In short
Podcast Episode Notes: Strategy & Tragedy - "Neuroscientist for Entrepreneurs: Stop Obsessing Over Your GOALS!" with Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Episode Overview
- Host: Stephanie Melodia
- Guest: Anne-Laure Le Cunff, neuroscientist and founder of Ness Labs
- Focus: Insights into productivity, decision-making, and the neuroscience behind achieving goals without falling into the trap of goal obsession.
Key Themes and Discussions
Introduction to the Podcast
- Concept of Strategy & Tragedy:
- Aimed at entrepreneurs and founders, discussing both successes and challenges in business.
- Highlights the importance of learning from others' experiences to avoid common pitfalls.
Guest Introduction
- Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
- Former Googler, expert in mindful productivity.
- Creator of Ness Labs—described as a mindful productivity school for knowledge workers.
- Author of *Tiny Experiments*.
Neuroscience of Productivity
- Misunderstanding Time:
- Entrepreneurs often view time as linear and quantifiable, leading to stress and burnout.
- The brain perceives time as elastic—experiences vary greatly based on emotional engagement (e.g., five minutes can feel like hours when bored).
- Qualitative vs. Quantitative Measures:
- Encourages tracking emotional energy throughout the week.
- Suggestion to color code calendar entries based on energy levels (green for energetic, red for drained).
- Focus on qualitative experiences rather than just completing tasks.
Strategies for Managing Energy
- Prioritizing Creative Work:
- Advocate blocking the first hour of the day for creative thinking without distractions.
- Importance of protecting creative time, especially when feeling drained later in the week.
- Flexible Consistency:
- Emphasizes the need for a balance between discipline and flexibility in achieving goals.
Aligning Goals with True Ambitions
- Misaligned Ambitions:
- Many entrepreneurs chase goals dictated by societal expectations, which can lead to burnout.
- Importance of aligning ambitions with personal values to sustain workload.
- Mindful Decision-Making:
- Decision-making frameworks that include both internal feelings and external signals.
- Importance of acknowledging and acting on internal signals (gut feelings) for better decision-making.
Tiny Experiments and Learning Mindset
- Embracing Uncertainty:
- Encourages adopting a scientist's mindset—viewing life as a series of experiments rather than fixating on rigid goals.
- Suggestion to accept that uncertainty can lead to growth opportunities.
- Weekly Review Framework:
- Introduces a “Plus Minus Next” weekly review to assess what went well, what didn't, and what to try next.
- Encourages iterating and learning from experiences.
Conclusion
- Final Thoughts:
- The episode wraps with a reminder to conduct a "tiny experiment" based on insights shared.
- Encourages listeners to share their experiences and continue the conversation.
Key Takeaways
- Time should be viewed through a qualitative lens rather than a purely quantitative one.
- Creative work should be prioritized and protected within one's schedule.
- Misaligned goals can lead to burnout; true ambitions should guide one's path.
- Adopt a learning mindset: view decisions and experiences as experiments.
- Regular reflection through structured reviews can enhance personal and professional growth.
Closing Remarks
- Listeners are invited to engage with the podcast through social media and consider personal experiments based on the insights shared.
- Encouragement to prioritize emotional well-being and personal alignment in business endeavors.
For more insights, tune in to the full episode of "Strategy & Tragedy" with Steph Melodia.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Neuroscience of Productivity
1:40 to 3:10
Exploring how neuroscience relates to productivity and time management.
“because I feel like we all love geeking out about this field.”
Elastic Perception of Time
3:10 to 4:50
Understanding the brain's elastic perception of time and how it impacts productivity.
“It's really about not looking at time just as this quantitative measure, but also looking at it as a qualitative measure.”
Utilizing Time Effectively
4:50 to 6:20
Strategies to leverage time effectively based on emotional energy levels.
“There's a link in the show notes so check it out and I would love to hear from you.”
Creative Work and Energy Management
7:20 to 9:36
Discussing the importance of scheduling creative work around energy levels.
“maybe listening to a podcast that you like, taking little notes, thinking about some of the ideas that have been bouncing around, thinking a little bit longer term, but you're not trying to ship anything.”
Experimentation in Work
9:36 to 10:56
The importance of experimenting with work habits and finding what works best.
“So when I was writing my book, I heard everybody say, start by working on your book.”
Aligning Ambitions
10:56 to 13:00
Exploring how misaligned ambitions can lead to burnout and pressure.
“As long as I do it within the week, I'm fine.”
The Role of Energy Management
13:00 to 14:03
Why managing energy is more crucial than managing time for productivity.
Embracing an Experimental Mindset
14:03 to 16:45
Learn how to adopt a scientific approach to life and work for growth.
“It's very aligned with the entrepreneurial space, right?”
The Problem with Goal Obsession
16:45 to 18:48
Understand why rigid goals can limit opportunities and how to live freely.
“And I definitely feel seen with that writing.”
Social Comparison and Individual Goals
18:48 to 19:52
Explore how external pressures affect personal goal setting and creativity.
“There was no way I could have imagined that this is where I would end up.”
Show all 22 chapters
Encouraging Curiosity in Teams
19:52 to 23:02
Learn how to foster an experimental culture in organizations.
“They were successful because they worked with the best people.”
Decision Making and Internal Signals
23:02 to 27:14
Discover the importance of balancing external and internal cues in decision making.
