Unconventional Success: How Tiny Experiments Change Everything | Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Former Google executive turned neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff reveals how breaking free from prescribed life scripts opened the door to genuine fulfillment through experimentation. In this rich conversation about her book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World https://amzn.to/43gz0Ui, she shares a practical framework for transforming life's uncertainties into opportunities for growth and self-discovery - whether you're questioning your career path, relationships, or daily habits. You can find Anne-Laure at: Website https://nesslabs.com/book | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/neuranne | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/how-to-transform-uncertainty-into-discovery-anne-laure-le-cunff If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations where I shared my 2x20 project https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/NjZkMGQzNzViZGM3YTc3Y2RkOGVmZjRh all about my own tiny experiments. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The doctors found a blood clot in my arm, and it was threatening to travel to my lungs. And my first reaction was to... That was one moment where I caught myself and felt like something is really wrong with my sense of priorities right now.

• 0:17Jonathan Fields?

  Anne-Laure Le Combe is a French-Algerian neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and writer. After leaving a prestigious role at Google, she founded Ness Labs, pursued a PhD in psychology and neuroscience, and champions this idea that life is a series of curious experiments rather than a linear path in her new book Tiny Experiments.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  A scientist doesn't feel like a failure when they get an unexpected result. And this is something that they can learn from and use to design their next experiment.

• 0:48Jonathan Fields?

  And all of this leads to a different philosophy.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  I wish I could tell you that I went from this moment of realization to then starting straight away to experiment more and live more freely, but that's not what happened.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 1:41Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Steel, so I am not in the studio today. I'm actually out on the trail and the Rockies at about 6,000 feet above sea level and boulder. The leaves are exploding with color and it's just stunning out. And yes, I'm wearing my favorite Steel hat. And just last night, I was wearing one of my favorite Steel jackets, which, if you know me, is not unusual. I wear the hat almost every day, and my Steel jackets pretty much live on me all fall and winter. There's even a Steel shop back in town.

• 2:10Jonathan Fields?

  Practically in my backyard. Here is why I love them. Stio is designed and tested in Jackson Hole at the base of the Tetons by locals who ski and bike and hike and climb and fish there pretty much every day. They have been at it since 2011, so they know warmth and they also know style. Everything I have from them, it works great. It holds up in every condition and also looks awesome. And their hometown down is 800 filled down, but it feels more like just your favorite hoodie than a puffy. And ski season is almost here, so gear up now the way that the locals do. Go to stio.com/goodlife for 20% off your order. That's S T I O dot com slash good life. Stio dot com slash good life. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole.

• 2:53Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is supported by Ernesta rugs. So a small confession, our front porch has been the most neglected corner of our homes since we moved in. It's the first thing anyone steps onto and it's been kind of greeting people with a sad, too small mat. Ernesta sent me their samples and now they're making us a rug. And the cool thing is for $10, you get five oversized 12 by 12 samples. So you see the colors at real scale in your own space before you even get it. So we lived with all five colors for a few days and cool morning light and golden afternoon light. And we're sure to be roasting the sky, but Caldwell just kind of kept quietly winning. The thing you're certain about isn't always the thing that fits. And because Ernesta rugs are custom size, cut to the ins, the one we ordered is made to our exact six and a half feet by nine feet space, not close enough.

• 3:45Jonathan Fields?

  Visit ernesta.com and order five samples for only $10 and you'll get $50 toward any rug of your choice. That's E R N E S T A dot com.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  I was working at Google. I had a really good career there. Good salary, good team. I was working on interesting projects and I had a healthcare where the doctors found a blood clot in my arm and it was threatening to travel to my lungs, but they said, don't worry. If we schedule the surgery pretty soon, it will be okay. So let's do that, right? And my first reaction was to open my laptop and check my calendar. So I could make sure to schedule this when it would not disrupt any of the product launches that we had planned with the team. That was the first thing I thought about. How can I make sure that I'm not disrupting work for others?

• 4:35Speaker 00

  So that was one moment where I caught myself and felt like something is really wrong with my sense of priorities right now. I might be a bit too focused on my career. And the other moment was a few months later, I so I did the surgery, it went well. And I went back to France to visit my parents for Christmas and someone in my family asked, how's life? And I don't know why, but for the first time, I really listened to the question and I paused and I asked myself, how's life really? And on the surface, it was great. Work was great. I again, I was living in fairly exciting. I was living in San Francisco, working for one of the best tech companies that you could work for at the time. But I felt a little bit empty.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  And this is when I started questioning my path.

• 5:23Jonathan Fields?

  What was it? What was the feeling when you sort of paused for that moment? It this is gonna sound like a weird question, but what was the feeling of emptiness for you?

• 5:32Speaker 00

  It's I describe it as being bored out and as if as if someone had spoiled the a movie for you and that told you how it finishes. And all of a sudden, you're not really interested in watching the movie anymore. That's how I felt like I had this sense of clarity as to where my career could go, the steps that I had to follow, what success looked like, what was expected from me. All of the rules of the game were pretty clear to me. But because of that, there was no sense of excitement, of wonder anymore.

• 6:09Jonathan Fields?

  I'm really curious now. Did you have?

• 6:14Jonathan Fields?

  Sort of growing up, did you have an ideology or sense of philosophy of what, quote, "work was supposed to be like in life that came from family or friends or local community" that you kind of tracked yourself into and said, "I'm doing the thing," before this happened?

