1KHO 723: Uncertainty Has So Much to Teach Us | Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Tiny Experiments

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Episode: 1KHO 723: Uncertainty Has So Much to Teach Us
Date: February 27, 2026
Guest: Anne-Laure Le Cunff (Founder, NEST Labs; Author, Tiny Experiments)
Host: Jeanne Ertz

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the power of uncertainty, personal experimentation, and redefining success in a world obsessed with linear goals and productivity. Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares her journey from corporate success at Google to embracing uncertainty, launching NEST Labs, and cultivating curiosity through "tiny experiments." The episode offers practical tools for listeners overwhelmed by perfectionism, linear life paths, and societal expectations—encouraging a mindset rooted in experimentation and intentional imperfection.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Redefining Success: Quitting Google and Embracing Uncertainty

• Anne-Laure describes her tenure at Google as "the dream job" yet reveals the hidden costs of overwork and the pressure to perform.
• A sudden health crisis (blood clot requiring emergency surgery) forced her to reconsider her priorities.
  • Quote: “I almost had this out of body experience, like when you want to shake the main character in a movie and say, 'Why are you doing this?'” (02:52, Anne-Laure)
• Parental expectations around stability and security added another layer of uncertainty when she decided to leave Google.
  • Quote: "They were so happy that you got this job ... then all of a sudden getting the news that I was going to leave my job to do a startup—what is that?" (04:00, Anne-Laure)

2. The Trap of Linear Goals

• After leaving Google and launching a successful (then failed) startup, Anne-Laure realized she replicated the same patterns of goal-driven busyness.
• Quote: "I jumped from one socially sanctified way of approaching your career ... to another one ... but it was kind of a different packaging for the exact same problems." (05:20, Anne-Laure)
• Failure of her startup became a vital turning point, admitting to herself: "I was completely lost," but also "strangely freeing." (06:44)

3. NEST Labs and Learning in Public

• In the midst of uncertainty, Anne-Laure asked: "What is something you'd like to explore even if nobody was watching?" (07:34)
• This led her back to neuroscience and to founding NEST Labs, a “personal laboratory for experimentation.”
  • Quote: “NEST Labs ... is really a personal sandbox, a laboratory for me to explore what it is to be human and make a lot of mistakes in the process and learn in public.” (12:07)
• She champions "learning in public"—sharing your learning process, not just results, to build authentic connections and reinforce learning (cf. Steph Smith example: 10:14).
• Daily life now split between neuroscience research, writing her newsletter, and public speaking (13:00–14:26).

4. The Limitation of Ladders vs. Loops (Cycles of Experimentation)

• Anne-Laure critiques the ladder model of life: consecutive, linear achievements breeding comparison and rigidity.
  • Quote: “You don’t need permission to take the next step. … Instead, you can design your life as cycles of experimentation.” (18:20)
• She proposes a "loop" or "cycle" mental model, where individuals run hypotheses about their interests and preferences, test them as "tiny experiments," and iterate—mirroring how historical figures like Einstein balanced stability and exploration (21:43).

5. Living in the Liminal Space

• The discomfort of "liminal spaces"—the in-betweens of life—is a central theme.
  • Quote: “A liminal space is an in between space … not who you used to be, but not that new, fully realized version of yourself yet.” (23:41)
• Instead of rushing for certainty, Anne-Laure urges embracing these states for their capacity to foster self-discovery and growth (25:59).

6. What We Really Want: Ambition Beyond Productivity

• Our sense of ambition is too often equated with productivity measures.
  • Quote: “Nobody really wants to live a productive life. … People want to be a good parent, a good friend…to be creative, to have a positive impact on their community.” (26:54)
• Societal definitions of success often clash with our true ambitions, creating inner conflict and dissatisfaction (28:14, Anna Quindlen’s story).

7. Tools for Navigating Uncertainty and Growth

a) Procrastination as a Signal (31:51)

• Challenges the moralization of procrastination—labels like "lazy" or "undisciplined" are misplaced.
  • Quote: "Procrastination, in essence, is really just a signal from your brain that something is not quite right with the task you're trying to do." (31:51)
• Introduces the Triple Check:
  • Head: Is the task even rational or necessary?
  • Heart: Is it emotionally engaging?
  • Hand: Do you have the skills or resources?
• Use procrastination cues to discover hidden interests: "Pay attention to what you do when you procrastinate. It might reveal what you’re really curious about." (37:17)

b) Kairos Rituals and Energy Awareness (39:17)

• Distinguishes between "Chronos" (quantitative time, calendar) and "Kairos" (qualitative, experiential time).
• Advocates designing small rituals (dancing to a favorite song, brewing tea, walking in circles) that anchor you in the present—a gateway to “Kairos” moments.
  • Quote: “Ask yourself, what is a very simple ritual that you can do whenever you've been in Chronos mode for too long and you want to reinject a little bit of that Kairos mode into your life?” (41:00)

c) Playful Experimentation and Embracing Messiness

• Encourages playful, family/team-based tiny experiments as a way to thrive amidst uncertainty and break free from perfectionism (44:17)
  • Quote: “It's really all about playing with uncertainty, playing with the messiness, embracing it, having fun and knowing that you're not going to get it right the first time around. And that's okay.” (44:17)

d) Intentional Imperfection & Seesaw Living

• Cites Shonda Rhimes’ “seesaw” metaphor: excelling in one area means dropping balls in others, and that’s inevitable (46:56).
  • Quote: "Step number one is just accepting that you're never going to be 100% perfect across the board. And this is great when you accept this, because first, you remove a lot of the pressure on yourself…" (46:56)

e) Plus-Minus-Next Practice

• Simple method for self and family reflection:
  • Plus: What's working?
  • Minus: What's not working?
  • Next: What small change will you try next?
• “It’s really this idea of cycles again, of iteration...” (49:35)

f) Mind Gardening (Bonus Chapter)

