Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World

by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

There was no obvious next step. After years of hustling, I finally went to a place I had never allowed my adult self to go to before: I admitted that I was lost. And that was the most liberating thought I’d ever had.

We were all born with this sense of adventure. It’s in children’s nature to experiment and explore the unknown. They learn first and foremost through movement, which is considered the foundational skill for developing emotional, cognitive, and social skills.

We begin caring about what people think of us and we project an image of confidence, focusing on self-packaging over self-improvement. We welcome anything that provides the perception of control—whether it’s a productivity tool, a time management method, or a goal-setting framework. This common shift from boundless curiosity to narrow determination is at the heart of why the traditional approach to goals keeps on letting us down; it impedes our creativity and prevents us from seeing and seizing new opportunities.

specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and timely goals—which you may have heard of as SMART goals.

Following that wild, twisted path with its intense highs and lows has repercussions. We may progress, but we feel like we’re constantly failing. And so instead of inspiring audacious next steps, our goals spark anxiety (What if I don’t succeed?), apathy (Why care when the journey ahead is all mapped out already?), and anger (Why am I forced to play this game?).

When we fixate on finding one singular purpose, we rule out the side quests that help us grow the most. Your life doesn’t need to follow predictable acts and arcs. The best stories are full of surprises, with colorful characters and unexpected plot twists. To avoid recycling old stories, we need to break free from the scripts we write for ourselves.

Cognitive Script Theory. Just as we have a sense of how we should behave when visiting a doctor and how the events there should unfold (we’d be alarmed if we were asked to undress in the waiting room), we also have a sense of how things “should” play out in other areas of our lives. When we navigate the world, the brain attempts to match the information it receives with a similar representation it already has in memory: a cognitive script. Cognitive scripts offer a predictable mold where the outcomes are clearly defined and the benefits pre-agreed. They act like programmed instructions that we follow in certain situations based on our past experiences. We follow these scripts because they provide us with a sense of confidence: established norms and predictable patterns reduce the fear of the unknown. We also tend to feel more confident when we act in ways that align with societal expectations, since it increases the chance that our choices and actions will be validated and reinforced by others around us.

There are myriads of cognitive scripts, but I see three broad categories surfacing as people consider their next steps: the Sequel, the Crowdpleaser, and the Epic.

Alvin Toffler, the futurist who coined the term information overload in the 1970s, wrote that the illiterate of our times will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

As you consider your next experiment, three questions can help you avoid the trap of the Sequel, the Crowdpleaser, and the Epic and reclaim your cognitive freedom: Are you following your past or discovering your path? Are you following the crowd or discovering your tribe? Are you following your passion or discovering your curiosity?

Simply create a new note on your phone so you can jot down thoughts as you go about your day. Call it “Field Notes” or another title that feels playful or meaningful. Then, whenever something crosses your mind, write a time stamp and a few words.

We have very little control over how we feel, which is why it’s hard to force ourselves to feel motivated. A pact solves this challenge by emphasizing doing over planning. As psychologist and philosopher William James explained: “Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”

That’s why “I will learn how to code” is a flawed pact, but “I will code every day for a hundred days” is a great one. Instead of “I will write a book,” try “I will write every weekday for the next six months.” Replace “I will run a marathon” with “I will run every Sunday for six weeks.”

A good experiment requires multiple trials to confirm that the results are not just due to chance. The repeated trials of your pact provide you with more reliable information to make decisions.

In the words of John Maxwell: “The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.” But this works only if you actually complete each loop, so keep your commitment realistic. There’s no point in making a three-month commitment if you give up after a few days.

a pact is a mini protocol for a personal experiment. It tells you what to do and how many times you will conduct the test.

Writer Tasshin Fogleman makes the distinction between cold curiosity, which is functional and calculating, and burning curiosity, which is feverish and irrational. Your pact should sit in the in-between: warm curiosity, the kind that both pragmatically aligns with your existing interests and fiercely drives you to explore new ones.

When you’re ready, take a couple of minutes to write down your pact: I will [action] for [duration].

To live in Kairos time, we need to shift the focus from what we do with our time to how we experience each moment—what you might call mindful productivity. It’s a simple idea, that making the most of our time isn’t about doing more but about being more: more present, more engaged, and more attuned to the quality of our experiences.

Managing your physical resources ultimately boils down to discarding the unrealistic expectation of always being “at your best.” Energy naturally fluctuates; attempting to maintain a perpetual peak is not just impossible but detrimental to your well-being. Respecting your natural rhythms can lead you to have a healthier relationship to work as well as increased productivity and creativity.