• 6:29Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely. I think it's very rare for to meet people who are not in that situation. A lot of us end up following the scripts that we've been taught unconsciously. And I was a very curious kid, as most kids are. When you asked me when I was a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, "A writer or a paleontologist." So, you know, I was keeping my options quite open. But coming from an immigrant background, my parents really pushed me to optimize for safety and stability, making sure that I would always have a roof over my head and food on the table. These were the factors I was optimizing for.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  And so I chose my studies and I chose my first job and I designed my career around optimizing for safety.

• 7:20Jonathan Fields?

  So when you're home and this person asks you how you are, and you pause for a moment and you realize, "Okay, on paper, objectively, I've checked all the boxes that I was supposed to check, you know, but why am I not feeling the way that I'm feeling?" Where do you go from there? You know, like because if you've sort of like you've tracked it and grabbed the brass ring and you got it, was it disconcerting for you to sort of like in that moment say, "What's happening here?"

• 7:52Speaker 00

  It was, and that's what's interesting is that I wish I could tell you that I went from this moment of realization to then starting straight away to experiment more and live more freely, but that's not what happened. I realized something was wrong and so I said... That's probably a sign that I need to quit my job and I need to start something new and I need to build my own thing. And so I quit my job at Google and I started a startup. What I didn't realize at the time that I know now is that I was yet again following another script. Because that's what a lot of people around me were doing.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  You start your job at a big tech company, you stay for long enough that you can save a bit of money and build your network. And then you raise money and you start a startup to save the world. Anything less than that is failure. So I followed that script again, and it's only when my startup failed that I found myself again in that state of, okay, what next? But this time around, I decided to really sit with the uncertainty, to really explore it and not try to just go and do the next logical thing that you're supposed to do when you're feeling this way.

• 9:09Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, it is so interesting the way you describe it because, you know, I think maybe if you're, especially if you're not in the tech industry and you look at somebody who's at Google, building this incredible career and then decides to just completely leave, um, walk away and start their own business. A lot of people raise an eyebrow and say, how could you ever do that? But in the space that you were living in, in the tech world, that's actually a pretty normal linear path. You know, it's almost like the equivalent of the investment banking path. You know, like you sort of, you go, you become an analyst and then you go, you get your MBA and then you go back and you become like deeper embedded and then you go out and oftentimes start your own thing or start your own firm or like, um,

• 9:50Jonathan Fields?

  and even though you're doing your own thing, it's actually really following a script still. So when, when that startup fails then, I mean, imagine it was just brutally hard for you anyway. Because then when you have your own thing that fails, I have been through that. It's not fun.

• 10:08Jonathan Fields?

  How do you, how do you think through at that point, how to do the next move differently?

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, um, it was very difficult, but once I had processed the grief, because that really what the emotion was like, it really felt like grief when my startup failed. I actually felt a sense of freedom that was very surprising to me. I did not expect that that was going to be the next emotion to show up after grief. Freedom, freedom to do whatever I wanted to do, but also a little bit of a fear around this, this freedom. Because all of a sudden I didn't have a next step, didn't have a blueprint and didn't want to follow a script. So what I did was that I went back to the drawing board and I asked myself,

• 10:57Speaker 00

  what would you be interested in exploring, even if nobody was watching, even if money was not part of the equation? Even if you removed any kind of thoughts around outcomes and success and achievements? What is something that you would like to explore if you could just wake up in the morning and do that thing? Just because you want to do it and you're curious about it in and of itself. And for me, that had always been the brain. I had always been curious about why we think the way we think and feel the way we feel. And so I decided in my late twenties to go back to university and study neuroscience, which also raised a few eyebrows, actually, because a lot of people around me said, what are you doing?

• 11:42Speaker 00

  You, you don't become a neuroscientist at that age, right? Those are very long studies. You're, don't just do that. Like maybe pick something easier. And, uh, and going back to university, how are you going to pay for this? And so it just, you know, maybe looked a little bit crazy from the outside, but it felt really grounded for me. Because I knew I had made this decision not based on trying to achieve a certain version of success or following a certain script, but just because that was generally the thing I was the most curious about in that specific moment.

• 12:17Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, that's such a powerful move when you reach that moment where you decide that the the script of others' expectations is no longer going to guide your choices in your work and your life. But that is a brutally hard thing for most people to do. There's so much, you know, there's fear of being rejected, fear of being outcast from the people you want to be seen as, you know, like being the accomplished one, the smart one, the one who's like doing all the good things. Um, did you have a any sort of internal battle um when people were really raising an eyebrow and questioning this?

• 12:50Speaker 00

  In that moment, I felt so strongly about my decision that it was actually fine. But in the years afterward, especially when I talked to former colleagues who stayed at Google and had another promotion and a raise, and then they bought their house, their first house, and then their second house, and or other startup founders that I knew um who their first startup failed, but they tried again, and the second one was successful. And obviously, you're going to compare yourself to these other people and and you'll have your moments of doubt. So I never tell people that it's about getting rid of doubt. It's really not about getting rid of that. I think if you're a human being, you are going to experience doubt. We're social creatures, and we're going to actually

• 13:35Speaker 00

  keep on comparing ourselves to each other. It's more about the response that you have when you experience that kind of of doubt and uncertainty and embracing it as part of the process, knowing that it's normal and that actually it might be a signal that you're doing something interesting.

• 13:50Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love that. And that's been a big part of the way that I tend to look at work and life as well. Um, you know, but we we are, I remember doing research on this years ago when I was working on a book and. And it was all about how we deal with uncertainty in high stakes environments. And you can see FMRI studies where the fear centers of the brain light up. And this is something you talk and write about as well. And we're literally, we're softwired to have this physiological and neurological response that makes us want to run from uncertainty. So walk me through some ideas and some sort of like strategies. Because everybody's going to experience this when we start to think about doing something that's maybe not the mainstream.