• Mind gardening: Don't overload your brain with information; instead, intentionally plant, water, and thin ideas so that they can take root.
  • Quote: “You have to thin ... otherwise nothing grows.” (53:14)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Out-of-body Wakeup (02:52):
  “You see yourself do something so absurd that you almost have this out-of-body experience ... That’s when I started reconsidering my priorities in life and work.” – Anne-Laure

• On Letting Go of Linear Success (06:44):
  “I was fortunate that my startup failed ... For the first time in my adult life, I admitted to myself that I was completely lost.”

• On Liminal Spaces (25:20):
  “Liminal means the in-between ... that phase of transition. You don’t know yet who you’re going to become, and that can feel really uncomfortable.”

• On Kairos Rituals (41:00):
  “My Kairos ritual is to put my favorite song on and to get up from my desk and dance for three minutes—like no one’s watching.”

• On the Plus-Minus-Next Practice (49:35):
  “Every time you complete your plus minus next, you’re just going to try a little improvement. … It is really this idea of cycles again, of iteration..."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Anne-Laure’s Google Exit & Health Scare: 01:02–03:19
• Parental & Societal Pressure: 03:19–04:54
• Startup Journey & Lessons: 05:20–06:44
• Founding NEST Labs & Learning in Public: 07:34–12:07
• Daily Life and Research: 12:56–14:26
• Linear Goals vs. Experimentation Loops: 18:01–21:43
• Famous Experimenters (Einstein): 21:43–23:09
• Living in Liminal Space: 23:41–25:59
• Ambition vs. Productivity: 26:54–28:14
• Intentional Imperfection & Seesaw Living: 46:56–49:00
• Plus-Minus-Next Reflection Tool: 49:35–51:16
• Mind Gardening and Bonus Chapter: 51:41–53:14
• Kairos Rituals Explained: 39:17–44:17
• Childhood Memory (Mushroom Hunting): 55:02

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Episode Tone and Takeaways

• Encouraging, honest, and practical—this conversation is infused with permission to experiment, make mistakes, and value progress over perfection.
• Anne-Laure blends research-backed explanation with humility and real-life anecdotes, maintaining a friendly and relatable tone throughout.
• The episode is a toolkit for anyone wanting to break free from rigid definitions of success and live more freely—even (especially!) in the face of uncertainty.

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Where to Learn More

• Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s newsletter and resources: nestlabs.com
• Her book: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World
• Access the online bonus chapter on "Mind Gardening" via Anne-Laure’s site.

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“You just need this experimental mindset. And that’s something that could be kind of pushed out of us in childhood ... So this is a way of bringing it back, of embracing uncertainty.”
— Jeanne Ertz (54:35)

Transcript

[Podcast Host (Announcer)]

This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread plus, powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go. Explore the new peloton cross training Tread [e-mail] Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.

[Jeanne Ertz]

My name is Jeanne Ertz. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I have the founder of Nest Labs here today, Ann Laura Lecomph. Welcome.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Jeanne Ertz]

So I read your book called Tiny Experiments and it's about how to live freely in a goal obsessed world, which, that's what this is. Very goal obsessed. And you talk about your story of quitting at Google. You had the dream job, you're working up the ladder, they're flying you all over the place. Can you talk about that?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

So I, as you said, I had what I thought was my dream job at the time, working with really smart people on really cool projects. And I was really excited to be there and have that opportunity. As a result. However, I said yes to absolutely everything. Part of me thought that someone might discover that I did not belong there among all of these smart people. And I was so scared that I would not be able to perform at the level I was supposed to at a company like that, that I would try to go over and beyond with every single project and take on even more than what I was supposed to do. This is obviously not sustainable, and I wish I could tell you that I realized that on my own. But as it is often the case, it takes a little bit of an external life quake for us to realize that our priorities are out of whack. And in my case, it was a health scare. So I was getting ready to go to work, brushing my teeth in front of the mirror, and I noticed that my entire arm had turned purple. So I, yeah, I, I went to the Google infirmary because we, we had that and the nurse had one look at it and said, you need to go to the hospital straight away. So I did that, went to the hospital in Stanford. The doctors had a look and said, you need to have to get surgery as quickly as possible. There's a blood clot in your arm that is threatening to travel to your lungs.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Wow.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

And in that moment, how did I respond? By saying, oh, one second, I need to check my calendar.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Yeah.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Oh, and I Don't know if you've ever had this where you see yourself do something that is so absurd that you almost have this out of body experience. And like if you know when you want to shake the main character in a movie and say, why are you doing this? It makes no sense. That's the feeling I had in that moment. And this is really when I started reconsidering my priorities in life and work.