“Well, very often as entrepreneurs, especially we feel like, and it is the case quite often, once we've made a decision, it is going to have consequences where it is kind of hard to backtrack, right?”
Personal Anecdotes on Motivation
27:14 to 28:00
Hear personal experiences on motivation and the influence of feedback.
“So that's why it's important to look at both and ask yourself, how does it look like externally?”
Understanding Internal Signals and Motivation
28:00 to 29:50
Explore the importance of recognizing personal motivations and signals for engagement.
“and you want to keep on posting, then that's your internal signals looking good.”
Embracing Individual Quirks and Optimization
29:50 to 31:30
Discuss the acceptance of personal quirks and the pitfalls of constant optimization.
Decision Making Frameworks for Entrepreneurs
31:30 to 33:40
Learn about decision-making frameworks and the importance of reversible decisions.
The Power of Weekly Reviews in Growth
33:40 to 35:10
Discover the benefits of conducting weekly reviews to track progress and set goals.
“it means i spend a lot of time doing that it's uh metacognition is observing your own thoughts observing your own emotions trying to understand your inner world and really understanding the why behind your decisions.”
The Impact of Newsletter Experimentation
35:10 to 36:40
Understand how a newsletter can transform your career trajectory and writing skills.
“Again, I love anything like that, practical frameworks, tips, tricks to help set up.”
Differences in Writing: Newsletters vs. Books
36:40 to 38:40
Examine the challenges of writing a book compared to writing newsletters.
“I thought when I signed this book deal, I felt like, surely I've been writing hundreds of newsletters.”
Neuroscience Insights on Uncertainty and Growth
38:40 to 40:30
Learn how to navigate uncertainty as an entrepreneur for personal growth.
“author it was painful knowing the amount of time i had spent writing this chapter that we were going to cut it but thinking about the experience of the reader which is what should always come first Yeah, exactly.”
Journaling as a Tool for Emotional Clarity
40:30 to 42:04
Discover how journaling can help manage anxiety and gain emotional insights.
Recognizing When to Move On
42:04 to 43:04
Learn the importance of leaving unfulfilling situations sooner.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Steph Melodia:Welcome to Strategy and Tragedy. I'm your host, Stephanie Melodia. If this is your first time tuning in, then this is the show for you. If you are a first-time founder, if you're an entrepreneur, or maybe you tried something before and it didn't quite work out. The purpose of this show, as the name indicates, being called Strategy and Tragedy, is learning from other entrepreneurs who have been there, done that, and subject matter experts to help set you up for success. because genuinely now, you know, the world of entrepreneurship is a well-trodden path and actually there's enough mistakes that have been made that you don't have to keep repeating the same ones.
0:34Steph Melodia:So I'm here to help set you up for the best chance of success in your own entrepreneurial journey and today's guest is of course no exception. I'm very excited to interview Anne-Laure LeCoumpf, I hope I pronounced that okay. She is a world-leading expert on mindful productivity and systematic curiosity. Those are already some of my favourite words. She is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur and former Googler. She is also the creator of a learning community called Ness Labs, described as mindful productivity school for knowledge workers. I love that. Featured in the likes of Wired, Rolling Stone and Business Insider, which is fantastic.
1:15Steph Melodia:And of course, we have her book here. She is the author of Tiny Experiments. I'm loving the cover artwork if you're watching this on video. And Lola Conn, welcome to Strategy and Tragedy.
1:25Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Well, thank you so much for having me. All right, I've got so many questions I want to ask you,
1:30Steph Melodia:but all these topics around productivity, like decision making, burnout, like these are all hot topics for all of my entrepreneurial listeners. But let's dive in first of all on the neuroscience because I feel like we all love geeking out about this field. So what's some of the neuroscience that you can share specifically to my entrepreneurial listeners when it comes to productivity? What do we get wrong? How can we actually lean into the neuroscience of our brain to actually be more productive?
1:59Anne-Laure Le Cunff:You're starting with a big question. I think it's impossible to talk about the neuroscience of productivity without talking about our relationship to time and how the brain processes time. And I think a lot of the reasons why we make ourselves miserable at work as entrepreneurs is because we're trying to treat time as this linear quantitative measure. So imagine a bunch of little boxes that you're supposed to stuff with as many tasks as possible in order to feel efficient, in order to feel productive, right? So very linear. And if you look at your calendar, this is the way it's organized, right?
2:35Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Boxes, linear, in order, with milestones that you have to go through one by one in a specific order. But the brain doesn't process time like that. For the brain, time is elastic. And if you pay attention, you'll notice that this is actually how you experience time. There are moments where five minutes can feel like five hours. And there are moments when you're so excited that you can spend three hours working on something and it feels like only three minutes have passed, right?
3:02Steph Melodia:Oh my God. Okay, Anne-Laure, you have already blown my mind. Of course, a neuroscientists coming on the show would do that but already within the first few minutes so true I've definitely felt that um I think when I'm kind of like struggling or maybe I'm in my Pilates princess era right and there's this funny meme that I've seen online where like you're holding like a very difficult pose and the instructor goes off to talk to someone you're
3:23Anne-Laure Le Cunff:like oh come on come on and it's like it's been five seconds but it feels like five years so I
3:28Steph Melodia:totally get that I feel like all listeners can relate to that so how can we utilize this elastic perception of time to better work in our favor?