• 14:35Jonathan Fields?

  Take me into this a little bit more about how we sort of explore handling that psychology and physiology.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  I think two things. The first one is just in the way you approach experimentation in general in your life. I took that big leap. I don't think I had to do that, right? It is absolutely possible to experiment in areas of your life where it might feel a little bit more comfortable and elicit a little bit less fear. So you could say, I'm actually happy to stay in that linear career where I know what I'm doing, I like my team, it's a good salary. But now that I have this sense of safety here, I might be able to experiment in other areas of my life. Maybe I'll experiment with health, the way I push myself and challenge myself in terms of running or different types of sports.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Maybe I'll experiment when it comes to my creativity, to side projects, how I show up in my community, how I build my network, in my relationships. So you don't have to experiment with absolutely everything and you don't have to take a crazy leap and quitting your job or anything like that in order to experiment. So I think in terms of managing that fear in the first place, maybe you don't have to put yourself in a situation where it's overly scary. But there's still going to be always a little bit of fear when you do something new, when you're uncomfortable. I think understanding why you're feeling this way from a neurophysiological perspective can be helpful. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that when we feel like we don't have enough

• 16:07Speaker 00

  information, we don't understand what's in front of us, we wanna get out of there as quickly as possible. And when we were in the jungle, not knowing who the other players were, what that noise in the bushes was, and where the resources were, could actually mean death. So your your brain is also optimized for your survival. And so knowing that that's a natural reaction, this fear is natural, but that today in your modern environment, your ambition is not just to survive, but to thrive. And so you wanna play with that fear. And again, from a neurophysiological perspective, something we can do that, to the extent that

• 16:52Speaker 00

  we know other mammals cannot do, is that we're able to practice what is called metacognition, which is observing your own thoughts. And so you can actually decide to have this activation in your prefrontal cortex where you look at the fear and you say, hello, old friend, you're back. What do we do? What are you trying to tell me? Why are we feeling this way? So it's a little bit like, I describe it like a two-step dance in the book, where you are able to move through, really trying to understand the subjective experience of fear, and then working on the objective consequences. Is something really scary happening that you

• 17:36Speaker 00

  need to deal with? Or is it just this kind of primal fear that we all experience when we do something new?

• 17:41Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and I think we we will all experience that at some point. I mean, maybe it's not your work or your job. Maybe it's literally just approaching somebody you're interested in for friendship or romance, you know, like at a dinner party, or when friends are around, it's, we don't know if it's gonna work out. We don't know if they can reject us or accept us. You know, there's, there are these microsocial moments all the way up to the really big things in life where the stakes are incredibly high, but it's like our brains still go to that same place. So you've described this experience where you're, you know, like you're you're tracking in this linear life, this path, like doing all the right things, quote, succeeding by everybody else's metrics, and then you decide to go a completely different direction.

• 18:27Jonathan Fields?

  Take me more into this notion of the linear life, because this was something that you were living. But this is something that you write and speak about. This is a really broad phenomenon. This is sort of like, there's a philosophy, or there's a way that you're, quote, "supposed to build your life and your living" that so many of us buy into.

• 18:45Jonathan Fields?

  Matt, this out a little bit for me.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  I think about it as a mental model, like how you visualize your life. I think the way we visualize our life, and that has a lot of downstream consequences on literally everything and all of the decisions we make. A lot of us think about our lives and success in general as a ladder that you're supposed to climb. And so you're supposed to go through each step, each rung of the ladder. And a little bit like in a video game, you're supposed to collect all of the points and the artifacts at a certain level, and then you're allowed to move on to the next one. And so you try to climb this ladder and ideally get to the top before you die. That's the idea. And this seems like such a simple mental model and such a harmless one.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  But actually, when you think about the way it makes us navigate life, it again, has a lot of consequences. One of them is that we keep on comparing ourselves to each other, because it's very easy, if we all have our ladders next to each other, to just look right and left and ask yourself, "Am I going fast enough? Am I high enough on this ladder? How come this person that was in school with me is already there and I'm still here?" So that linear approach really creates comparison, social comparison. So that's one thing. The other one is that it's based on a lot of assumptions. It's based on the assumption that if you get to a specific point, a specific outcome or milestone, you'll be happy. We all know that. Once we've had several experiences of success,

• 20:14Speaker 00

  we all know that that's not the case. You get there and you realize that, "Oh, I'm still the same person. My problems are still here. I'm not particularly ecstatic to be here." And once you have this sense of short-lived achievement, what you do is just feel like, "Oh, but maybe I'm not on the right rung yet. I need to climb a little bit higher and then I'll be happy." The other assumption it makes is that you know what outcome you want. And that's the one that I feel like is the most dangerous. It assumes that the person you are today can imagine the kind of success that you're capable of. And so you design your outcomes, your goals, based on what you think is possible.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  But the person you're going to be in two years, or three years, or five years is going to know a lot more things, have more skills, have more experiences, know more people, have lived more, and will be able to imagine more. So to me, a ladder is, and this linear model is optimizing for achieving a very narrow definition of success, where you might get to that place that you have predetermined before you got started. But it's going to limit what you're capable of. And what you ideally want to do in life, I think, is get, design your life in a way where when you look back in five years, or in 10 years, you feel like, huh, I had no idea the place I'm in right now existed.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  I had no idea I could get here.

• 21:45Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. No, I think that resonates so deeply. I think, you know, so many of us, we, we pursue our lives and our livings in chasing a feeling that we think we'll want to have 10 years from now. If our life looks a certain way, if our work looks a certain way, if our health and relationships look a certain way.