[Jeanne Ertz]

So your parents were kind of freaked out. You talk about how, you know, you're. They were so happy that you got this job and you're working. It's a dream job. It's amazing pay, international travel, challenging work that matches your skills, interesting colleagues, no limit to the heights you could achieve, and you felt a little unsure about it, you quit. But also your parents are a little unsure about it too. How did you deal with that?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Coming from an immigrant background. But I don't think it's just when you come from an immigrant background. But I, I have parents who think that success is basically stability, just making sure that you make enough money every month to be able to pay your rent, having this financial freedom. And so we went from feeling like they had done their job as a parent because I had this, this role at Google with a good salary, a good carer, and feeling like they were done to all of a sudden getting the news that I was going to leave my job to do a startup. What is that? They were completely confused.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Yeah.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

And, and they were scared. They were scared. And they've always been supportive, of course. But I think for most parents, you, you mostly want to know that your child is going to be safe. And all of a sudden they weren't so sure that I was going to be safe with this scary choice that I was making.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Yeah, I, I'm like, oh, that is an interesting version of success, stability. I mean, that is what feels good and is what you want for your kids. So you start this tech startup, but you. And it. And it goes amazingly well. Right. You say within a year, you're in Wired magazine, highlighted as one of the health care startups you need to know about. But can you talk about. He went from one kind of busy to another kind of busy.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Yes.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

When I left my job at Google, it could have been an opportunity for me to completely change the way I approach things. But I felt so uncomfortable with not having the title anymore, not having a clear idea of how I was supposed to spend my days and how I was supposed to direct my attention, that I jumped from one socially sanctified way of approaching your career, which is working at a big corporation, to another one, at least in Silicon Valley, which is working on a tech startup. And so it was kind of a different packaging for the exact same problems, which were that I was still completely overworked, still designing my work and my life based on external expectations of success and traditional definitions of success. Of, yes, a startup might sound innovative, but it still has its own codes, its own definitions of what performance is supposed to look like. And I was using that blueprint to design my life instead of asking myself how I wanted to live my life.

[Jeanne Ertz]

How'd you finally get out of it?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

I was very fortunate that my startup ended up failing. And

[Jeanne Ertz]

what a thing to say. What a thing to say. To say you're fortunate that it failed.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Yes. Because, you know, I don't know how long, how much longer it would have taken me to realize that this was not the right path for me and that I was following this external blueprint. It's only when the startup failed that for the first time in my adult life, I admitted to myself that I was completely lost. I had no idea what I wanted to do next. And to be completely honest, maybe I had. I never knew what I wanted to do. It's just that I had kept on climbing a ladder that was the one that I was apparently supposed to climb. All of a sudden, when that ladder was not in front of me anymore, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And this was, yes, a little bit scary, but strangely freeing as well.

[Jeanne Ertz]

So where does NEST Labs come in?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

So when I found myself in this space of uncertainty, admitting to myself that I was completely lost, I asked myself, what is something you'd like to explore even if nobody was watching? So forget about your parents, forget about your colleagues, forget about your friends. If nobody was watching, how could you spend your days waking up in the morning? What would you be curious to explore even if nobody was watching? And for me, it's always been the brain. I've always been curious about how the brain works and why we think the way we think and feel the way we feel. And so instead of trying to design the next step in my career, I decided to follow that curiosity and I decided to go back to school to study neuroscience, and I freelanced on the side to be able to still pay my rent. But I spent a lot of my time just learning, exploring, being a little bit like a child again, where I was completely out of my comfort zone. But I decided to stay in that uncertainty guarantee, and NEST Labs was Initially, a way for me to experiment with learning in public. So I discovered something in my course, neuroscience, which is that if there's something you're curious about learning in public, so sharing what you learn while you're learning it is going to help you both understand it and remember it's better. So teaching is actually a great way to learn, and you can do that in a lot of different ways. You can do that through writing, you can do that through a podcast. You can do that through posting on social media or hosting conversations with friends. It doesn't matter. It's really the idea of taking something you're still learning and sharing that in public with other people. Not when you feel ready, not when you feel like an expert. So I started a newsletter where. Where I said that I was going to take something I learned in university and share it with people, even if it was very new to me. And that was my very first tiny experiment. Just something to try to see what would happen. Something a little bit uncomfortable, but really letting go of any outcome, letting go of any goals, letting go of any traditional definitions of success, and just experimenting. So that was the beginning of NEST Labs.

[Jeanne Ertz]

So this is all about just taking small steps, trying little things. In the book, when you talked about learning in public, you talk about a podcast host that does it. Can you tell us about Steph Smith?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Yes. Steph Smith is one of the best examples, I think, of someone who's learning in public. So there's the kind of, like, baby version of learning in public where you will just take something you're curious about that you just discovered, and maybe you will post it on your social media or share it with a friend. And this is great. Steph is really an extreme public learner. She has a page where she shares everything she's currently learning, her exercise routine, all of the books that she's reading, all of the courses that she's taking, and she's tracking her learning progress. So she says, here's what I'm learning right now, and I feel like I'm at 10%. I'm just getting started. And here's something I'm a little bit more comfortable with. And what she shared with me is that not only sure that's a great way for her to track what she's learning, but the kind of unexpected benefit she got from it, from having this page online where she shares everything she learns is all of the connections and friendships that she's made based on that. Because people read that page and they say, oh, wait a second. Also curious about this. So maybe I would get along with this person and they reach out, or maybe this is something they've learned about in the past, and they will reach out to Steph and share a resource. So it creates all of those natural icebreakers, and it makes it so much easier to connect with people and make new friends.

