Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 2: episode is going to be a longer one part of
Speaker 2: the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
Speaker 2: take their days from great to awesome and any advice
Speaker 2: they have for the rest of us. Today, I am
Speaker 2: delighted to welcome and Laura Lecomfe to the program. She
Speaker 2: is the author of the brand new book Tiny Experiments.
Speaker 2: So and Laura, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excited to have you here. So please tell our
Speaker 2: listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3: I'm a ner scientist at King's College, London, and I
Speaker 3: also write a weekly newsletter called nest Labs, which is
Speaker 3: all about how to explore your ambitions without sacrificing your
Speaker 3: mental health. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the ness part is that maybe you can explain
Speaker 2: that a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so. Ness is the suffix that you add
Speaker 3: at the end of a word to describe the state
Speaker 3: of being something. So consciousness, the state of being conscious, mindfulness,
Speaker 3: awareness and Labs was because I wanted to create a
Speaker 3: little laboratory for myself to explore these ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and your new book is all about tiny experiments,
Speaker 2: So what are these tiny experiments?
Speaker 3: Tiny experiments are all about replacing the linear definition of success,
Speaker 3: where you have a fixed goal and then you work
Speaker 3: really really hard to get there, sometimes at the expense
Speaker 3: of your mental health, with tiny experiments where you don't
Speaker 3: start from a clear vision of where you need to go,
Speaker 3: but you start instead with curiosity, a hypothesis, a little question,
Speaker 3: and then you start exploring and in that process you
Speaker 3: learn more about yourself and your work and the world.
Speaker 2: And go from there. Yeah, we talk a lot about
Speaker 2: in this post podcast about how to iterate in life
Speaker 2: and try different things, so hoping you can give us
Speaker 2: some practical tips for how we might do that better.
Speaker 2: And one of the things you talk about doing to
Speaker 2: start all this as you're figuring out what little tiny
Speaker 2: experiments to do in your life is a bit of
Speaker 2: self anthropology. So let's talk about self anthropology and what
Speaker 2: it might mean to be doing field notes on yourself.
Speaker 3: So think about what an anthropologist does as their job. Right,
Speaker 3: they go and they study a new culture that sometimes
Speaker 3: they know nothing about. So they go there and they
Speaker 3: take the little notebook their field notes and they try
Speaker 3: to capture all of their observations and they ask questions
Speaker 3: like why do people care about this? And why do
Speaker 3: they do things in this specific way? And why is
Speaker 3: this so important in their culture? So you can do
Speaker 3: the same thing. And that's what I call self anthropology.
Speaker 3: It's being an anthropologist with your own life as the
Speaker 3: topic of study, and you look at your life as
Speaker 3: if you knew nothing about it. It's your first time,
Speaker 3: you're completely new to this culture. And for twenty four
Speaker 3: hours you can take little notes. You can do that
Speaker 3: on your phone or in a notebook, and you ask
Speaker 3: the same kind of questions, why do I care so
Speaker 3: much about this? And why do I have this routine?
Speaker 3: Why is this a priority for me? Why is this
Speaker 3: something that I think a lot all the time? And
Speaker 3: you take those little notes. And what's amazing with this
Speaker 3: exercise that I've done with hundreds of people is that
Speaker 3: all of them say I had not realized how many
Speaker 3: decisions I was making on an everyday basis that were
Speaker 3: automatic that I never questioned. It just seemed obvious to me.
Speaker 2: I'm very curious when you first did this to yourself,
Speaker 2: was there anything surprising to you that came out of
Speaker 2: this self anthropology.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely. I thought, for example, that I was a
Speaker 3: knight ol. I had thought that for a very very
Speaker 3: long time. But then when I started paying attention to
Speaker 3: my energy levels throughout the day, I realized that actually
Speaker 3: I had a lot more energy in the morning. And
Speaker 3: so based on that, I started readjusting a little bit
Speaker 3: my bedtime so I could make the most of that
Speaker 3: energy in the morning.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, and a podcast called Before Breakfast. We're gonna
Speaker 2: be sure to talk about your morning energy later in
Speaker 2: this show. But one of the parts, you know, anyone
Speaker 2: who's been in science class, even if it's been a
Speaker 2: few decades, you know you're supposed to have a hypothesis
Speaker 2: as part of an experiment. So what exactly is a hypothesis?