3:37Anne-Laure Le Cunff:It's really about not looking at time just as this quantitative measure, but also looking at it as a qualitative measure. What is the depth of the experience? Are you feeling present in the moment? What are the emotions that you are feeling right now? And I know, I know as entrepreneurs, we love to optimize for anything that we can put in a dashboard with neat metrics that we can look at. So we're not always comfortable looking at things that are a little bit messier, like emotions, but it's really important. A very simple tip is to start paying attention. You can do that for a week to how you feel throughout the day.
4:15Anne-Laure Le Cunff:So when do you feel energized? When do you feel more drained? You can also do that retrospectively. So on Friday, look back at your calendar and color code the blocks in your calendar, red, orange, and green. red for when you felt really tired and green when you felt really good and then the week after if you have a little bit of freedom around how you organize your schedule instead of going with the traditional most important task first eat the frog first that everybody tells you to do right start with the thing that gives you the most energy and then do the admin stuff later on
4:51Steph Melodia:that makes total sense if you're tuning into this right now then first of all a big heartfelt thank you i really appreciate it and secondly there's a very high chance that you're on your own entrepreneurial journey right now so whether you're a first-time founder and you're figuring things out and you feel like you're on your own or if you've done it before and realize that actually this whole entrepreneurship business is a lot easier said than done then i might be able to help you if you feel like you vibe with my energy and feel like you need some of that professional big sister direction support and advice then i'm opening up a few select spots for that one-to-one coaching, mentorship and growth strategy for ambitious founders.
5:29Steph Melodia:There's a link in the show notes so check it out and I would love to hear from you.
5:33Anne-Laure Le Cunff:All right let's get back to the episode.
5:34Steph Melodia:All right I'm gonna ask you a bit of a selfish question because I have definitely noticed an unignorable pattern with my weeks. It's really funny you actually saying this audit. I've noticed that by the time Thursday comes around I am brain dead, Anne-Laure. I'm so tired and actually had a coaching session recently where in our in our first session we kind of decided that I was going to set aside the Thursday for some of this creative work and when we spoke again I was like it's just not happening because not only is it just this box of time but it's the energy the emotion I'm so drained I'm definitely not you know pouring from a from a full cup at that stage so how could I get out of that and any other entrepreneurs founders business owners that are finding themselves maybe especially you know being very realistic here if they're feeling the pressure whether they've got investors or targets or just their own pressure they put on themselves right and they're like I need to I need to just like you know plug away and keep hitting at something how can we get out of that and stop those kind of crashes during the week well first
6:36Anne-Laure Le Cunff:you do have to communicate to people around you that your creative time is some of your most precious time for the long-term success of the company. And this is something that's really important for you to acknowledge and to communicate to others. Second, once you've decided that this is important, and that's the first step, because too often we say, I'll do that once I'm done with everything else, right? No, this is important. Then you have to make space for it in your calendar. What I recommend playing with, and you can experiment with and see if it works for you, is to block the first hour of every day without any emails, without looking at your to-do list, just for creative and strategic thinking.
7:17Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Nice. And that can include reading your favorite newsletters, maybe listening to a podcast that you like, taking little notes, thinking about some of the ideas that have been bouncing around, thinking a little bit longer term, but you're not trying to ship anything. You're not trying to be productive. You're just trying to think around some of the problems that you've been thinking about and not looking at your email inbox not looking at your to-do list during that first hour can be incredibly powerful pushing back on this because i do believe you i
7:48Steph Melodia:trust you i have no reason not to and it sounds like it makes a lot of sense and the neuroscience i'm also aware when you first wake up your brain waves are also in kind of like beta is that
7:58Anne-Laure Le Cunff:yeah yeah so it's going to have an impact on the way you feel for the rest of the day yeah
8:03Steph Melodia:So it's so important that you protect that first hour. So this will make sense. But pushing back and going back to step zero, how can we prioritize that? How can we more importantly get over the guilt? Because I'm conscious of, yeah, you know, it makes sense. Do it even if, you know, you find a way to just kind of like block out the email and everything and just focus. It's almost like the same idea with like affirmations. I don't know your stance on affirmations, right? But there is an argument that it can be even worse, right? If you don't actually believe these affirmations that you're saying, then all you're doing is you are just kind of further compounding that you don't believe in it, right?
8:46Steph Melodia:And so I wonder whether there's that same risk that can happen here. It's like fine, all fine and well to hear you as the expert on a podcast saying this and it makes sense. but realistically feeling the pressure and and being addicted in all honesty to that sense of busy work could that possibly make it even worse if you're sat there in that first hour and you're saying no ann laws she told me to block out this hour but you're doing it in the back of your mind still wondering what emails are coming in what have i got to get back to blah blah blah so i'd love to get your take on that and yes it could make it worse and this is
9:21Anne-Laure Le Cunff:why all of my work is about, I tell people experiment. And that's what I said, right? I encourage you to try this and see if it works for you. That's really important. So this can be helpful and maybe it's not. And actually the example you described happened to me. So when I was writing my book, I heard everybody say, start by working on your book. And so block an hour or two hours every morning, work on your book, and then you can work on the rest, right? And so I thought that's brilliant. Let me experiment with that. The idea of an experiment is that instead of committing to it for the rest of your life, you say, let me try this thing for a week or for two weeks.