[Jeanne Ertz]

You talk about how this is intentional imperfection. I mean, most people don't share their learning progress. They only share when they're at the end of the road. But you can see how there's so many benefits to. To learning in public. So that's one of the things you talk about in the book as a tiny experiment. Can you explain what NEST Labs is and how you came up with the name?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

So NEST Labs means. So the part ness is the suffix we add at the end of a word to describe the state of being so something. So this is why we have awareness, the state of being aware, mindfulness, the state of being mindful consciousness, wellness, et cetera. And then labs was because I wanted NEST Labs to be a personal laboratory for experimentation. My own sandbox to try things even if I didn't feel ready to share them with the world yet. And so it is really a personal sandbox, a laboratory for me to explore what it is to be human and make a lot of mistakes in the process and learn in public.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Okay, so tell us, what do you do on a daily basis?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

I split my time between doing research. So I'm a neuroscientist, which, by the way, was not the case when I started that tiny experiment. At the time, I ended up loving it so much that I applied for a PhD afterwards, which I completed about a year ago. That was completely unexpected. And this is. This is really. I think the value of experimentation is that you don't really have a plan. You just follow your curiosity, and every time you really like something, you can decide to invest more time in it, if that's what you want to do. But equally, if you experiment with something and it's not for you, that's completely fine, you can stop as well. So I split my time these days in between doing neuroscience research at a university that's called King's College London here in the uk. And the rest of my time, I'm just writing. I'm still writing the newsletter, which I started now five years ago. I think it's still one of my favorite moments every week when every Thursday, I make myself a cup of coffee, I sit down, I think about what I learned this week, and I write about it in the newsletter and I do a little bit of public speaking these days as well, which used to be something I was terrified, terrified terrified about and that I've become a little bit more comfortable with through experimentation. But that's mostly how I spend my time. Research, writing and a little bit of

[Jeanne Ertz]

public speaking so people can read some of your writing in tiny experiments. How to Live Freely in a goal

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[Jeanne Ertz]

One of the things you talk about in tiny experiments is the trap of linear goals. And you talked about it. Even at Google you're like and with your startup it's like you're climbing a ladder. It's straight and you talk about how that's all you have to do is keep climbing. Can you talk about that? That can be a trap for some people.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Absolutely. Linear goals, this approach to success and to life in general, that is based on the mental model of climbing A ladder can actually be very limiting in terms of personal growth because the idea is that you have to do things in a certain order. So first you do a. And then either when you feel ready or when someone else tells you that you're allowed to, because you're ready, you can go on to the next rung on the ladder. And this is how we see most careers being designed, and this is how most companies are being designed. You know, you need to wait for your turn to have the promotion to do the next project when you're supposed to be ready for it. And so you limit yourself. Another problem with this very linear approach to success is that it encourages toxic social comparison. So when everybody's climbing a ladder in a very linear way, there's a temptation to look around you and compare where you are on the ladder compared to other people. And you ask you, you wonder, why is this person I used to be in school with is up there on that ladder? Why am I still here? Why am I so slow, why am I not productive enough, et cetera. And this is obviously exacerbated by social media these days because everybody's posting about where they are on the ladder. Everybody's posting about their success. The last part about linear goals, that's dangerous is that very often we feel like once we started climbing a specific ladder, we have to keep on climbing that one ladder. And we don't give ourselves permission to say, actually, you know what, I'm not that interested in this career anymore, or this doesn't feel like the kind of work that is aligned with my values, with the way I want to show up in the world. So the alternative, when you know, there's the mental model of the ladder, very linear that you climb. I tell people that in the book that the alternative is the mental model of a loop. So cycles of experimentation. Instead, you're not climbing a ladder. You're going through cycles of experimentation where instead of starting from a place of control, of wanting to have certainty about your career path and your life, you start from a place of curiosity. You might have a little bit of a hypothesis. Feeling like, this might be for me, this might be something I enjoy, this might be how I want to spend my time. Let me give it a try. I'm going to experiment with this. I'm going to run a tiny experiment and I'm going to let go of self blame, self judgment of this illusion of control. I'm just going to give it a try and see what happens and I'm going to learn from that experiment. And once I'm done, I'm going to decide what is my next cycle of experimentation. And in that way, you can make progress and you can design the life you want, even if you don't have a perfect linear plan for where you're supposed to go.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Can you talk about, you talk about in the book about people who did this. Albert Einstein, you know that they had a career, but they would do these tiny experiments like you talk about on the side to just explore and see what they might be interested in. So can you talk about some historical people who did that that we might know of?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Yeah, absolutely. And I love this question because I think a common misconception when I talk about living a more experimental life is that you need to quit your job and you need to go all in. And that's absolutely not the case. That's why the book is called Tiny Experiments. It's about keeping them tiny and you can absolutely do them on the side without having to quit your job. And especially if you still need that financial stability right now. And that was the case with Einstein. So Einstein was actually a clerk. Einstein needed that financial stability and had a very stable, very traditional job. And on the side was experimenting with exploring physics. And I mean, we know the outcome, right? And this is not an outcome first, that he could have planned, because when you're trying something that you don't know is going to be successful, you have no idea what the outcome is going to be. And second, I would argue that in his case, maybe having a stable job, maybe having a stable income is also what allowed him to free up a bit of the mental space, a bit of the mental load, to be able to then experiment freely on the side. So I would even go further and say that it's not just that you can do experiments on the side, is that sometimes this might be for you, in this season of your life, the perfect way to go about it.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Yeah, I love this question that you have in the book. What is the smallest version of this experiment that you can run? So you talk about, we grow in circles, our brain, but our brain is uncomfortable in the in betweens. So you talk about your parents. They view stability as success, certainty. And I think a lot of people do, too. I mean, I like stability and certainty. So how do you deal with yourself and your brain when you're in. You call it the liminal space.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