• 22:07Jonathan Fields?

  And assuming that we know, like, we know ourselves, we know the thing that we want, we know the way that we want to feel, and we know the things that will make us feel that, you know, like, five years, 10 years, 15 years, maybe even 20 years out.

• 22:21Jonathan Fields?

  And all the research says it's completely wrong. I remember years ago reading Dan Gilbert's, you know, work on effective forecasting. He's like, we are literally worse at predicting how we'll feel, you know, like, at a certain point in our future is, than we ask, if we ask a total stranger who's in that same situation, 10, 20 years from now, like, they'll actually be more accurate at, like, describing how we would probably feel. But we think we're really good at it, like, we really delude ourselves and think like, no, we know, we know ourselves. But we really don't.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  We're so bad at it because we feel like it's also the illusion that we feel like the more information we have, the more clarity we'll have about the future. And so we think that I know myself, right? Which again is another assumption. A lot of us don't know ourselves very well either. But also, yeah, we don't know what's in front of us and how each experience and each person we meet is going to shape us in ways that are impossible to imagine for us today.

• 23:21Jonathan Fields?

  That makes so much sense to me, you know? And, and tell me if this is right. I think what I'm reading from what you're describing here is that we end up effectively doing harm to our future selves by limiting all the actions we're taking now to just tracking along this one sort of like, like linear path that we think will get us to this place and make us feel the way we want to feel. And we don't realize that A, we probably won't feel that way, even if we get it. And B, we kind of put blinders on and then ignore all the other possibilities that may be so much more energizing and fulfilling for us. And does that make sense?

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And, and again, there's research on this, but also you don't even need to read a research paper. If you go and grab someone a little bit older and ask them if they have any regrets in terms of the way they live their lives. A lot of them will tell you that they regret that they, they didn't pursue that random thing they were curious about, that they didn't explore more. They didn't jump on that plane to visit that country and take that holiday, even if their boss said that we were busy at work, right? None of them will tell you that they regret not sticking better to the career ladder that they were supposed to climb at work. So I think at an instinctive level, we know this.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  But again, the, the fear of uncertainty and this illusion of control that we cling to, feeling like we can predict what we want and what the future will look like, is so strong that despite the intuition that this is really not the right way to design our lives, a lot of us still cling to the linear model.

• 25:02Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, we want that safety. We want the feeling of like ground beneath our feet. In my very early career, I was a lawyer and working in a large firm in New York. And a couple of years in, I decided to leave. And I sent a memo around, which is what you did back then. Like everyone sent a quote, a departure memo, it landed on everybody's desk. And most of the memos were like, oh, I'm going to be like general counsel in this firm. I'm going to like do all these different things. And my memo was equivalent of saying, I'm leaving the practice of law to go lead people up mountains and help people. And what was interesting, and I'm curious whether you got anything similar at Google when you left.

• 25:42Jonathan Fields?

  The response from people who were sort of like at my level, mid-level associates in the firm were kind of like, oh, what a shame. Like, he couldn't cut it, you know, or he's like, how could you leave? This is the job that everybody wants. How could you like leave all of this behind? And then I got some notes from sort of like senior partners in the firm who were saying, "God bless. Go do this. Keep me in the loop. Tell me how it is. This is amazing." That was such a huge signal to me. I wonder if you experienced anything similar, or if you've talked to people who've experienced something like that.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  That's very interesting because I actually also at Google got really nice notes from very senior people. And yeah, the number three person at the company sent me an email, replied to my email and told me to have fun, enjoy, explore. And it was mostly my friends at my level who were worried for me. And who thought that maybe I was making a terrible mistake. And who also very reassuringly and kindly told me, you know, if you ever need to come back to Google, we'll help you.

• 26:48Jonathan Fields?

  They're there for you. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 26:54Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Quince. So these days, I tend to want fewer things made well. That's how I'm thinking about gifts this year, and it's why Quince is on my list. So Quince makes elevated everyday essentials from premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and stretch denim at 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Cashmere sweaters that start at just $50, they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. Our executive producer, Lindsay, actually just ordered their organic cotton denim chore jacket in indigo blue. Her verdict: dreamy and soft. She also grabbed Quince's bees' oil wood conditioner. It's made in the USA from beeswax and mineral oil. It's food safe and it's lovely on cutting boards and bowls.

• 27:36Jonathan Fields?

  And I actually just got the yummiest button down from Quince, which is great as the weather gets cooler. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about us, let them know it was Good Life Project. It's the best way to support the show. Good Life Project is sponsored by Talkiatry. So you know that moment when you finally say, okay, I need some help? That takes courage. And then you start calling psychiatrists and hear, we're not taking new patients or our next opening is months away. Talkiatry exists to change that. Unlike therapy only platforms, Talkiatry is psychiatry.

• 28:21Jonathan Fields?

  It's a 100% online practice where a medical provider can diagnose conditions like anxiety, ADHD, depression, and more, and prescribe medication when it's appropriate. All 800 plus clinicians are in network with major insurers. Take a short assessment, get matched, and have your first visit in days, not months. More than 300,000 patients have already found care through Talkiatry. So head to talkiatry.com/goodlife to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y.com/goodlife to get matched in minutes. Talkiatry.com/goodlife.

• 29:02Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is supported by Kachava. So I used to think being salty was reserved for bad moods and pretzels. But lately, I have come to realize that a little salty edge actually makes life, and especially dessert, way more interesting. Any pastry chef will tell you that a pinch of salt isn't there to ruin the party. It's there to make the sweet parts just really shine, which is exactly what Kachava pulled off with their new salted caramel. First sip, I actually laughed. It's that good, rich caramel, a little salty edge, and none of the sugary drawbacks. And it's still the Kachava that I count on. Two scoops for complete nutrition with plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. No artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, no fillers, no nonsense.