9:57Anne-Laure Le Cunff:So you pick a duration, right? So I said, let me try this. What happened was that there were many days when I just wasn't feeling inspired and I couldn't write anything. And then I felt like crap. And then I was procrastinating on everything else during the day. And I felt guilty because I had made no progress that day. So I changed my experiment. And instead of saying, I need to write one hour every morning, I said, I need to write for five hours every week. And it could happen anytime. And there were weeks where, yes, I felt inspired in the morning and I would do that first thing. But there were days where that didn't work.
10:32Anne-Laure Le Cunff:And I would spend five hours on Sunday feeling all very inspired all of a sudden and actually hitting those five hours. and so it's really important i think especially as an entrepreneur anything that you hear on a podcast take it as a source of inspiration for a potential experiment but collect your own data because even if it works for other people it might not work for you yeah not as gospel right
10:55Steph Melodia:and what comes to mind with you mentioning about that five hours instead of it being you know an hour a day five hours a week it takes off that pressure and of course we're not you mentioned like dashboards and neat metrics and as humans we don't operate that way so and like women as well you know that's a whole other conversation right with our cycles and everything else we go through different energy levels just throughout the days weeks months and so I'd love to get your thoughts on where you draw that line between the discipline that we do need you know to put on ourselves versus enough of that freedom to say okay the pressure's off I'm not making things even worse for myself if I don't do my hour this morning.
11:37Steph Melodia:As long as I do it within the week, I'm fine. Where can we draw the line? Because we need a bit of both, don't we?
11:42Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Yes, I like to think about it as flexible consistency. So it needs to look consistent over the long term, but it doesn't have to be perfect every day. So you can practice kind of a sort of intentional imperfection when there are some days when you know that because of your current energy levels or anything else. Life happens sometimes. You might have a spouse or partner or family member or colleague who's sick and you need to cover for them or take care of them. And that's not your fault. And you're not going to be 100 % that day. And that's okay. And so really aiming for that flexible consistency.
12:16Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Another thing I really think is helpful is to pay attention to those patterns. Because if, you know, it happens one day from time to time that you're not really hitting your targets and you're struggling a little bit that's completely normal right but if that's most days that you're struggling there might be a systemic problem in the way you're working in general or in the way you're organizing your priorities or managing your energy and that might be worth looking at and maybe changing something at a deeper level
12:46Steph Melodia:okay so let's stick with that what in your experience have you seen been the biggest causes of those problems those systemic issues that mean this isn't just a one-off this is quite frequent for example just feeling pressure what what do you think it is very often it's
13:04Anne-Laure Le Cunff:misaligned ambitions it's chasing goals because you've been told that those are the goals that you're supposed to chase or because society in general has created those expectations and you're creating this pressure and when your ambitions are aligned you most entrepreneurs actually can sustain pretty important workload and they're fine usually burnout comes from misalignment
13:33Steph Melodia:that's very interesting have you read the book energize by simon alexander on yes i love it so right he kind of talks about this as well and this is where i really do i'm a proponent of energy management versus time management because when you've got the energy and that energy needs to come from that alignment to your to your point one of the chapters I remember or at least a paragraph in that book was around um when you're in love and it was you know we don't talk about it in business right but he Simon wrote about you know when you first fell in love when you got the butterflies and suddenly you know you've got this bountiful boundless and you can do anything you know and if they message you to meet at certain time or go to see them it's almost like yeah you know we become superhuman so that makes sense I've plugged someone else's book before doing your book properly so forgive me for that let's talk about your book so what are some of the can you give us some teasers as to some of the top takeaways and tiny experiments yes this is a book
14:28Anne-Laure Le Cunff:about living a more experimental life and so I'm a neuroscientist by training and what I've realized is that scientists have a completely different relationship to uncertainty than most other people not because they're smarter than everybody else but because they've been trained to approach uncertainty from a place of curiosity it's really interesting to see a scientist in the lab because when they don't understand something when they're confused when they don't get the results they want they get excited they feel like oh wait a minute we can learn something this is exciting and so the book is really about taking that mindset which i call an experimental mindset and using it in your work and in your life by running tiny experiments and by starting from, again, a place of curiosity rather than trying to be in control by embracing mistakes and imperfection and really trying to learn from whatever data you're collecting.
15:22Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Love that.
15:22Steph Melodia:It's very aligned with the entrepreneurial space, right? Especially in those early days when you're trying to find product market fit, you have no choice. You have to have an experimental mindset. Can you give any practical tips to help people mentally be less judgmental and reduce that need for control and really embrace that fully experimental mindset?
15:44Anne-Laure Le Cunff:It's really about pretending that you're the scientist of your own life. You are not your data. And so whatever the result, as long as you analyze the result and you extract knowledge from it, this is success. So it's a completely different definition of success than the very binary one that we normally have. It's really a more iterative approach. As long as you keep on learning and iterating, then you're growing. And that's all that matters. What's interesting with this approach, too, is that it means that you can grow and you can succeed, even if you don't have a clear plan as to where you want to go.