The key is to use sequential focus—doing one thing at a time—by accepting that you can’t maintain equal effort across all the essential aspects of your life, deciding moment to moment what your priority is (your family, work, or yourself) and giving that your undivided attention.

Noticing your emotions and regulating your nervous system will help you develop what Susan David calls emotional agility, the ability to fluidly adapt and respond to your emotional experiences. When emotionally agile, you can navigate your emotional landscape effectively and prevent certain psychophysiological responses such as free-floating anxiety from holding you captive. You will be able to do your best work without sacrificing your well-being. • • • Your energy, executive function, and emotions are the three pillars of a fulfilling life—a life in which contributing to the wider world doesn’t come at the expense of your inner world. In summary, mindful productivity aims to answer three questions: Managing your energy: When is my magic window? Managing your executive function: What belongs in this window? Managing your emotions: How can I keep the window open? To manage your physical resources, use energy syncing to align your most demanding tasks with your daily energy peaks and block a weekly magic window for strategic work. For your cognitive resources, apply sequential focus to tackle one major task at a time, considering how your environment impacts your attention and off-loading worries to your notes so you can free up some working memory. For your emotional resources, practice conscious movement whenever you notice any signals of distress.

Being mindful means interrupting the autopilot mode we often use on a day-to-day basis, taking the time to appreciate the little things, and observing how we feel at a physical, cognitive, and emotional level. As such, a Kairos ritual is a way to see the present moment clearly.

Kairos rituals are as idiosyncratic as the people who practice them. As you develop your own, think about a simple action that can quickly shift your mood, such as music or scent; reconnect you to your body, such as stretching or conscious breathing; or give you the chance to check in with yourself, such as making a handwritten list of your intentions for the rest of your workday.

Physically, they guide you to pause and recalibrate your energy levels. Cognitively, they interrupt your autopilot mode, allowing you to recenter your focus and approach tasks with renewed clarity. Emotionally, these rituals offer a sanctuary—a momentary retreat to acknowledge your feelings, validate your experiences, and reconnect with your inner self. Kairos rituals function as mini resets, priming you for action and ensuring that all your faculties operate in synergy. There are two key factors in choosing a Kairos ritual. The first is practicality. You may not be able to get up and dance or light candles in the office. Choose a ritual that you can easily use whenever you need to reconnect with yourself and with the present moment, even if it’s just mindfully sipping tea, jotting down one thing you’re grateful for on a sticky note, or gazing at a photo that brings you a sense of calm. The second, most importantly, is to select a ritual that resonates with you personally. It should be something you look forward to and enjoy, not something that feels like a chore.

Just like advising a friend who is feeling down to “just cheer up,” telling yourself to “just do it” when you procrastinate is not going to get you anywhere. When you try to repress the source of that awful feeling, you deprive yourself of valuable information. You are essentially wandering in the dark, stuck in a cycle of inaction and frustration.

human motivation arises from the interplay of rational (head), affectional (heart), and practical (hand) factors. Rational factors include explicit motives. It’s your head telling you what it thinks is the right thing to do. The affectional factors are your implicit motives. It’s your heart telling you what would feel good or not so good to do. Finally, the practical factors pertain to your perceived abilities—the skills, knowledge, and tools you believe you’ll need to perform the action. It’s your hand telling you what it believes it can do.

Whenever you’re procrastinating, ask yourself whether it’s coming from the head, the heart, or the hand: Head: “Is the task appropriate?” Heart: “Is the task exciting?” Hand: “Is the task doable?”

A note of caution: It’s important to notice when we use learning as procrastination in disguise. Sometimes what we think is a lack of skills really is a lack of self-assurance. Reading books or listening to podcasts on the subject won’t help until you apply the knowledge to the task you have been putting off. That’s why getting input from a more experienced person is often the best way to go. They will narrow down the scope of what you need to learn and may even point out that you already know enough to get started.

When love, acceptance, and attention seem conditional on our achievements, it creates a deep-seated sense of inadequacy that makes us feel that we’re never quite good enough.

we don’t just set our mind on a target and blindly power through. Instead, our brain converts the information it perceives into action; it uses feedback loops to constantly adjust our trajectory as we make progress.

The scientific method relies on formulating hypotheses, testing them, and incorporating the results into the design of future experiments. Sports teams commit to a strategy, apply it during a game, and keep on adapting their approach through each cycle of training and competition.

metacognition. This is the distinctly human ability to reflect on your own learning process to synthesize insights, appreciate how far you’ve come, and determine where to focus next—but

Metacognition ensures your choices aren’t made on impulse or in a bubble, but in conversation with both your inner self and the wider world. It allows you to parse what you have accomplished with clear eyes; to assess what worked, what didn’t, how you really feel; and to appreciate the view from where you now stand.

metacognition is curiosity directed at your inner world—your thoughts, your emotions, your beliefs. It empowers you to be the master of your mind, providing you with the tools to shape these inner experiences in a way that brings you closer to your aspirations. The more data you have to reflect on, the greater the insights gained to excel amid uncertainty.