• 29:47Jonathan Fields?

  Which if you're feeling a little salty yourself is kind of the point. Embrace your salty side. Go to kachava.com and use the code GOODLIFE for 15% off your order. That's Kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code GOODLIFE.

• 30:04Jonathan Fields?

  So when you decide, okay, I've left Google. I've done my own thing. It didn't work out. And now I really have to take a different path. You end up basically creating your own entity, which ends up evolving into Nest Labs and where you're running a lot of experiments, learning, writing, exploring. You go back to school even to pursue a degree in neuroscience. And all of this leads to a different philosophy, the experimental life philosophy. So tell me how this starts to emerge.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  For me, it started with going back to school, studying neuroscience and getting reacquainted with the scientific method and the scientific mindset. And I absolutely fell in love with this way of thinking, where instead of reacting with fear when you're faced with uncertainty, you react with curiosity. Uncertainty becomes almost an opportunity, something that you want to explore, something you want to experiment with. And that's how scientists design their experiments. They see something they don't understand, and they ask themselves, what kind of experiment can I design around this? The other thing I really liked was that instead of defining an outcome in advance and saying this is what success looks like,

• 31:21Speaker 00

  they taught us to start from a hypothesis. And so you say, I think this might be the case. I'm not quite sure. Again, I'm going to try it and I'm going to see what happens. And that really completely changes your relationship to success. Because as long as you complete the experiment and you collect the data and you learn something new, whatever the results are, this is success. You learn something. And so I started asking myself, how can I start applying this in my own life? Because the contrast between this approach and the linear approach that I had been following before was so obvious that it felt like an interesting avenue to explore. And so I started running more and more experiments

• 32:03Speaker 00

  in my life, personal experiments, really taking that mindset out of the lab and using it in the way I wrote. So conducting writing experiments. And I conducted experiments around meditation. My current experiment is around walking, just walking more. Um, and, uh, and I started writing about it in the newsletter. And then a lot of other people joined and decided to also run their experiments with me. So that's how this entire kind of, um, I don't really like honestly calling it a method because I tell everyone you should also experiment with the way you do this instead of copy pasting the way I do it, kind of meta. But this, uh, you said philosophy, I think this is the right term. This is how it emerged.

• 32:46Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, that makes so much sense to me. And I love how you took the, the scientific method and really adapted it for life. You know, could you imagine a scientist starting like a PhD program saying, like, I know exactly what outcome I'm working towards. And I've seen it replicated a whole bunch of times before. So I'm going to do it again myself for the next five years. I mean, that would be insane.

• 33:10Jonathan Fields?

  That's how we live our lives.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  Yes, I love that how you're putting it. And it's true when we say it this way, it actually sounds completely absurd. And that would explain why so many people get both bored out and burned out at work. But somehow that's still what we do and what a lot of people decide to follow in terms of path.

• 33:30Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, it's that safety thing, right? And and I guess you could also make the argument that, I mean, there's been a lot of turmoil in the world of science over the last decade or two. And you can make an argument that some of it is due to people saying, well, I want to actually take the safe option even within the field of research. I need, how can I create the perception of doing something, but really play it safe so that I'm protected, my lab is protected, my reputation, my salary are protected? And and this is a very human instinct, you know, you know, and so you've seen that even kind of in moments in the world of science and research.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I think that's why it's very important, even when you have decided and committed for yourself to living a more experimental life, to still keep on questioning your scripts, questioning your behaviors and your actions, because, you know, we talked at the beginning how I thought I was finally free and doing my own thing. And I didn't realize until later on that I was following yet another script. And it can absolutely happen that you think you're experimenting. And really, if you take the time to really look inside, within and pay attention to where you got that experiment from, or or maybe what outcome you're hoping to get, that you're not truly experimenting.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  You're performing something that looks like an experiment from the outside, but really you're hoping for a very specific form of success.

• 35:03Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, you know, in research, you call that curve fitting, right? It's like you're you're really, you're quote running the experiments, but you're really kind of manipulating the data to get you to the outcome that you want at the end of the day. So you have, you developed a framework, a really simple and super useful framework to actually run these experiments.

• 35:25Jonathan Fields?

  You know, so I'd love to drop into that, kind of walk through the elements of it and and then explore what it's like to apply that in different domains of life. You shorthand it with the acronym PACT. So take me into this.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  So just like a scientific experiment has a protocol that you write before you get started, I recommend creating a pact. And I called it a pact because it's a commitment to curiosity. You commit to completing the experiment and only when you're done, you will analyze the results and see if you want to keep going or tweak the experiment. The format of the pact is also inspired by the scientific method in the sense that a scientist, when they design an experiment, they say, we're going to conduct this test and we're going to have this number of trials. And it's very important to have several trials, so you know whether there's actually an effect happening here, right? And to conduct the same test and you do it over several times and you collect that data

• 36:24Speaker 00

  and then you analyze it. So a pact follows this very simple format. You say, I will insert an action for insert a duration. So action and duration, those are the two ingredients for a pact. And I mentioned that my, my current pact, my current experiment that I'm running is around walking and my pact is I will walk for 20 minutes every day for 20 days. So that's an example. You can do that with literally anything, with your health routine, your diet, your relationships. I know someone in my community, for example, who realized that they were losing touch with their friends. And so they designed a pact where they said that every week

• 37:09Speaker 00

  they will send a voice note to one friend that they haven't talked to in a while. Just ask for some news and tell them how they were doing. That was their pact. So that's a pact, a commitment to curiosity, a commitment to complete your experiment and collect the data, and a commitment to not judge whether it worked out or not until you're done going through all of the repetitions.