So first, what does liminal mean? I think that's really helpful to think about this concept. So liminal means the in between. It comes from the Latin word Lemon. Which means a threshold, the doorstep of something, the doorstep of something of change. Right. And this is actually you, you might have heard the word subliminal that they, they use sometimes. Like something. Yeah, it's, it comes from exactly the same word. And subliminal means under the, the threshold of perception. So that's what it is. Threshold. Liminal. A liminal space is an in between space. It's a space of transition. It's when you're not who you used to be, but you're not that new, fully realized version of yourself yet. And so some examples in life are maybe you, you're pregnant, but your child is not here yet. That's a liminal space. Maybe you graduated school, but you haven't started your first job yet. That's a liminal space. Maybe you're engaged but not married yet. That's the liminal space. And so you're in that phase of transition. You don't know yet who you're going to become. And that can feel really uncomfortable, comfortable. And this is why usually when we're in that liminal space, we want to get out of it as quickly as possible. Bring me to the other side. I want to get back to shore. I want to get back to stability. But there's lots of research showing that liminal spaces can offer some of the best opportunities for growth and self discovery if you allow yourself to sit with the uncertainty. And this is really what the entire book is about. The original title was actually Liminal Minds, not Tiny Experiments. And we changed it because people didn't know what liminal meant. And so people don't tend to pick up a book where the title is confusing. Right. But this is really the essence of the book. Tiny Experiments is a book that is an all about how do we become more comfortable in liminal spaces, how do we become more comfortable with uncertainty? And how do we start approaching that uncertainty not with fear and anxiety, but with curiosity and an experimental mindset.

[Jeanne Ertz]

And this is a big deal because life is really uncertain right now. You had a good job, you know, and you had an opportunity to move forward at Google. But we have a friend who got let go from Google just because of, you know, changes in the job market. And a lot of people are getting let go from different situations. So this is something that we need to be okay with, comfortable with uncertainty, and try and help our kids to be that way as well. You have this sentence, nobody really wants to live a productive life. I was like, oh, that's really true. Like we're so goal Obsessed. But if you were to ask somebody, is that all you want? Is that the main thing you want is to be productive? They would say no. Can you talk about what people really want?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Absolutely. I think it's really interesting how we have defined ambition as a society and we have tied it to productivity. And I think it is because our society kind of measures people's worth based on how productive they are. Right. This is how you get a job. Right. You show that you have the answers, that you're able to, to do the work. But if you ask people about their true ambitions in life, people want to be a good parent, they want to be a good friend, they want to be able to show up for the people they care about. They want to be creative, they want to have a positive impact on their community. That's actually those are the kind of ambitions that people have. But somehow those ambitions are not celebrated in the same way than productivity is. And I think that's why there's this disconnect between the way we spend our energy and this obsession that we have with goals and with productivity and what we actually care about. If we take a moment to ask ourselves, what do I actually care about? It's not your to do list, right? It's the people in your life, it's the relationships you have. It's is the, it's what you create and how you impact the world.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Yeah, it's really an important distinction. You talk about Anna Quindle and sort of similar to you, she quits a pretty stable job. She was a full time writer at the New or she was a writer at the New York Times and she quit to become a full time mother. And people said, you're nuts. And, and she said, no, I'm not, I'm happy. Can you talk about people, Anna, or people like Anna, who are refusing to be defined by this productivity role?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Yeah, it's really interesting how if you are fortunate enough that at some point in your career you were in a socially sanctified, well recognized kind of role that people automatically label as, ooh, this person is successful. In Anna's case, working at the New York Times, anybody would say, wow, very successful. I had that with Google as well. But it doesn't have to be associated to a specific company. It could be being a lawyer, being a doctor. There are so many roles that society automatically labels as successful. It can be really, really hard to leave those because that means that you're saying all of a sudden like, I'm changing my definition of success, I'm changing My definition of productivity, I'm going to have my own definition. That's automatically going to be harder. First, because at an individual level, personally, you will have to create that new definition for yourself. But second, a lot of people around you will tell you that this is crazy, that you're taking a huge risk. Are you really sure you want to do this? Why wouldn't want to keep the job that is so successful so recognized and that so many people would want to have and so really breaking free from this idea that if everybody wants it, you should want it too is actually really difficult.

[Jeanne Ertz]

So she quits to become a full time mother. And you talk about how success comes from following a path that allows you to positively impact the world around you, even if it doesn't conform to society's expectations. So if you want to start trying these tiny experiments, you can grow in circles. This is what you talk about.

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[Jeanne Ertz]

But one of the things that you cover in the book Tiny Experiments is procrastination. Oh, and procrastination makes us feel like a failure. Can you give us a different take on procrastination?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Thank you. Because this is one of my favorite topics and the reason why I love this topic is that it's unexpectedly juicy. It's something that people love to talk about at a conceptual level where they say, oh yeah, procrastination, oh yeah, that's so hard. Right? But nobody admits to it in the moment. You never walk to your boss and say, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't finish the presentation because I was procrastinating. Nobody does that. There's a lot of shame and self blame around procrastination, and it's because it's been moralized. We've been told that if you are, if you're procrastinating, it's maybe a lack of willpower, a lack of discipline, maybe laziness, but it's none of that. Procrastination, in essence, is really just a signal from your brain that something is not quite right with the task you're trying to do. And that's it. It's really just your brain trying to tell you, hey, not quite sure about this. Something's wrong here. And so if instead of blaming ourselves for procrastinating, we decided to listen to that signal. Signal. We would get unstuck a lot faster and suffer a lot less in the process.