16:20Steph Melodia:Okay, I love that. I think it was Eric Ries, the author of Lean Startup, who wrote the purpose of a startup is a vehicle for learning. You just exist to acquire learnings. As long as you're learning, you're making progress. If you're not learning anything, you're not going anywhere. One of the promises with your great book here is to live freely in a goal obsessed world. That's really interesting. And I definitely feel seen with that writing. right like I feel like we're all conditioned from maybe school you know from very far back to set goals and you know previously especially in my like girl boss era like I've definitely found it exciting to like set targets and work towards achieving them so I'd love to hear your take on how we're goal obsessed as a world and how do we start to live more freely first it's important I
17:11Anne-Laure Le Cunff:think to understand the problem with those big goals that we have one of the first problems is that it assumes that you know what you want yeah which is a big assumption right very often if you look back on your life some of the best things that happened to you you probably couldn't have predicted yeah and you would have limited yourself if you had been just sticking to this one goal and ignored all of the other opportunities that you had around you right and i'm so sorry to just jump in
17:38Steph Melodia:here for a quick second but we might kind of do a re-release of this around sort of new year time because obviously we're recording this nowhere near around the new year but that's obviously the time when we've got like new year resolutions new new year new me and everything else and someone else opened my eyes to this and we're like well hang on a second like you know just taking the classics of new year's resolutions you're like how does the the ann law the staff or whoever's listening to this of the 31st of december of 2025 know what we're going to want by 31st of December, 2026, right? We change all the time.
18:13Steph Melodia:We learn, we grow to your point on experimenting. So yeah, I love that.
Read the full transcript
18:18Anne-Laure Le Cunff:And yeah, and we don't know what we want. We don't know what we will want. We don't know who we become. And so those big rigid goals come more from a place of wanting to have this illusion of control, this illusion of certainty, wanting to feel like I know what I'm doing. I know where I'm going, but you don't, you actually don't. And so the first step when it comes to freeing yourself from those goals is really just admitting that you don't know where you're going. You don't know who you're going to become and that's actually a really good thing. You want to be able to look back in five years and feel like, I had no idea.
18:51Anne-Laure Le Cunff:There was no way I could have imagined that this is where I would end up. It's very freeing. Exactly, yes. And then the second problem is just social comparison. When everybody is copy and pasting goals from each other, this creates a giant leaderboard where we're always comparing our success to the success of others and it's very very very rare when people come up with their own goals there's a lot of mimetic desire right when you experiment you're in your own sandbox you're just trying your own things you're not really comparing yourself to others you're just seeing what works for you so
19:26Steph Melodia:it's a completely different mindset again yeah I feel like my audience might be the most skeptical group of people to kind of persuade on this right because naturally if you're entrepreneurial you are a visionary you are creative there's something in the world that you want to create that you want to put out there and so that does fall in line with like having goals and self improvement and pushing yourself and your business forward so I guess what can you say to the
19:52Anne-Laure Le Cunff:skeptics oh I can give you so many examples like YouTube started as a dating app Gmail started as someone tinkering one day a week at Google, some of the most successful businesses were not successful because they had a big goal and they worked really, really hard to get there. They were successful because they worked with the best people. They created an environment where it was okay to experiment, to learn, to make mistakes and to learn together. And so whatever iteration you were going through, you could tell your team, hey, I tried this. Don't do it. It doesn't work. I tried that looks permissing.
20:25Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Maybe let's experiment with this. This is how you create a successful business, not by having this blueprint for success that you copy and paste from others.
20:34Steph Melodia:Do you know what? I'm going to do a bit of a shameless self plug here very quickly. My signature topic is hacking luck. And one of the core chapters of it is spotting opportunities, because a way to, you know, get lucky is to discover, you know, things that you weren't expecting. Right. And so I apply that obviously to business and some of those similar examples. and and so lots of takeaways I think from for entrepreneurs in business and I wonder whether okay it might be easier for solopreneurs small business owners to say okay yeah interesting this is a fresh take I'll read the book I'll learn more but then if they've got bigger teams co-founders investors board members it's taking everyone along on that journey isn't it and so if people are starting to employ and build out a bit of a small team in that startup how are they still able to encourage that curiosity whilst again it kind of goes back to that that fine line between open-mindedness being exploratory experimenting embracing curiosity versus we still you know your salary is paid based on this you know xyz you need to be delivering on these results otherwise you don't have a job next month.
21:48Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Yeah, thanks for asking, because I think a lot of people assume when I talk about having an experimental mindset, I'm saying experiment with everything. And that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is make sure that at any point you have a little bit of space, at least one experiment going. So just to give you an example, let's say that you're organizing a conference for your company, right? And you've been organizing at this beautiful venue for the past two years, it works well, the staff is awesome. You don't need to experiment with that. Just go back to the venue, right? But then maybe there are areas that you want to experiment with.
22:21Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Maybe there is a different lineup of speakers, a different format. Maybe you've never done workshops before and you feel like, let's try it, right? Let's experiment with that. And let's experiment knowing that it might fail. It might not work out. It might be a complete disaster. This is okay. We're trying to learn here. So it is really about being intentional and saying, okay here are the things that are not necessarily experiments they're projects we can have projects right this is a project as part of this project we're going to experiment with this area and this is something that we know is a little bit higher risk we've never done it before and let's see what happens and this is how you keep on growing and evolving as a business love that i could not have
23:02Steph Melodia:wished for a better answer to that question because i think we focus more on one part of your title which is the experiments but actually what I'm kind of gleaning from you here is the tiny bit of it right and the fact that to your point you don't need to kind of reinvent the wheel but if you can especially as a business and especially if you do have some external pressure or investors to answer to then it's saying there's this one thing and I think your language point is very important as well we're calling it a project we're calling we're calling it a sprint you know the terms we choose to use is so important as well it's like there's one thing we're going to play with and then that means of course depending on your company's risk tolerance you're not suddenly betting everything on this one thing you know because we don't know that's inherent to risk taking another big topic that you talk about is decision making oh my god and law i could keep you in here for 17 hours just on the subject of decision making so let's open this topic with again the pressure we put on ourselves to make the right decision to get the decision right?