• 37:30Jonathan Fields?

  So I will and then insert what the thing is for a particular duration. And then suspend judgment, like don't try and analyze it along the way while it's happening. So let's go with that first part. That thing where you're going to say, okay, so this is experiment. This is the behavior. This is the action I'm going to take, whatever it may be. How do we choose that? How do we? Because that in itself is kind of an experiment. Like, how do we actually decide what is the thing? That we want to be the source of the experiment that we want to run?

• 38:01Speaker 00

  Yes, it always starts with observation. Always starts with the observation. And I know for a lot of people, they want to get into the pact and start running the experiment. But it's very important to have a little phase where you don't do anything, you just observe. And I call this self anthropology, because that's really the way you want to approach it. You want to pretend that you're an anthropologist, but with your life as the subject of study. And just like an anthropologist looks at a new culture and they ask questions like, why are they doing things like that? Why do they care about this? Why do they communicate in this way? Why do they design their days in this way? You can do the same with your life. And a simple exercise that you can do is for 24 hours,

• 38:45Speaker 00

  you literally take field notes, just like an anthropologist. And throughout the day, you can do that on your phone. Or if you have a notebook, you can do that. On your phone is usually a little bit easier. You take little notes throughout the day and you write things like, oh, I feel like I have a lot of energy after this conversation. Or I was scared to give this presentation, but actually it was fine. Maybe I'm really good at this. Or I noticed that I'm not productive at all right after lunch. Or I snapped back at my spouse when I got back home tonight for no reason at all. And you can write down those little things. And you can ask yourself also, why have I been scheduling those meetings exactly at that time every morning? Why have I not been taking? Right, why?

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Maybe you're eating at your desk. It can be literally anything that you notice and you write it down. You would not be able to do that for a week, just for 24 hours. You're an anthropologist observing your own life. Based on that, you will see it's really incredible. I've really, I've helped already thousands of people run this experiment in the Nest Labs community. And they all say, It's absolutely incredible the number of decisions that I make subconsciously or that I consider obvious on a day to day basis. I don't even question it. That's just the way I've been doing things and it's eye opening for a lot of people. Based on that, you can say, maybe I could do this thing differently. And that's the beginning of an experiment. That's the formulation of a hypothesis.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  That's just looking at how things currently are and asking yourself how they could potentially be.

• 40:21Jonathan Fields?

  If I understand this, and basically you take 24 hours and just jot down all the different things that you're noticing about moments, circumstances, decisions you're making, interactions that you're having, and probably also note like how they're making you feel and like, did it go the way that I would like it to go? And then reflect back on that and maybe for the things where it didn't actually feel the way you want it to feel or go the way you want it to go. Maybe those become really interesting sources to run experiments around. Is that right?

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And this is the more active practice of finding experiments. But once you're used to looking for experiments everywhere in your life, you'll also have other ways to do it. One for me is anytime I say something that sounds like it's a fixed mindset, it's a very useful one, also a good signal. So my meditation experiment, for example, started after I heard myself say to a friend, I'm, I'm just not good at meditation. It's just not my thing. And now whenever I hear myself say something like that, I'll go, oh, interesting. Why am I so convinced that I'm not good at meditation? Maybe I'll run a tiny experiment.

• 41:30Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love that. I, I had a friend who, she had a rule. She said, um, anytime I hear myself complain about something three times, then A, I'm not allowed to complain about it again, and B, I need to fix it. Whether it's like something in my own behavior, or whether it's something that just bugs you, you know, like that the way somebody else does something, or a product, or a service. She's like, like, I literally like, like, that's my traitor. Like, there's my rule. Like, I need to run the experiment of like, how can I fix this now?

• 42:00Speaker 00

  This is amazing.

• 42:01Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and she literally ended up building, like, a series of companies. In no small part because of that, you know, that brought so much joy to thousands and thousands of people. So, so, so those are some great ways to think about it. Okay, so what experiments could I even think about running? You know, because a lot of people probably, I would imagine, and I'm curious whether you see this, you know, with the community at Nest Labs. I would imagine a lot of people start out thinking like, oh, there's this big thing. Like, I need just like one experiment, doing completely different job, or changing relationships, or... But there are probably a lot of just really tiny ones, and this is your whole philosophy, like, literally the name of your book, Tiny Experiments,

• 42:43Jonathan Fields?

  that are gonna feel a lot more accessible and doable to us, that would get us into the habit of experimentation. Does that make sense?

• 42:51Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely. I, um, I call this the maximalist brain, and it's our tendency to think that we really need to always go for the biggest, most impactful version of whatever project we're starting. And, and I see that when people design experiments, and this is why I tell them, don't get started yet. Go back to that place of observation and have a look, because very often you'll find very fun, interesting things that could be, you know, the, the basis for an experiment that might not be the big ambition, the big change that you had thought about in the first place. So, in terms of the kind of experiments that you can run, you can think about different categories in your life as well.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  So, that could be in your work. A lot of people do that with the way they manage their time, their productivity, their schedule, their meetings. So, those are some of the, the easiest ones sometimes to run, and especially if you're in the kind of work where you have a little bit of freedom over the way you organize your time. You can experiment with relationships. So, I've seen people experiment with saying, okay, for the next two months, every two weeks, we're going to go on a date with my spouse, and we're going to alternate, and one of us is going to organize it for the other one. And the great thing about that is that you're not committing to it for the rest of your life, right? You're just saying, let's do it for two months. And at the end of the two months, we can decide if we want to keep going or not.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Another relationship one is the one I mentioned earlier about reaching out to friends you haven't talked to for, with in a while. That's a good one, too. You can experiment with your studies, with your health. Um, you can experiment with even where you live. A lot of people will want to make a big move to another city. If you can, and especially if you're in a remote job, it might be interesting to go and experiment and say, for the next year, I will spend one weekend in a different city every month. And I'm going to go and see if I like it. If you can afford to do that, that's the kind of travel experiment that you can run. So you can really run experiments in all areas of your life. And whenever you're in doubt in terms of the scope and the duration,

• 45:00Speaker 00

  always try to think tiny. What's the the tinier version of this that I can run?

