Mar 13, 2025
My guest today is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs and author of Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.
On paper, Anne-Laure had it all: top grades, a high-flying job at Google, and a life that seemed to hit all the markers of success.
But something was off. No matter how “traditionally” successful she became, she felt… “empty.”
So, she decided to do something about it. A neuroscience PhD, 100,000+ newsletter subscribers, and a newly published book later, she’s developed a new model of success — one built around conducting “tiny experiments” that help her build a life on her own terms.
She joins me to discuss how we get trapped in cognitive scripts, the hidden dangers of productivity culture, how we can experiment our way to a better life and MUCH more!
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!”, check out our Substack.
Important Links:
Show Notes:
- How do you know you are bored out?
- People who love us the most might turn out to be our biggest blockers
- Don't confuse activity with effectiveness
- We will do virtually anything to gain what is really an illusion of control
- The map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal. And yet, words are magic spells.
- The Winner’s Script and the Loser’s Script
- "You got to run at the top speed if you just want to stay in place.”
- Let go of the linear and replace it with the loop- a more cyclical approach for growth
- Can you sit alone in a room for 15 minutes?
- Procrastination is just a signal from your brain that something is not quite working right now
- We know nothing
- AI is a rocket ship for the mind
- In 100 years, nobody will remember you
Books Mentioned:
- Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned; by Ken Stanley
- Thinking in Bets; by Annie Duke
- Collective Illusions; by Todd Rose
- Maybe Logic; by Robert Anton Wilson
- Beginning of Infinity; by David Deutsch
- Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics; by Alfred Korzybski
- The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better; by Will Storr