[Jeanne Ertz]

So you say this is poor teamwork between our emotional and irrational selves. Can you elaborate on that?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

So that our emotional self is trying to communicate something to us. Something is, is stuck here. And that this is our instincts trying to tell us that something is not quite working. And so really, that's the, in the brain, it's the amygdala that is activated. And so that's why you feel stuck.

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[Ann Laura Lecomph]

You're frozen. Lots of self blame, very high emotional activation. That is really useful information. But our rational self, the part of the brain that is, and I'm generalizing here obviously, but the prefrontal cortex is not listening to any of this. And it's saying, let's do this. We can do this. We've done this in the past. We can do it again. This is a simple task. Why aren't you doing the task? Why are you being so lazy and trying to rationalize the experience? And so you have really useful information you could use from the emotional part of your brain that the rational part of your brain is completely ignoring. No wonder you're stuck.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Okay, so then you go through the triple check. This is a way to deal with procrastination. Would you explain what that is?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

The triple check is a very simple tool that allows you to have this conversation with your procrastination. And I know it's going to sound strange, but it really starts with opening up to the fact that you are procrastinating. And so you can say, hello, procrastinator, welcome back. What are you trying to tell me? What are you trying to communicate to me? And using a triple check, you can ask three simple questions that are going to help you diagnose what's wrong. First you ask, is the problem coming from the head? If the problem is coming from the head, it means that at a rational level, you're not fully convinced you should be working on this task. So maybe the task makes no sense based on your overall objectives. Maybe the task is not aligned with your principles and values. Maybe the task is outdated. Maybe AI should do the task and not you. So you're resisting because you know deep down that you should not even be spending time and energy on this task. Second, is the problem coming from the heart? If the problem is coming from the heart, it means that at an emotional level, you don't feel like this task is going to be enjoyable. It's not exciting, it's not fun. And so again, there's resistance here. That's why you procrastinate. And if the last question is, is the problem coming from the hand? And if the problem is coming from the hand, it means that although the head is saying, yes, we should do this, the heart is saying, oh, that looks like fun. At a practical level, the hand is saying, I don't believe I have the right skills, the right tools, the right resources, the right support network maybe in order to do the task. And so you procrastinate. And what's great is that once you start systematically asking these questions instead of blaming yourself, you can also find solutions. So if the problem is coming from the head, either you did that task from your to do list or go to your team and say, hey, I've been procrastinating on this task because I don't think it makes sense. Can we have a quick chat about this? If the problem is coming from the heart, make it fun, Grab a friend and do a little co working session. Or maybe go to your favorite coffee shop to do it. And if the problem is coming from the hand, I always tell people, raise that hand. Don't stay stuck, Ask for help. Ask for the resources that you need in order to do the job. And that could be access to an online course or mentorship or access to a new tool that you need need in order to get the work done. And that's it. That's how you have a conversation with your procrastination.

[Jeanne Ertz]

And then you go further. You say, sometimes procrastination can help reveal our innate curiosities. How does that work?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

I'm sure we've all experienced this, and anyone listening to this has experienced this. Sometimes you procrastinate on the thing you're supposed to do by doing something else that has nothing to do with the main task. Pay attention to that. That is actually a really interesting signal about what you're curious about. You're supposed to work on a thing, but you're working on another thing. What is that other thing? Should that other thing have actual dedicated time and space for you to explore it further? Why only work on it when you're procrastinating on the main thing? And so if you notice that you watch cooking videos, for example, when you're procrastinating on the main thing, do you need more space in your life for cooking, for learning how to cook? Is that something you're really curious about? If you're procrastinating by doodling, drawing, or doing something else, is that something where you want to have a little bit more time to do that? Like, maybe you should block a few hours every week just to draw, because apparently this is something you love doing. So looking at what you do when you procrastinate on the main thing can be an amazing way to discover things you're curious about and potentially make more space for them in your life.

[Jeanne Ertz]

All right, there we go. How to deal with procrastination. It's great. The book is called Tiny Experiments. Lots of ideas in here. You talk about this idea of keeping track of your energy levels. So I. I guess I don't think people do. I. I tend to, like, make plans without thinking about you. You kind of know. You're like, well, I know I'd probably be tired at the end of that day. But you're like, you still kind of plan to get something done, or you think, that's when I'm gonna do X, Y or Z. And then you get there and you're like, I'm too tired, like, you know, or whatever. So can you talk about how this helps with emotional agility? And you talk in the book about small acts along the way that can ground you. You call them kairos rituals.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Is that what you call them?

[Jeanne Ertz]

Yes. Where does that come from? And how does it help us with our energy levels?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Yeah, absolutely. So in the book, I explain that our modern society has a very quantitative definition of time. So we talk about time in terms of seconds and minutes and hours and Weeks and months. And this is the time of our calendar with all those little boxes that needs to be filled with as much stuff as possible so we feel productive. And that is what the ancient Greeks called chronos, which we find in the word chronometer, for example.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Yeah, or chronological.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Yes, exactly. Chronological. Chronometer. That comes from ancient Greek Kronos.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Okay.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

