of the experience. And that means that, yes, you can still optimize for your time, but you also want to pay attention to three other resources that are as important as time. Your executive function, your energy, and your emotions. Executive function is basically your attention and your working memory. And it's really just being aware of the fact that you have limited attention and limited working memory. So there is just so much that you can hold in your mind or pay attention to your focus on throughout a day. So you have to be mindful of how you use those limited cognitive resources. Your energy. is paying attention to how you feel throughout the day. You might be the kind of person who does their best work early in the morning or late at night. You might need more breaks. You might need to have smaller chunks for your tasks. So instead of applying rigid productivity frameworks that you're just copying and pasting from others, it is really about paying attention to how your energy is fluctuating and as much as you can, trying to align your workload with your energy levels. And lastly, very importantly, something that we used to say should stay out of the workplace, your emotions, how you're actually feeling. And so if there are things that activate you, things that make you angry, that make you annoyed, or that make you excited, pay attention to that. Those are actually really important signals of how you might want to spend your time. Yeah.
29:21
Speaker 1
More broadly speaking, Anne-Laure, What are the unexpected benefits of having a tiny experimental mindset?
29:30
Speaker 2
The main benefit is that all of a sudden, instead of experiencing fear and doubt and anxiety when you're facing uncertainty, it becomes... exciting. It becomes an opportunity for learning, for discovery. And whenever you find yourself in a situation where you're not quite sure what's going to happen next, you have this completely different response where you ask yourself, how? That's really interesting. What can we learn? Let's go. Let's explore. Let's experiment.
30:01
Speaker 1
I imagine that there's a subset of listeners who are hearing this and thinking, OK, that's all well and good. But Anne-Laure, I'm dealing with an issue in my life that's way, way, way too high stakes to experiment with. But they still want to start to cultivate an experimental mindset. You have a solution for them, which is to engage in what you call a lateral experiment.
30:23
Speaker 3
Tell me about that.
30:24
Speaker 2
So first, this is why my book is called Tiny Experiments and not Huge, Massive, Disruptive Experiments. So it's really important to keep them small. That being said, you are absolutely right that sometimes the area of uncertainty in our life is just too big, too sensitive for us to approach directly. And in that case, you can experiment laterally. And that means experimenting in an area that is not directly connected to the area of uncertainty. So let's say that you are thinking about quitting your job. And you're not quite sure that you're ready for this. You might want to experiment in other areas of your life. You can experiment with your creativity, art, with exercise, with public speaking, with other areas in your life where you can start building that confidence that maybe you're ready for something new and maybe you're ready to expand your range of possibilities. Once you've built that confidence through lateral experiments, then you can come back to that other bigger, scarier area of uncertainty.
31:30
Speaker 1
Can you give this really illustrative example? This guy who was stuck in a job, couldn't quit, and then did something very surprising that helped him get a little more comfortable with uncertainty.
31:43
Speaker 2
So this person was feeling stuck in their job and anxious. although they had thought about quitting, they thought it was terrifying for several reasons. One of them being thinking about what their family and friends would think. Would they be worried about him? Would they think that he failed at the job? The other part was financial. And that was a really good job that paid well. What would happen? Would he find another job quickly enough and so because of that although he was feeling miserable every morning when he was going to work he stayed in that job and felt like he could not quit so instead of experimenting with this part of his life which felt quite sensitive quite risky he experimented with something completely different cold swimming he decided to go and swim in cold water every day for.
32:30
Speaker 1
10 days And by the way, just to clarify, why did he choose this particular tiny experiment? Was it to increase his pain tolerance? Like, what was the motivation behind it?
32:42
Speaker 2
He wanted to experiment with discomfort, putting himself outside of his comfort zone. And, I mean, I think we can all agree, swimming in cold water.
32:50
Speaker 3
Oh, my God. The worst. The worst.
32:52
Speaker 2
Yeah.
32:52
Speaker 1
Yep.
32:54
Speaker 2
And by completing this experiment, he discovered that he was the kind of person who could actually tolerate discomfort, that he was the kind of person who could jump in cold water and see if he could figure it out. Through that lateral experiment, he built the confidence to then take risks in another more sensitive area of his life, which was quitting his job, which he ultimately did.
33:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, you say that he realized that he was actually braver than the person stuck in that job. Just two weeks later, after starting this experiment, he developed the courage to resign. And I think, look, for those listening, even if the tiny experiment doesn't lead to an outcome as big as quitting a job or leaving a relationship, the mere cultivation of this tolerance of discomfort, tolerance of uncertainty, building courage in the face of fear. All of those traits will help you down the line to maybe pull that bigger lover.
33:56
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And it is really about changing your relationship to your identity from something that is fixed to something that can change, something that can evolve, and something that you can mold. So even if nothing specific comes out of an experiment, just discovering something new about yourself is already an amazing outcome.
34:15
Speaker 3
What's your advice to.
34:17
Speaker 1
people who want to introduce these tiny experiments into their life, even tiny ones, but they are just so trapped in their habits. They've really been steeped in this hyper productivity, Instagram culture that we're all living in. How would you help them take that first step? The ones who are like, yeah, not swimming in cold water every morning.
34:38
Speaker 2
Sorry.
34:38
Speaker 3
And Laura, not happening.