• 45:04Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love that. So let's dive into the duration side of it a little bit more also. Like as we're having this conversation, I'm in Boulder, Colorado. Um, but you know, I spent my literally my entire life in New York and my entire adult life in New York City for thirty years. And we came out here as a family in September twenty twenty, after New York was a very scary place. And we looked at it as an experiment. We're kind of like, you know what? We're going to come out here for two or three months, just to see how it feels. We and we pretty much assumed that we would love it, but you know, we're New Yorkers. We'll go back.

• 45:38Jonathan Fields?

  And you know, four and a half years later, I'm still in Boulder and we're still here. But had we, I mean, this, this goes to what you're saying, the psychology of the duration. Had we at that moment said, okay, let's move to Boulder, Colorado. We would probably look at each other and said, not happening. There's just no way. It's too big. It's too disruptive. But we ran this, you know, in our minds, we were committing to a couple of months. And that led us say yes to making the change in behavior. So take me me deeper into how we think about choosing what feels like a psychologically sustainable.

• 46:20Jonathan Fields?

  Commitment for duration, but also something that's maybe long enough for us to experience to gather the data that we need to actually like, like run a successful experiment.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Yes, it's a, it's really based on the nature of the, the action itself that you want to test in your experiment. So if you're doing something daily, for example, so let's say you want to experiment with going to bed at the same time every evening for two weeks, two weeks might be enough, a couple of weeks might be enough to start seeing changes and see if that has any impact on your mood, your energy levels, right? If you want to run more of a creative experiment, similar to what I did with Nest Labs, and you say, you want to experiment with a weekly newsletter. Well, obviously you can't do that for just one week and maybe two weeks is not enough. So you can commit to maybe six months, but maybe you're not quite sure actually.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  And in a lot of cases, what's great is that although we're not all climbing the same ladders, like in a linear model, it is likely that you're not the very first person ever to come up with that particular experiment. And so if she knows someone who has experimented with something similar, you can actually ask them and say, hey, how long did it take you to feel like you knew whether you wanted to keep going with this thing? And this person will tell you, you say, okay, cool. So you're telling me three months, I'm just going to commit to that three month. And the great thing about experiments is that if that duration was wrong, if after three months, you're still not quite sure, well, that's an experiment. So you can say, actually, let's collect more data.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  I'm going to redesign my pact and I'm going to say that it's going to be for, you know, I'm going to run it for another two months. Just see if I, I feel clearer after two months. So you can also experiment with the duration of your experiment.

• 48:10Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 48:15Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Vinted. So here's a question that I have been sitting with. How many things in your closet were bought for, let's say, a version of you who never quite showed up? Maybe it's the tailored jacket for the dinners you were gonna go to, or someday pieces with the tag still on them. They're lovely clothes. They're just not yours anymore. That's where Vinted comes in. So Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where everyday people sell the clothes that they're not wearing to people who actually will. Listening on Vinted is quick and simple. You take a few photos, write a short description, and you're done. Once something sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. There are also no seller fees on Vinted. So whatever your piece sells for, you keep.

• 48:57Jonathan Fields?

  What I love about that is how it turns letting go into something that actually feels good. You get more room, a little extra money, and maybe a closet that reflects who you are right now. So see what's hiding in your closet. You might be surprised how much you can earn with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free and start listening with no seller fees, so you keep everything you earn. Good Life Project is sponsored by Bombas. So my wife Stephanie has been one of the great gift givers in our family. And her secret is that the best gifts often aren't the flashy ones. They're the ones that people reach for on any given day without even thinking about it. That's why so much of my list ends up at Bombas. Fuzzy sundae slippers for the friend who lives in sweatpants from November to March. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for anyone who runs cold.

• 49:43Jonathan Fields?

  That would be me, by the way. Ski and running socks for the ones who refuse to slow down. Also me, by the way. And water-resistant suede booties. So cushy. My executive producer, Lindsay, actually more or less lives in hers. And here's what else makes it a good life kind of gift. For every item you purchase, Bombas donates an essential clothing item to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased, one donated. Over 200 million donations and counting, so every gift you give is really two. So head over to bombas.com/goodlife and use the code GOODLIFE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash goodlife. Code GOODLIFE at checkout. This message is brought to you by Apple Card.

• 50:25Jonathan Fields?

  Ah, fall, that cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2% daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch.

• 51:10Jonathan Fields?

  Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 51:14Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, as you're describing that, the thing that came to mind for me is we're having this conversation under this umbrella of Good Life Project, which was launched 13 years ago. People thought I was like a little off my rocker when I actually said, okay, so we're going to start producing video and audio and all this stuff at a time where nobody was doing this in a long form. But the name of what became a business and a community and all sorts of other stuff has baked into it the notion that from the beginning, this has been an experiment. It's called Good Life Project, rather than like whatever, not having this, you had Good Life, success stories, because from the very beginning, I had no idea what was going to happen with this.