Speaker 2: And maybe you can talk a little bit about what
Speaker 2: it means to come up with ideas that are actually testable.
Speaker 3: Yes, So a hypothesis when it comes to personal experimentation
Speaker 3: is really about starting with this magic word that I
Speaker 3: really really love, which is maybe maybe if I did this,
Speaker 3: I would feel this way. So maybe if I went
Speaker 3: to bed a little bit early earlier in the in
Speaker 3: the evening, I would feel better in the morning. Maybe
Speaker 3: if I woked more, that would give me more energy.
Speaker 3: Maybe if I went to more meetups, even though I
Speaker 3: feel a little bit introverted, I would meet interesting people
Speaker 3: and that would be a good thing for me in
Speaker 3: my life. So maybe maybe maybe that's a hypothesis. And
Speaker 3: it doesn't necessarily be to be need to be testable
Speaker 3: in the scientific lab like kind of way when it's
Speaker 3: your personal and professional life we're talking about, But it
Speaker 3: just needs to be something you can try for a
Speaker 3: specific duration and then you can look back on and
Speaker 3: see if that hypothesis was correct or not very cool.
Speaker 2: Well, when we come back from our first ad break,
Speaker 2: we'll talk a little bit more about what those, you know,
Speaker 2: experiments for a certain length of time might look like.
Speaker 2: So I am back with Anne Laura Lacombe, who is
Speaker 2: the author of the brand new book Tiny Experiments. We've
Speaker 2: been talking about what it would mean to do a
Speaker 2: tiny experiment and come up with a hypothesis about.
Speaker 1: Your own life.
Speaker 2: So one of the things you suggest is making packs
Speaker 2: packs with yourself pacts. I guess how you spell that.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, what wait, what did she just say?
Speaker 2: And that takes the form generally I will do X
Speaker 2: for why amount of time, So maybe you could give
Speaker 2: some examples of that and talk about why this is
Speaker 2: a wise way to approach your experiments.
Speaker 3: So Tanny experiments are inspired by the scientific method, and
Speaker 3: you have two very important components. When you design an experiment,
Speaker 3: it's deciding what the test is going to be, what
Speaker 3: the action is going to be, and then how many
Speaker 3: trials and scientists decide that in advance, right, they don't
Speaker 3: stop in the middle or feel like that's not going
Speaker 3: where I wanted to go. They say, I'm going to
Speaker 3: conduct this experiment for this period of time, and I'm
Speaker 3: going to withhold judgment and I'm only going to analyze
Speaker 3: the data at the end. And so a pact is
Speaker 3: really just a mini protocol to design your own experiments.
Speaker 3: And the way it looks like is, as you said,
Speaker 3: you decide on an action and a duration. So that
Speaker 3: could be like I'm going to go for a twenty
Speaker 3: minute work every day for twenty days. That's a pact.
Speaker 3: It's a commitment to conduct this experiment. I'm going to
Speaker 3: reach out to a new person on LinkedIn every Monday
Speaker 3: and tell them that I want to talk about their work,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to do that for three weeks. That's
Speaker 3: a pact. You have the action and you have the duration,
Speaker 3: and you can use that for literally any area of
Speaker 3: your life. That's what's amazing is that you can do
Speaker 3: that to explore different ways to be productive, to be creative.
Speaker 3: You can use that for your relationships. I've seen people
Speaker 3: who said, I'm going to make the pact that for
Speaker 3: the next four weeks, I'm going to organize a date
Speaker 3: for me and my partner on Friday every evening for
Speaker 3: the next four weeks, and when we're done, we're going
Speaker 3: to see if we liked it or not. So that's
Speaker 3: the idea behind the.
