Tiny experiments: a book recommendation

A book written by Anne-Laure Le Cunff from Ness Labs on leading a more experimental life

The book “Tiny Experiments” by Anne-Laura Le Cunff proposes a more experimental approach to life.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a bit, you will know I am quite interested in creativity, after all it’s in the title of this blog. About a year ago, in summer semester 2024, I taught my first stand-alone course on creativity (and I talked about that in my newsletter before), and a year before that, I had experimented with a lab themed around creativity as part of a course at my university.

One resource that I have been using in my course is Ness Labs, a newsletter and collection of articles by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a neurobiologist. In fact, it was her newsletter that also motivated me to start writing this weekly newsletter of mine. As kind of an experiment.

This sort of experimenting is really neat. Every year I try out something new. Those are not exactly ‘tiny’ experiments, but of course I could always stop if it didn’t work out. Incidentally, my experiment for this year is to go on a three-month sabbatical to the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. Why is this an experiment? Because I don’t know anybody there. To me that is actually quite scary. The natural impulse is clearly to go somewhere where I have friends. The idea was to apply for a fellowship from this institute, which I received, and then to interact with as many different labs as possible, right across all of the natural sciences. This way, all connections will be new.

I like this approach to life, this idea of experiments, of being constantly curious and willing to try out new things and see where they take you. This is why I was very interested in Anne-Laure’s book, which is out March 4th, 2025. I got to read an advance copy of it. You can listen to her explain what the book is about in this video:

The book starts by looking at linear goals, the typical way we go through our lives and careers. Several flaws with these linear goals are identified: they breed fear, they encourage toxic productivity, and they lead to competition and isolation. She then goes on to identify the experimental mindset as the antidote to these linear progressions. A key ingredient are what she calls tiny experiments, they are purposeful, actionable, continuous (something you can do regularly) and trackable (did you do it or not). Something like “I will write a newsletter every week for the next x weeks” (which is how I started this newsletter). Anne-Laure calls such agreements with oneself a pact. A pact is a “mini protocol for a personal experiment”.

Throughout the book she emphasizes the role of staying curious. Even metacognition is introduced as “curiosity directed at your inner world”. Another consequence of curiosity is that we maybe don’t have that “one purpose” we need to find. I find that very refreshing.

I particularly enjoyed reading chapter 10 on social flow, how creative ideas emerge from interaction with others. This resonated with me, as I have just been reading two books that also described this social interaction, like in salons and circles of friends, as a key ingredient in breakthroughs, even in science findings that are usually attributed to the “lone genius”. I really liked the idea of a “curiosity circle”, this is something I have been thinking about myself, and also have written about in my newsletter.

As often the case in creativity/ productivity books the audience addressed and the examples given often are from the entrepreneurial realm. And of course the book has general self-help vibes. But I found it didn’t distract from the overall message as I tried to read it more from the perspective of a practicing scientist.

Perhaps you also find this book to be interesting. What tiny experiments would you start?