24:02Steph Melodia:Talk to me about that.
24:04Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Well, very often as entrepreneurs, especially we feel like, and it is the case quite often, once we've made a decision, it is going to have consequences where it is kind of hard to backtrack, right? And so when you make decisions that actually have consequences on other people, you talked about people's salaries, the livelihood, your customers, you're responsible, you feel responsible for them. And so I don't necessarily think that it is a bad thing that we feel responsible and we want to spend a little bit of time thinking about those big decisions. The issue is that quite often we only make decisions based on what I call external signals.
24:41Anne-Laure Le Cunff:And external signals are anything that you can put in a dashboard. If it can be turned into a number, a metric, something we can neatly measure and put in an Excel file, we love it. And we make our decisions like this, right? We very rarely look at internal signals. How does it feel to do the thing. So if you're launching a project, let's say I'm going to give you a personal example. A couple of years ago, I ran an experiment launching a YouTube channel because everybody was telling me as an entrepreneur, you need a YouTube channel. If you're not on YouTube, you're going to be obsolete. You have to launch your YouTube channel.
25:18Anne-Laure Le Cunff:I said, OK, let me experiment with that. Again, an experiment has a specific duration. So I said, I'm going to try this for a couple of months one video every week for a couple of months and then we'll see external signals great quite a few subscribers comments likes all of that in the green beautiful internal signals every time i was sitting in front of my camera to record a youtube video i was dreading it absolutely dreading it interesting and it had downstream consequences on the rest of my day because every time i knew it was on thursday i was supposed to record my video every Thursday I could not work on anything else I could not focus because I knew that at 2pm I was supposed to sit down and record this video and so at the end of the experiment I said you know what actually I'm going to keep on focusing on my newsletter and my other channels I don't think YouTube is for me and you might say oh she failed at YouTube but I don't think that's a failure I made the informed decision to not continue doing YouTube videos based on the data
26:21Steph Melodia:I collected love it love it and I don't know there are so many cliches and quotes on the topic but genuinely in my view the only failure is never having tried at all because the only resource that we have that's finite is our time and if you haven't tried something you just never know right it's like the Schrodinger's cat situation we don't know if the cat's dead or alive you have to you have to put it to the test and try it really really interesting I appreciate you sharing your own kind of personal anecdote there because it's super relevant as well as social media channels I think all of us feel that right like right now at the time of recording it's like Substack is taking off and yeah I get a lot of pressure to do more on YouTube as well and it's like someone said no actually don't do Substack you should be prioritizing LinkedIn article and like oh my goodness I mean look Testament your newsletter is fantastic you've got a phenomenal following on there and it fills your cup so obviously you're in both alignment internally as well as the external signals but what I'm really curious about is your YouTube experiment the fact that you did have positive external feedback why did that not create more motivation for you internally because I don't know if we're just because we're wired differently but for somebody like me who thrives on positive reinforcement and praise that would make me feel good yeah and if in that case
27:43Anne-Laure Le Cunff:it means your internal signals would be aligned to you, right? And for me, it wasn't enough. So that's why it's important to look at both and ask yourself, how does it look like externally? External signals, internal signals. If anytime you get a comment on YouTube, it makes you feel really excited and motivated and you want to keep on posting, then that's your internal signals looking good. And it just means we're different people. And this is also why, again, again, do not copy paste what other people are doing. ask yourself and be honest with yourself as well where are you getting your motivation from and if you're someone who gets that motivation from those comments from that engagement with your audience in that format go for it for me weirdly when I get an email a response from to my newsletter over email I get really happy I open it I make myself a little cup of coffee and I sit down and I reply to all of the emails that I receive and I love that right and on YouTube I don't know if it's because maybe there's not I don't feel as close to you to people who subscribe on YouTube or it's a bit more anonymous maybe I don't know I don't have this same response yeah
28:54Steph Melodia:and I think there's something even in that as well like I've definitely noticed with myself like I I've really I really crave the answers and the explanations to things and I and like to my detriment you know especially with like how I'm feeling like um last week I woke up and I was so tired and I was just like why am I this tired I was like is it because of this is it because of that have I been taking too many of these supplements or not enough or do I just need a holiday and I'm like and it is this it's almost like experiments on steroids where I'm like I need to know the answer I guess my question there is am I am I wrong for doing that and is there an element of just like just accept that that that that is your internal signals and how you feel about something you know like your YouTube examples that's just how I feel we'll move on yeah would you say that overall you're feeling pretty good yeah yeah then you're doing
29:51Anne-Laure Le Cunff:like a one-off yes you're doing well i think there is a risk to in trying to ever optimize ourselves and change who we are and i think we all have our little quirks and we're a bit weird sometimes and and that's okay there's no such thing as normal yeah exactly and that's okay i don't think we need to fix everything and try to to normalize our behavior yeah this goes back to