Speaker 2: Pact, And how can we come up with the right
Speaker 2: amount of time for a pack to be useful, like
Speaker 2: you could have some actual useful data, but maybe not
Speaker 2: feel quite so overwhelming like I'm doing this for the
Speaker 2: rest of my life.
Speaker 3: I love that you're asking this question because I talk
Speaker 3: about the maximalist brain in the book, and it's our
Speaker 3: tendency to always want to go for the bigger, most
Speaker 3: ambitious version of something. So whenever you design a pact,
Speaker 3: try to think small, tiny experiments. That's what you want
Speaker 3: to go for. But obviously you need to be long
Speaker 3: enough that you have enough data to know if it
Speaker 3: worked or not. So first think about the pact itself.
Speaker 3: What is it. If it's a daily action like going
Speaker 3: to bed at the same time, or going for a
Speaker 3: daily walk or stretching every morning, maybe two weeks is enough.
Speaker 3: You'll have enough data after you've had those fourteen to
Speaker 3: fifteen repetitions. If you say, actually, I'm going to start
Speaker 3: a newsletter and I want to write a weekly article
Speaker 3: that I'm going to post online, well, obviously one week
Speaker 3: is not going to be enough for this, so maybe
Speaker 3: you do it for one month or for six weeks.
Speaker 3: And in doubt, it is very likely that someone else
Speaker 3: has run a similar experiment in the past, so you
Speaker 3: can even use that as a way to connect with
Speaker 3: other people. You can reach out to people and say, hey,
Speaker 3: I see that you've been writing online for a while,
Speaker 3: or that you've been going for daily runs for a while.
Speaker 3: I'm going to start this experiment and I wanted to
Speaker 3: ask you how long do you think I should go
Speaker 3: for it? Like when did you know that it worked
Speaker 3: or it didn't for you? And then you use that
Speaker 3: for your experiment. So when you.
Speaker 2: Started ness Labs, I think you had a pact going
Speaker 2: to do it for maybe one hundred newsletters.
Speaker 3: Is that what that was?
Speaker 2: How did you come up with that?
Speaker 3: It was a hundred articles for every day or one
Speaker 3: hundred weekdays. And I came up with that at the
Speaker 3: time because I actually felt a little bit lost. I
Speaker 3: didn't really know where to focus my creativity and my attention.
Speaker 3: It just felt like an interesting experiment, and for me,
Speaker 3: the inspiration came from the fact that I had always
Speaker 3: loved writing in the past, but didn't really have a
Speaker 3: lot of space for it. And also when I restarted
Speaker 3: my studies and went back to university to study in
Speaker 3: your science, I discovered this very neat psychological phenomenon called
Speaker 3: the generation effect, which shows that by creating your own
Speaker 3: version of something, you're going to both understand it and
Speaker 3: remember it better. And I felt like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: really great. So I'm going to take something every day
Speaker 3: that I study at university and I'm going to write
Speaker 3: a newsletter about it, and that's going to be my
Speaker 3: pact for the next one hundred weekdays.
Speaker 1: Do you have any packs going right now?
Speaker 3: It's really funny because my current pact was to work
Speaker 3: for twenty minutes every day for twenty days, and I
Speaker 3: actually this morning decided to not go for a walk
Speaker 3: because my back hurts a lot. And that's the interesting
Speaker 3: thing too about a pact is that because it's not
Speaker 3: a goal, it's completely okay. If there are days where
Speaker 3: you can't do it. You just make a note. That's data,
Speaker 3: and that's interesting for you. So in my case, maybe
Speaker 3: it means I've been pushing myself a little bit too
Speaker 3: hard the past couple of weeks and I need a
Speaker 3: little break, and so I'm making a note of this.
Speaker 3: But there's no sense of failure of the fact that
Speaker 3: I didn't do my walk today because I'm just experimenting.
Speaker 3: I'm just collecting data.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well with that, I mean, I think you said
Speaker 2: earlier we kind of want to both hold judgment the end, right,
Speaker 2: we want to see how this pack plays out, how
Speaker 2: our experiment goes.