But the ancient Greeks, they didn't have only one word for time. They also had another word for time, kairos, which is the qualitative definition of time. And this is the depth of the experience. It's not the quantitative approach. And so Kairos is the time of. And obviously it's always difficult to explain when a word doesn't exist in the English language, but I'm going to give you examples. Kairos is the time of watching a beautiful sunset with a friend, is the time of reading a bedtime story to your child. Kairos is the time when you have coffee with someone and then you actually lose track of Kronos time. You're like, whoa, what happened? This was so interesting. I was so deep in my experience in this moment in time that I forgot about Kronos. And so what I encourage people to do is, yes, obviously we live in a Kronos society. So even the reason why we're having this conversation, you and I right now, is because we put it in our Kronos calendar that we would meet at a certain time so we could record this together. So it's not about completely getting rid of Kronos time, which is a very practical way to organize what needs to be done. But what I invite people to do is to make sure that you have a little bit of space for Kairos time as well. And so reconnecting with the depth of the experience and what I call Keras rituals are small rituals you can design for yourself when you feel like you've been in Kronos mode for too long and you just need a little Kerose moment for yourself. So what is for you? Something that every time you do it, you instantly feel more connected it to yourself, more present more Here, and add this to your toolkit and use it whenever you want to reconnect with Keras time. So mine, for example, is. I know it's going to sound a bit silly, but it works. Anytime I feel like I'm stuck in Chronos mode, I'm at my computer to do list, obsessed with whatever tasks I need to do. My Keras ritual is to put my favorite song on and to get up from my desk and Dance for three minutes. Like no one's watching. Unfortunately, no one's watching. And then, and then I get back to work and that's my little Keros moment where I can, I can really feel alive. I have in the book a few examples from people that I interviewed and I asked them, what is yours? What is your ritual? And for some people it's walking around, walking around the room in a circle. For some other people it's just making yourself a cup of tea and really, really observing the experience, smelling it, feeling warmth of the cup on your hands, taking a deep breath, making it again a ritual. So it's really about asking yourself what is a very simple ritual that you can do whenever you've been in Chronos mode for too long and you want to reinject a little bit of that Keras mode into your life.

[Jeanne Ertz]

What is your favorite song and lore?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Oh, it's. It changes, but at the moment it's. It's a song by Gansburg. It's French.

[Jeanne Ertz]

It's called so you get up and dance. It is interesting that Kronos has other words that came from it. And Charis does not like the Chronos stuck, right? Chronological. And the other word, yeah, but the other one did not stick. It's very interesting. So this kind of goes in line with it. You talk about playing along the way. So that's kind of what we're trying to do is to pull away from the sort of daily to dos and get outdoors and have more downtime with our kids and downtime in our family. Can you talk about how play? Oh, it's interesting, right? This is a book about tiny experiments, learning about yourself and pulling out of this goal obsessed world. And so one way to do that is to play.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Yeah, absolutely. It's really all about playing with uncertainty, playing with the messiness, embracing it, having fun and knowing that you're not going to get it right the first time around. And that's okay. That can actually be really fun to make mistakes together, to learn together. And so I know, you know, there are a lot of people out there who tell you you need to have a very clear system them and you need to organize your life in a certain way. And this book is really about the opposite of that, is really accepting that you actually don't have a lot of control. Life is messy. And that's okay. When you embrace that, when you're open about it, you play along the way, you can have fun, you can experiment and you can bring people with you on this journey of playful Experimentation. You can do that with your kids, you can do that with your friends, you can do that with your spouse, with your colleagues and saying, hey, we are in the space of uncertainty. We don't know what we're supposed to do here. How about we experiment how we have a little bit of fun here.

[Jeanne Ertz]

I love it. Okay, so if you want to get off the ladder and you want to help your kids, you know, childhood is very linear. Childhood is very like second grade, third grade, fourth grade, you know, so this is sort of the world that we're brought up in. So we're exposing ourselves and our kids to growing in circles, that life is a continuous opportunity, you say. So going back to this concept of intentional imperfection that we talked about more toward the beginning, which was about this Steph Smith, who puts online, you know, how many. What. What's the number of days she's exercised and what are the side projects she's doing and what's the revenue that those things are generating? So you're showing your learning progress, your imperfection. You talked about Shonda Rhimes, who's made a bunch of TV shows and I'm sure done a bunch of other things as well. But she talks about how if you're excelling at one, it's like a seesaw. If you're excelling at one thing, you're often failing at a lot of other things as well. And that's what you have to sort of come to grips with. And that's what you kind of have to understand, that when you see someone who's really excelling at something, especially with social media, you can see it. They are really excelling at keeping their home at their skin care, at their. Their decorating, at. You know, that there's always. At their fitness. There's always going to be something that drops. So can you help people who are struggling with perfection know that that's normal?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Yeah, absolutely. There is this really completely unrealistic expectation that you need to be percent performing across the board, across every single aspect of your life. That is obviously completely impossible. And so step number one is just accepting that you're never going to be 100% perfect across the board. And this is great when you accept this, because first, you remove a lot of the pressure on yourself to try and excel everywhere. But second, you can also communicate that intentional imperfection to other people. And so it's as simple as telling maybe your partner, hey, I have this big project at work this week where I need to be 100%, which means that I Know that I might only be 50 or 60% this week at home. And I really appreciate it, appreciate you for picking up a little bit of what I normally do and for your support because I know I'm not going to be able to give home my full attention this week. All of a sudden you realize that by simply communicating that, saying I'm not going to be perfect. I know that. Less pressure on you and also clearer expectations with the people around you. So less stress overall. And what's interesting is that when you do that, you actually end up performing better across the board because you are actually in the end, a better spouse and a better parent. When you communicate that you're going to be a little bit less present this week, that makes you aware of the fact that you're going to be less present. So you'll probably want to maybe do something together the week after to compensate for that because you're aware of it. But also your, your spouse or, you know, your, your kids or your family or your fans, they'll know that you're going to be less present that week. That makes you a better parent, a better friend, a better spouse. So it is really worth it. Embracing it and communicating it.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Yes. And just being aware. If I'm excelling at one thing, something else is falling off. And that is completely okay. This is about embracing the perpetual juggle of life. Okay. There was something. I love this practice in the book. The book is called Tiny Experiments. So Ann, Laura, it's called the plus minus practice. The. No, the plus minus next practice. You can use it with yourself, you can use it with your family, you can use it with your team. There's a great practice about these small adjustments that we can make. Can you tell us about it?