34:40
Speaker 2
Don't worry. That won't happen on my end as well. Um, A way to get started with tiny experiments, if you're not in a place right now where you feel like you can change much, you don't have that capacity, is to start by experimenting with removing something. So don't add something, don't change anything, just remove something. One of my favorite tiny experiments to start with when I work with people who feel really stuck, they're really not sure where to start, is I will not bring my phone in my bedroom for one week. That's such a simple one. And so the action is not bringing your phone in your bedroom. The duration is one week. You're not actually spending more time or energy into changing anything. And it doesn't mean it's easy, but it's simple. And it can be an opportunity to go through the entire process of having a hypothesis. Maybe I will sleep better. Maybe I will have more energy in the morning. Maybe I will read more books. Whatever your hypothesis is, then run the experiment. And at the end of the experiment, see if you were correct or not, and then decide what you want to do next. Do you want to keep going? Do you want to tweak it? And in one week, you can go through that entire experimental cycle.
35:53
Speaker 3
Yes, yes.
35:54
Speaker 1
I picked up a reading habit in the last three months, and now I've read like 15 books in two months, and it's entirely because I just leave my phone in the other room. Tell me a little bit more about what experiments look like in community with others.
36:08
Speaker 3
I mean, you have a whole tiny experiments community online.
36:11
Speaker 2
The best way to run experiments together is to choose the same start date. So you say, on Sunday, we're going to start our experiment together. And just like scientists, you can have a kickoff meeting where you get together over coffee or however you want to do it. And you all share your protocol. You say, this is the action I picked. And this is the duration. Ideally, you want to all have the same duration, although the actions will be different. And at the end of that duration, again, same as scientists where we have debrief meetings, you all come together and you transparently share what you learned. What's really important here is that it's not about sharing success as in, I did that and it went great, right? It's really about sharing the actual experience, the actual results of the experiment and what you learned. And there's actually so much value in saying, hey, I tried this thing and it went completely wrong. Here's what I learned. Yes.
37:05
Speaker 1
Give me a couple of examples of tiny experiments and give me one where it doesn't work, but you would learn something valuable, like in your personal life.
37:13
Speaker 2
So, you know, I'm a neuroscientist, but I'm also an educator. And a couple of years ago, I had lots of people around me telling me that I needed a YouTube channel, that video was the future of education, and that if I just kept on writing my newsletter, Very soon, nobody will engage with my work. And so I need to start filming videos.
37:32
Speaker 1
By the way, slight change of plans, listeners everywhere. Please continue to support audio-only productions and support people like Anne-Laure who write words because neither of us are going to be able to do the video thing. It's not right for our personalities or the shows or the newsletter.
37:48
Speaker 2
Yes, please. Thank you.
37:50
Speaker 1
That was just a public service announcement on behalf of the industry.
37:53
Speaker 2
All right. Yes. I mean, so you know where this is going because actually I ran that experiment and I said, okay, so it was towards the end of the year. And I said, I will record one YouTube video every week until the end of the year and I'll see what's going to happen. In terms of what you would say are external signals of success. So, you know, any kind of metrics you would normally look at to look at the success of a YouTube channel. So likes, subscribers, comments, it all looked great. In terms of internal signals, meaning how it felt to record those videos, every time I had to sit in front of that camera and talk to myself, I absolutely hated it. So you see how... Important it is, right, to look at both the external and internal signals, because if I had only looked at the external signals, I would have kept going. But I would argue that if you complete an experiment and the external signals look good, but you felt absolutely terrible while doing it, is that really success? No, it's not. And so I decided to stop. And some people might say, oh, she failed her YouTube experiment, but I don't think it's a failure at all because now I know YouTube is not for me. And when people ask me, so why don't you have a YouTube channel? Now I have an answer. I can tell them, well, I tried it and it doesn't work for me. It's a little bit like in the Goldilocks story. So you don't want it to be too cold or too hot. You want your curiosity to be just right, to be warm, where you have this emotional connection. You are excited. You do want to find out, but also you're able to direct that curiosity towards things that are actually interesting to you, where there's the sense of inner alignment and not curiosity that is being directed and controlled by external actors. Yeah.
39:46
Speaker 1
You launched this book in 2025. it has gained a massive following, right? You've built this whole community around the world of tiny experimenters. What is some parting wisdom or advice you would leave our listeners with?
40:00
Speaker 2
You know, something I've noticed that we discussed together today is how in both of our cases, it took an external trigger, a bit of a lifequake, really, for us to realize that something needed to change. In my case, it was a health scare. In your case, it was a career-ending injury. So... The invitation I have for your listeners is maybe to not wait until you have that kind of external lifequake and also not wait until you feel like you're ready, until you feel like you have all of the tools. Start experimenting, start building that curiosity muscle and see what happens.
40:38
Speaker 1
Thank you. Hey, thanks so much for listening. To learn more, you can check out Ann Lohr's latest book, Tiny Experiments, How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. We've included a link in our show notes. If this episode resonated with you, be sure to check out my conversation with Judith Joseph about pathological productivity. You can find that in the show notes as well. And one final thing, we'd love to hear from you. What's helped you through times of change? Maybe it was advice someone gave you during a major transition, a phrase you still come back to when things feel uncertain, or something surprising you discovered about yourself. Share your reflections with us in a voice memo and tell us why those lessons have stayed with you. You may be featured in an upcoming episode. You can email your voice memo to slightchange at pushkin.fm or leave us a voicemail at 646-397-8557.
41:54
Speaker 3
That's 646-397-8557.
41:54
Speaker 1
All right, we'll be back soon with another episode of A Slight Change of Plans. I'll see you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me, Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner, Alexander Gerriton, our editor, Daphne Chen, our lead producer, Megan Lubin, our associate producer, Sonia Gerwitt, and our sound engineer, Erica Huang. Luis Guerra wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there. And of course, a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
The Host