30:17Steph Melodia:living in the goal obsessed world and that obsession with optimization so that when I'm not feeling great I'm like what's wrong what's wrong why why how can I fix it what is it it's just you're a human being so fascinating coming back to decision making so the internal alignment we've touched on a couple of times it's super important you also talked about kind of the impact the consequences taking responsibility of our decisions I know Jeff Bezos has a thousand different frameworks that always get cited left right and center and especially in decision making so he has the um what's it called the whether it's a one-way or a two-way door decision making framework right so is this reversible and irreversible decision just get everyone up to speed in case you don't know what i'm talking about reversible not the end of the world take the shortest amount of time possible to just make a decision reach it take action move on the irreversible decisions that do have those longer term consequences yeah take your time think it through gut check all the rest of it my question to you and lawyers do you have any of your own decision making frameworks to share with my listeners well the one i just shared with you
31:24Anne-Laure Le Cunff:internal external always for for big decisions and then for the really big ones i will sit down and i will draw what i call a consequence cascade and this is really about asking myself okay if i do that what is likely to happen and if i do that and if this happened what is likely to happen what's really interesting is that very often i get to the end of the cascade and there's really nothing important at the end of it like whatever the outcome it's like oh what if i cancel this event oh well then it means i will sell fewer books what happens if i sell fewer books well i sell fewer books and that's it there's nothing really bad that happens right and so it can be really useful when there's something that feels a little bit paralyzing and you're trying to think about what's going to happen what's going to happen and you're you're overthinking it just putting it on paper and especially if you're a bit you're a visual person it can be
32:22Steph Melodia:really helpful as well yeah that's a great tip an important reminder is and i love this i have to remind myself this fairly frequently is a decision will get made as time passes whether or not you like it because the longer you take on stalling what's happening is is that you're relinquishing your power and you're letting just time the passing of time right to make the decision for you whatever that specific thing is so let's say for example maybe it's hiring someone that's typically you know a tough decision for entrepreneurs is this the right person and you've got the the cliche again of like hire slow fire fast you want to take your time is this the right person but if you take too long deciding they've gone and got snapped up by somebody else as just an example there so any other kind of tips or mental reframes you can share as well with maybe even more so we're getting back into alignment as that's such a fundamental piece like how can we feel more comfortable with that inner kind of knowing and and trusting it as well because i feel like we've all got it but we often ignore it we override it yeah what you're talking about is
33:34Anne-Laure Le Cunff:what we psychologists call metacognition which just means thinking about your own thinking okay it means i spend a lot of time doing that it's uh metacognition is observing your own thoughts observing your own emotions trying to understand your inner world and really understanding the why behind your decisions. Yeah. And a very simple way to do this. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs do it already. But if anyone listening or watching this is not doing it already, I would highly recommend giving it a try is a weekly review. Just having a weekly review. You can use any format you want. My format is something I call plus minus next.
34:15Anne-Laure Le Cunff:And it's very simple. It's three columns or three bullet points in your notes. plus you write everything that went well this week, minus everything that didn't go so well, and next, what you want to try next, what you want to iterate on. So really the next part is the most important one because it's about extracting all of the juicy knowledge from the plus and minus and asking yourself, how can I next week have a little bit more of what is in the plus column and a little bit less of what is in the minus column? If you do that and you make sure in that process to pay attention again to internal and external signals, I guarantee you that you're going to figure out your way to whatever challenge you're facing right now.
34:59Anne-Laure Le Cunff:And you're just going to keep on iterating every week, making it a little bit better. And again, even if you don't have a clear plan, you're not quite sure what's going to happen, you can trust that you're going to learn from each iteration.
35:10Steph Melodia:Yeah, I love that tiny experiments. Again, I love anything like that, practical frameworks, tips, tricks to help set up. Has there been a tiny experiment that has drastically changed your path?
35:25Anne-Laure Le Cunff:I would say my newsletter experiment definitely has completely changed my life, has changed my career. For me, it might seem like not like a, you know, a very big experiment, but it was my first time committing to write in English in public. which English is not my first language and so I it was kind of scary and uh and it was really helpful to design it as an experiment because I just said you know I'm just going to do that for this period of time and if I hate it I can stop yeah and turns out I loved it and uh that's how then publishers started getting in touch on the back of my newsletter I met so many interesting people I think everything good that has happened business-wise to me in the past few years I can link back to that experiment when i said i'm going to experiment with writing online wow that is so
36:20Steph Melodia:interesting so how long ago did you start that was six years ago wow in 2020 yeah was it covid that
36:28Anne-Laure Le Cunff:spurred it no covid happened literally two months after right at the beginning of 2020 yeah wow that's so interesting yeah and you've been consistent with it since for six years
36:40Steph Melodia:every how often every week every week i might have missed a few weeks but most weeks have that is hundreds of newsletters and i can imagine how that's just so so helpful in practicing your skill for longer form writing with a book right how did you find what was the difference between writing newsletters versus a book was it a big leap it's so funny you're asking this because
37:04Anne-Laure Le Cunff:I was so naive. I thought when I signed this book deal, I felt like, surely I've been writing hundreds of newsletters. Like, how hard can it be?
37:14Steph Melodia:Come on. Yes.
37:16Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Walk in the park. I thought I would take the newsletters and rewrite them and, you know, voila, you get a book.
37:22Steph Melodia:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you basically have written a book, right? If you push together all your newsletters, right?