The secret to designing growth loops is not better knowledge or skills, but your ability to think about your own thinking, question your automatic responses, and know your mind. That’s the metacognitive edge: it equips you with the skills to be both the actor and the director in the unfolding story of your life. By reflecting on the past, you can better decode the future.

Write the date at the top of a page and draw three columns. At the top of each column, write a plus sign for what worked, a minus sign for what didn’t go so well, and an arrow for what you plan to do next. Then fill it with experiences from the past week. Any experience constitutes valid information to include in your Plus Minus Next review. The idea is to capture a snapshot of your mind. That includes celebrations, questions, emotions—all viewed from a metacognitive perspective.

Plus Minus Next also works great alongside daily journaling, whether you use bullet journaling, morning pages, or simply free writing. Some people start with journaling, then collate key observations in the Plus Minus Next columns, or go the other way around and expand on the observations with journaling. Plus Minus Next can also stand on its own for those who struggle to journal on a consistent basis.

a pros-and-cons list often teases out all the reasons you think something should be wrong or right, without ever digging into whether something is wrong or right for you and why. Simply listing the pros and cons doesn’t capture the full range of motivations that drive your choices. Rather than illuminating what you really want, social psychologist Timothy D. Wilson warns, such lists can provide plausible-sounding but hollow reasons to pursue choices that do not reflect your authentic needs and desires. To better assess your situation, practice decision framing: Widen your cone of uncertainty and explicitly take into account not only external signals but also internal ones. Once again, consider your life as would an anthropologist—with systematic curiosity.

Buddhism teaches that suffering arises from attachment to desires, including the desire for control over outcomes. Taoism talks about wu wei, which can be translated as “effortless action.” This doesn’t mean inaction but rather acting in harmony with the flow of life, without force or resistance. Similarly, in Hindu philosophy, vairagya is the detachment that allows us to experience greater levels of tranquility.

Studies show that constantly trying to fight and fix the things that go wrong in life can lead to chronic stress, and that one of the hallmarks of psychological well-being is the ability to fluidly adapt to change—not to resist chaos, but embrace it.

Uncomfortable emotions are not inherently bad. In the words of Emily Willroth, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis: “Anxiety can help you to face a potential threat, anger can help you stand up for yourself, and sadness can signal to other people that you need their social support.” It’s how we interpret our emotions that can cause suffering. You want to translate these bodily responses into a language your mind can assimilate.

labeling our emotions relieves our brains of the burdensome task of processing them. Once you have those words, it’s much easier to investigate their cause and address the issues underlying those feelings.

Life, like music, carries highs and lows, crescendos and silences. Embracing these movements is not just a strategy—it’s the very essence of the dance. The tumult of change can catalyze fresh ideas. New opportunities arise through the ups and downs. It’s a vast, dynamic ecosystem that invites you to engage in creative problem-solving. Waltzing with chaos isn’t just about survival—it’s about feeling alive and open to the world, welcoming change as a source of growth, and finding humor in life’s trickiest moments.

Start scrappy. Jugaad, a Hindi term for innovative problem-solving using limited resources, emphasizes starting small and creatively using what’s available. It’s considered a form of frugal engineering, allowing you to start something new without needing extensive resources.

Studies suggest that we form deeper relationships through self-disclosure—when we share vulnerable information such as our motives, desires, and worries. By being open about the experimental nature of your community, you encourage others to be open, too.

Don’t overthink it. People who are action-oriented tend to thrive in new or unfamiliar environments, as they quickly take initiative rather than getting stuck in indecision. This kind of proactive approach is especially beneficial when creating a curiosity circle.

Make it cozy. Fostering psychological safety, where members feel they can speak up without risk of being punished or judged, is key to making your curiosity circle secure and inclusive.

Don’t hold the reins too tight. While having a vision is important, too much structure can stifle spontaneity and creativity. Giving members freedom to take the initiative can lead to unexpected manifestations of collective curiosity, and embracing distributed leadership, where responsibilities are shared among group members, promotes collaboration and shared decision-making.

When we make our ambitions known to others, we feel a greater sense of responsibility to follow through. A public pledge acts as a form of commitment device, increasing the likelihood of maintaining your efforts.