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Absolutely. So you can run tiny experiments and try new things and see what happens. And this is a really great. Just doing that is going to make your life a lot more fun and free. But if you really want to learn from your experiments, you need to reflect on them. And plus minus next is a way to do that. It's a tool for self reflection, for what I call, and psychologists call metacognition, which sounds like a fancy word, but it really just means thinking about your own thinking. It's observing your own thoughts, observing your own emotions, asking yourself what's going on inside? How do I feel right now? And plus minus next is very simple. It has three columns, plus, minus and next. And in the first column, plus, you list everything that's going well right now. In the second column, minus everything that's not going so well. Sources of friction and frustration and resistance. And in the last column, next, where I use a little arrow for this, you write what you're going to try next, what you might tweak, for example, what you might try to do a little bit more of, a little bit less of. The idea here is to design your life and iterate in a way where you have more of what is in the plus column and a little bit less of what is in the minus column. And you don't need to fix everything in one go. It is really this idea of cycles again, of iteration, of saying that every time you complete your plus minus next, you're just going to try a little improvement.

[Jeanne Ertz]

I love it.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

See if it helps or not.

[Jeanne Ertz]

I love it. It's a great. It's a great tool to use for parenting. It's a great tool to use for yourself. So it's in the book. And then you give an example of, like, a chart that's filled in. So is it a fantastic tool? Lots of fantastic tools in the book. Tiny experiments. Okay. I've not seen this too often. You have a bonus chapter online. Tell us how that happened.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

My editor cut it. That's what happened.

[Jeanne Ertz]

You're like, no, it's a good chapter.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

It's. I. I do think it's a good chapter, but it is true. I. I think it made the book better. It's more of an advanced chapter. So I talk a lot about managing overwhelm, managing uncertainty in the book. And something I've noticed with the people that I work with is that one way that people try to manage overwhelm and uncertainty is by seeking as much information as possible. And so they read everything about a question, and they try to listen to all of the podcasts, and they try to buy all of the books. And at the end of it, because they don't really take action on what they learn. They just feel more overwhelmed. It doesn't solve the problem. And so I had this entire chapter called Mind Gardening, which is about intentionally planting seeds of information in your mind, but then treating your mind as a garden. You need to water those ideas. You need to connect them together, and you need to think about how do they actually apply in my life. And so instead of having this illusion of control, because you have all of this information, you're actually applying what you learn. My editor said that, yes, sure. But that is. This was adding another chapter and maybe, like, you know, another tool to the book. And so not everyone might want to use it. And so we cut it. And I thought, what a shame to not give people access to it. And so it's a bonus chapter.

[Jeanne Ertz]

I love that. It is really an interesting parallel. And lore, because it's like, you don't go out into a garden and just like, put an unlimited amount of seeds in. And for a lot of things, they have to be spaced, and they have to be spaced well. Otherwise they're growing on top of each other. So is interesting that in this day and age, you could be dumping unlimited amount of seeds of information into your mind, and it's just all crowded and then nothing grows. You have to thin. Like, if you do that with carrots, you have to thin them. Otherwise you get these like, ours never worked. It's like spindly, gangly, like the thinnest carrots you got. It's not. It's like, what even is this? Because we didn't do it right. So I like that. I love that there's a bonus chapter online. This has been such a wonderful opportunity. And Laura, I know I'm like, at the tail end of my voice here, so I appreciate your grace and for your amazing answers to my as short as possible questions that I could ask. So I don't, because I'm at the tlm, but you're gonna learn so much in tiny experiments. And it's so cool what you're doing at NEST Labs. People can go to your website and find you online. And I'll make sure I'll put those links in the show notes. You say, do you want to achieve more without sacrificing your mental health? I think everybody would say yes. Then you say, you just need this experience, experimental mindset. And that's something that could be kind of pushed out of us in childhood because you're a lot of times told what to do. Told what to do. So this is a way of bringing it back, of embracing uncertainty. So I'm so honored to have read your book and had this chance to talk with you. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside,

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

probably hiking and looking for mushrooms in the mountain. Mountains in France with my dad. And I think the reason why I love that memory so much is because he almost looked like a child, too. And it was one of those times when I almost didn't feel like this was my dad. I really felt like he was the friend and we were going on a little adventure together.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Oh, isn't that cool that nature can capture your attention at any age and you're out. You're both out playing hide and seek, basically looking for these mushrooms. That's so cool.

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I love it.

[Jeanne Ertz]

Well, I so appreciate your time. I love what you're doing. People can find a ton of really cool [e-mail] as well. And, Laura, thank you so much for being here.

[Ann Laura Lecomph]

Oh, thank you so much. I love your. I love your questions. I think it's the first time I do an interview where someone has the actual book in front of them and they're, like, asking questions from the book. That was so much fun for me. So, yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me.