Speaker 1: We'll run the experiment, see what comes of it.
Speaker 3: But it sounds like we.
Speaker 2: Are tweaking in the middle too, right that you know,
Speaker 2: we are sort of analyzing what's happening, like, oh, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: maybe if I walk every day or do all this
Speaker 2: other stuff, my back starts to hurt, I can deal
Speaker 2: with that or you know, maybe you aim to go
Speaker 2: out with your partner every Friday night and you realize
Speaker 2: that you're both just so incredibly tired. By the second Friday,
Speaker 2: You're just like, it's you're in a bad mood. I mean,
Speaker 2: should we analyze and decide to tweak in the middle.
Speaker 3: So ideally what you want to do is just collect
Speaker 3: the data. So in the case that the example that
Speaker 3: you gave, you make a note you say, actually, that
Speaker 3: Friday night, we didn't do it because we were feeling
Speaker 3: too tired. But you don't necessarily make a judgment about
Speaker 3: the entire pact at this stage. It's at the end
Speaker 3: where you look back and you say, okay, So, out
Speaker 3: of six dates we had planned for this pact, we
Speaker 3: ended up going on four of them and we missed too.
Speaker 3: One of them was of external circumstances, something happened, couldn't
Speaker 3: do it. Another one was because we were too tired.
Speaker 3: How do we feel about the remaining four ones? Actually
Speaker 3: we felt really really good. So maybe for the next
Speaker 3: iteration we say every two weeks instead of every week,
Speaker 3: because every week was maybe a little bit too ambitious here,
Speaker 3: And so it's really about waiting until you have collected
Speaker 3: all of the data about the pact, so you can
Speaker 3: look back and decide what you want to do. If
Speaker 3: you want to keep going, if you want to pivot
Speaker 3: and redesign it in a way that makes more sense,
Speaker 3: or if you hated it, which is completely fine you
Speaker 3: just stop. But now you know because it's based on
Speaker 3: your own experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what are some questions we should be asking
Speaker 2: at the end of it? I mean to figure out
Speaker 2: did anything come of this? Am I happy with it?
Speaker 2: Did it result in what I wanted? I mean, what
Speaker 2: should we be asking ourselves?
Speaker 3: What's really important at the end of an experiment is
Speaker 3: to consider both external and internal factors, and a lot
Speaker 3: of us are more comfortable with one or the other.
Speaker 3: Some people they will just want to open a spreace
Speaker 3: and look at the data, and other people they will
Speaker 3: maybe be more comfortable asking about how they feel. It's very,
Speaker 3: very important to look at both. If an experiment is
Speaker 3: successful on the outside but make you feel miserable while
Speaker 3: you were conducting it, you probably don't want to keep going.
Speaker 3: So the questions to ask yourself are externally speaking. If
Speaker 3: I just look at metrics of success, So if you
Speaker 3: were writing a news that or having you subscribers and
Speaker 3: likes and comments, do people open it and read it?
Speaker 3: And then internally speaking, how do I feel? Did I
Speaker 3: actually enjoy writing this? Did I like it? Did it
Speaker 3: bring me joy? And only when you consider both internal
Speaker 3: and external signals you can decide whether you want to
Speaker 3: keep going or maybe tweak it.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Well, we're going to take one more quick ad
Speaker 2: break and then we will be back with more on
Speaker 2: Tiny Experiments.
Speaker 1: Well, I am.
Speaker 2: Back with an Laura Leconte, who is the author of
Speaker 2: Tiny Experiments. We've been learning about all sorts of different packs.