37:27Anne-Laure Le Cunff:But it's completely different. A book is a completely different beast. and you know you have to i know it's going to sound obvious but when you're writing chapter eight you have to remember what you said in chapter two and it has to make sense and build on top of what you said before and uh the part that i didn't expect to be so scary for me was how final it felt as an online entrepreneur primarily i've been every time i post something or create a product that's a digital product i can go back to it and i've had people say oh by By the way, what you wrote in this newsletter, there's actually a new paper that came out.
38:03Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Right. And so what you wrote is wrong.
38:05Steph Melodia:You can update it. I can update it. I can say sorry.
38:07Anne-Laure Le Cunff:And this is fine. With a book, once it's out in the wild, I can't run after people and say, oops, sorry. It's not what I meant. We ended up cutting an entire chapter from the book. What's the secret chapter? It's called Mind Gardening. And it's really about, we talked about information overload a little bit earlier. And it's really about that. How to manage that. how to decide which information to plant into your mind garden which one to cultivate which one to weed out and it's a it's a chapter where it's it was one of my darlings basically we had to kill it and it was a good it was the right decision right but as you said as a as the the author it was painful knowing the amount of time i had spent writing this chapter that we were going to cut it but thinking about the experience of the reader which is what should always come first Yeah, exactly.
38:56Anne-Laure Le Cunff:It made sense to remove it.
38:57Steph Melodia:Well, I appreciate you sharing the chapter. This is like the like the uncut, like directors, directors cut, you know, version of the book. And Laura, are there any other like neuroscience insights in particular that you want to share with my audience that you haven't already before I come to my traditional closing question?
39:17Anne-Laure Le Cunff:I can share just a little bit about maybe the neuroscience of uncertainty, which I think is really helpful as an entrepreneur to know a little bit about. So our brains have evolved to try and reduce uncertainty as quickly as possible, which makes sense. Because if you think about our ancestors, the more information you had, the more likely you were to survive. And so this is not a problem in the sense that your brain is doing its job. if all you want is to survive then great but if you want more than surviving if you want to actually grow and thrive then those survival mechanisms can get in the way so this is i'm just sharing this because i think as entrepreneurs it can be really important to pay attention to the moments when you are trying to reduce uncertainty as quickly as possible which might mean rushing to the first solution that you find or trying to feel in control and maybe inviting yourself to stay in that space of uncertainty for a little bit longer even if it's uncomfortable because very often this is where you have some of the best opportunities for growth and self-discovery
40:25Steph Melodia:great tip but it does feel so horrible doesn't it what's worked for you to stay in the discomfort
40:32Anne-Laure Le Cunff:when you've needed to journaling for me has been extremely powerful i journal every morning even if it's five minutes but having again this little check-in with myself and honestly asking myself how are we feeling today and oh we're feeling a bit anxious what are we anxious about and all of a sudden you go from this free-floating anxiety to something that you can name and once you can
40:56Steph Melodia:name it you can start working with it yeah another phrase an old coach of my news which was you feel the feeling don't be the feeling and I think that's again another helpful reminder especially if we don't have that metacognition and we're not creating that space we're not sitting with the discomfort or just yeah just creating kind of a moment for ourselves it's so easy to let the emotion take over it's so easy to if you to your example if you're feeling anxious to just be like oh my god I'm just like that anxiety can feel so overwhelming but but whatever that practice is if it's journaling if it's touching grass quite literally getting out in nature whatever it is to to create that space and to your point with you name it okay this is just how i'm feeling it's just and it's just a feeling it doesn't doesn't rule your life it doesn't have to rule your day even okay what can we do about this love that and law i've got a thousand more questions to ask you but i need to come to my traditional closing question on the show which i ask all my guests which is what's one tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson
42:04just staying for too long in jobs that made me miserable because I felt like I had to
42:12Anne-Laure Le Cunff:and I don't do that anymore I try to get out of situations where I'm not flourishing as quickly as possible now love that love that I guess there's moments that when you're in it where
42:24Steph Melodia:you're like just give it a bit more time give it a better chance now are you a lot more cutthroat
42:29Anne-Laure Le Cunff:about it yes yeah I try to it's not perfect it's not perfect almost every single time when I look back I feel like I could have left sooner yes yeah but it's getting better yeah I love that
42:41Steph Melodia:as I said like our time is short isn't it like I'm saying earlier the only resource we have that's finite is our time and we're spending that being unhappy in misalignment doing things that aren't filling our cup and it goes back to what you were saying earlier as well around society's expectations or other expectations that are put on us to continue down a path that doesn't feel right to us.
43:03Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Yes.
43:04Steph Melodia:Okay, amazing. Anne-Laure, thank you so much for coming on Strategy and Tragedy. Appreciate you coming on and sharing your pulse of wisdom, as well as the neuroscience insights, as well as some practical tips and tricks. I'm sure my listeners will find it super helpful.
43:17Anne-Laure Le Cunff:Thank you.
43:19Steph Melodia:And thank you so much for tuning in. If you have found this helpful, do let us know. Use this as your opportunity now to do one tiny experiment. and let us know how you get on. All right, hopefully see you next time. Thanks, guys. Bye.
From the publisher
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As a world-leading expert on mindful productivity and systematic curiosity, Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur and former Googler. She is the creator of learning community, Ness Labs (https://nesslabs.com/) - described as the mindful productivity school for knowledge workers featured in Wired, Rolling Stone and Business Insider. Anne-Laure is also the author of Tiny Experiments you can get your hands on: https://nesslabs.com/book
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