Speaker 2: We can have ourselves at pacts. Try doing this for
Speaker 2: one hundred days, see what comes of it, See if
Speaker 2: we enjoyed it, how it felt. So one of the
Speaker 2: things you talk about in your book is, you know,
Speaker 2: creating your community, finding your tribe of people as you're
Speaker 2: doing these experiments. So maybe you can talk about what
Speaker 2: is the upside of doing that. And then also these
Speaker 2: sort of three levels of involvement one might have with
Speaker 2: an online with a community, you know, being the apprentice,
Speaker 2: the artisan, the architect.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I talk a lot about learning in public in
Speaker 3: the book. I think it's extremely important. There may be
Speaker 3: the temptation to wait until you feel like you're ready
Speaker 3: you're the expert to start sharing your knowledge, But you
Speaker 3: will actually learn better and faster if you start sharing
Speaker 3: your journey from the very beginning. And if you say
Speaker 3: that's what I'm experimenting with, I'm sharing it with the world.
Speaker 3: Does anyone want to follow me and also help me? Maybe?
Speaker 3: So learning in public is extremely important, and and there
Speaker 3: are different levels of engagement. Some people might feel a
Speaker 3: little bit scared of learning in public because they feel
Speaker 3: like it means I have to start a community and
Speaker 3: I have to do all of this, but you can
Speaker 3: start quite small, actually, So what I call the apprentice
Speaker 3: is really just paying a little bit more attention to
Speaker 3: the way you create your network, the people you connect
Speaker 3: with and who you want to learn from. And that's
Speaker 3: also something we rarely make time for. So just doing
Speaker 3: that already is going to allow you to learn from
Speaker 3: other people in a better way. The artisan is when
Speaker 3: you start creating your experience at a higher level. So
Speaker 3: maybe you start actually contributing to those communities and you
Speaker 3: start posting sharing saying I'm actually happy to co host
Speaker 3: this event with someone, and just being a little bit
Speaker 3: more active in those communities. The architect is when you're
Speaker 3: finally ready to launch your own community and to actually
Speaker 3: decide who's going to join, what the experience is going
Speaker 3: to look like, and really being more of a leader
Speaker 3: when it comes to learning in public.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think people are often a little bit
Speaker 2: wary of this learning in public because I don't know,
Speaker 2: I guess they think they might be might do something embarrassing,
Speaker 2: which which is entirely possible. Is there a way to
Speaker 2: kind of psych ourselves up for that?
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely. I have sent newsletters with things and them
Speaker 3: that were actually wrong, and I had people reply and
Speaker 3: tell me, you know, actually there's new research that came
Speaker 3: out and that shows that what you wrote is not correct.
Speaker 3: And once you managed to move past the embarrassment, you
Speaker 3: realize that it's actually amazing that you got to share
Speaker 3: that information in public. Someone corrected you, and now you know,
Speaker 3: instead of walking around your entire life thinking that this
Speaker 3: information was correct. So it is really not about getting
Speaker 3: rid of the embarrassment that you might feel. This is
Speaker 3: a very normal human reaction. It's more about rewiring your response.
Speaker 3: How do you deal with the embarrassment And once you
Speaker 3: manage to look at it as a sign that you're
Speaker 3: growing and learning. You almost welcome these moments where go like, oops,
Speaker 3: I actually did not know that, but now I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wonderful. Well, I want to pivot more to your
Speaker 2: own experience. You mentioned earlier in the show that you
Speaker 2: had thought you were a night owl. You analyzed your
Speaker 2: energy found you had more energy in the morning than
Speaker 2: you were aware of. I'm curious how you spend your
Speaker 2: mornings these days.
Speaker 3: I always start with journaling. This is my most important
Speaker 3: ritual and I always try to do this before I
Speaker 3: open my computer or do anything else. Cup of coffee, journaling,
Speaker 3: a little bit of stretching, and then I get into
Speaker 3: work and I try to do as much as possible
Speaker 3: to kind of work where that's creative, where I can
Speaker 3: be focused the research, the writing, and then I keep
Speaker 3: my meetings for the afternoon.
Speaker 2: When you're journaling, is there something specific a format to it,
Speaker 2: or it's whatever is in your head.
Speaker 3: I have two ways of journaling. My daily morning journaling
Speaker 3: is very free flow, writing whatever comes up, and I
Speaker 3: often start with today I feel dot dot dot, and
Speaker 3: usually starting with this thread, I do end up finding
Speaker 3: a lot of interesting things that are on my mind.
Speaker 3: And then every week I use plus minus next, which
Speaker 3: is a very simple method to review your week that's
Speaker 3: a little bit more structured, shorter, and where I have
Speaker 3: three columns. The first one plus is for everything that
Speaker 3: went well that week, the second column minus for everything
Speaker 3: that didn't go so well or when was unexpected, and
Speaker 3: the last column with a little arrow next is anything
Speaker 3: I want to focus on next or I want to
Speaker 3: experiment with during the following week. So those are my
Speaker 3: two ways of journaling and reflecting throughout the week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you mentioned that you try to do your
Speaker 2: creative work in the morning and you're more focused work,
Speaker 2: then move your meetings to the afternoon. I wonder if
Speaker 2: you have any other sort of productivity tips that have
Speaker 2: been helpful for you as you try to get everything
Speaker 2: done in your life.
Speaker 3: So for me, it's really about taking little breaks in
Speaker 3: between everything, and not just a break in go and
Speaker 3: take your phone and scroll on something, or but really
Speaker 3: a conscious break where I pay attention to how I'm
Speaker 3: feeling in the moment. And then that might mean that
Speaker 3: I will take literally five minutes to walk outside the
Speaker 3: house and just be in the sun being outside before
Speaker 3: I go into my next meeting. Maybe sometimes it means
Speaker 3: having a glass of water, a little stretch, But I
Speaker 3: try to avoid looking up from my computer at the
Speaker 3: end of the day and having no idea as to
Speaker 3: how I'm feeling, so really just staying in touch with
Speaker 3: those signals awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, that probably answers my next question. I always ask
Speaker 2: people if there's something they've done recently to take a
Speaker 2: day from great to awesome, But it sounds like being
Speaker 2: aware of those signals is a good one.
Speaker 3: Are there any things you're looking forward to right now?
Speaker 3: So after the book comes out, I'm going to take
Speaker 3: a little break for a few weeks. I'm going to
Speaker 3: spend a lot of time with my parents, and I'm
Speaker 3: also going to try to limit my screen time for
Speaker 3: a few week because I won't have to be in
Speaker 3: so many meetings or answer so many emails. And as
Speaker 3: someone who is a your scientist, I spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time in the lab and also a writer, I
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time in front of my laptop.
Speaker 3: Spending a couple of weeks with not so much screen
Speaker 3: time I think is going to be amazing and I'm
Speaker 3: very much looking forward to this.
Speaker 2: What do you think you're going to do with your
Speaker 2: time that's not going to be spent on screens. I
Speaker 2: think that's always people's problems. They're like, well, I've spent
Speaker 2: so much time on screens. I don't even know what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do when I'm not plugged in.
Speaker 3: So one of my experiments in the past year was
Speaker 3: around meditation, something that I always thought I was terrible at,
Speaker 3: but then through running an experiment, I discovered that I
Speaker 3: actually enjoy it and has become part of my practice.
Speaker 3: So more meditation, going a little bit deeper. I also
Speaker 3: sign up for a course to learn more about plants
Speaker 3: and how to make different teas and tinctures. So I'm
Speaker 3: kind of looking for different things I can experiment with
Speaker 3: and learn about that will be in the way they're designed.
Speaker 3: Intrinsically speaking, they don't require a scream Yeah, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2: Well and Laura, thank you so much. Where can people
Speaker 2: find you?
Speaker 3: You can go to nesslabs dot com and I have
Speaker 3: a newsletter that I send every week or on social media.
Speaker 3: I am at at nuran n E U r A
Speaker 3: n n.
Speaker 2: E excellent excellent. Well, and Laura, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining us.
Speaker 3: Everyone.
Speaker 2: Please check out her book Tiny experiments. Thank you to
Speaker 2: everyone for listening. If you have feedback on this or
Speaker 2: any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura
Speaker 2: at Laura vandercam dot com and in the meantime, this
Speaker 2: is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's to making the
Speaker 2: most of our time cool.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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