• 51:57Jonathan Fields?

  I'm like, if I literally just call it a project, then I kind of let myself off the hook if I decide six months in, a year in, two years in, okay, the project has run its course. And who knows like if and when it will. But it really changes the psychology in a powerful way of you being willing to take the first step. And I found that really powerful. Shortly before I started this, I started something that nobody knows about called The Being Project. And that was basically me sharing things on back in the day when blogging was a big thing.

• 52:35Jonathan Fields?

  And it started to grow really quickly, but I had delusional aspirations around how I would measure growth because I was comparing myself to other friends who were doing something similar in the space. So I guess my question around this is, How do we set realistic expectations when we're running our experiments? How do we measure what the learning looks like, what success looks like for us in a way that is true to us without being caught up in how others have run similar experiments and gotten better or worse results?

• 53:11Speaker 00

  Yes, it's really about letting go of the idea of getting to a specific place, a specific destination, because this is what causes a lot of misery. It's the idea that, and very often, again, copy pasted from others, we see that this person has a hundred thousand subscribers or YouTube followers, or that this person is making this amount of money, or they have this big house on the other side of town, right? And we compare ourselves to each other. Those are specific outcomes. They're a destination. And they are what caused this also arrival fantasy where we feel like, if only I get there and I just need to work harder.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  When you experiment, the only thing you're trying to achieve is to learn more about yourself, about the world, and about your work and your relationships. You're just trying to learn more. You're just trying to complete the cycles of experimentation where you just collect data. So first, there's no specific outcome. So what are you measuring then? What you're measuring is based on your hypothesis. You always start from this hypothesis. And if, when you designed your experiment, it started from this, huh, maybe I would like this, maybe I would enjoy that, maybe I would be good at this, maybe this would make me

• 54:38Speaker 00

  feel more productive, more creative, maybe my mood would be better, maybe that would improve communication with my friend, or my spouse, or my manager. And you're only testing whether that hypothesis was correct or not. And so if at the end of the experiment... It turns out the hypothesis was not correct. So let's say, for example, in my case, I can give you an example of an experiment that could be considered as failed based on the normal definition, traditional definition of success. I write a newsletter, I love writing, and a lot of people around me started YouTube channels, and they were very successful with that. And so I formulated that hypothesis.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Maybe I would like that too, and maybe this would be a way to engage with more people, connect with other people. And so I started publishing weekly YouTube videos, and I said, I'm going to do that for the next six months, which was roughly until the end of the year. So for the next six months, I'm going to publish one video every week. What did I measure? Two things, and I think it's very important to always do that. Internal and external metrics of success. So external metrics of success at the end of the experiment were pretty good, actually. I got to about 10,000 subscribers, which was fairly good. People seemed to love the videos. Internal metrics, though, I was dreading it every time I had to sit in front of the camera, every time I had to do it.

• 56:02Speaker 00

  And because of that, I was procrastinating on every single other project on the days that I was supposed to film. And so this was actually having a pretty negative impact across the board for all of my other projects and even my mental well-being. And so at the end of the six months, I said, well, no, actually, I'm done. I don't think YouTube is for me. I like writing much better. And so some people might say, oh, she failed. She tried to build a YouTube channel, and she quit after six months. But to me, that's success because I actually didn't know if I would like it or not, if that was something for me or not, before I ran the experiment. And after the six months, I had data, actual, real-world data, based on my experience that was telling me that actually that was not the thing that I wanted to pursue.

• 56:46Jonathan Fields?

  So how do we frame that hypothesis then, so that we don't trap ourselves? You know, because that experiment, if we use it as an example, you know, you had basically these two measures of whether it was, you know, like, quote, successful or not. One was external. And like you said, objectively, check. You know, you grew really quickly, people were loving what you're doing, then there was the internal measure, which is like, how's it making me feel?

• 57:18Jonathan Fields?

  How do we frame that in a way where it's a hypothesis and not a want?

• 57:23Speaker 00

  It's really this magic key word, maybe, maybe. You just start the statement with maybe. Maybe if I do this action for this duration, this will happen. And it might be the case that if I perform this action for this duration, something else will happen. That's not what I expected. And that means my hypothesis was wrong, but that's okay. A scientist doesn't feel like a failure when they get an unexpected result. And actually, they might even celebrate it because they did not see that coming. That is something new that was outside of the realm of what they expected. And this is something that they can learn from and use to design their next experiment.

• 58:05Jonathan Fields?

  So what happens then when you run an experiment? I'll go back to your YouTube experiment, right? You run it, you have kind of like two different metrics.

• 58:15Jonathan Fields?

  And they end up conflicting with each other. One is like, yay, like, like, um, the other is like, mm, no. And especially when one of those metrics is something that will get you social acceptance, acclaim, maybe status, maybe money. And these are all things that matter to most people, even if we say we don't want that to matter, they do.

• 58:40Jonathan Fields?

  It's a really hard dance, right? Just kind of say, okay, so all these things, um, like were proven out by this experiment.

• 58:50Jonathan Fields?

  But there's one metric, like, which is really, you know, like, critical to me that is telling me that this is not the thing that I want to move forward with. Like, so you've got to do this dance, is like, how do I, how do I resolve this?

• 59:04Speaker 00

  Yes, I, I think you should always optimize for making sure that as a basis, at least the internal metrics are aligned and they work. There's no point in being successful externally if you're miserable. We have so many examples. We know a lot of us have probably been through that where, again, successful externally but feeling very empty or burned out or overwhelmed, right? So as a basis, having that, those internal metrics sorted out, making sure it feels aligned, it brings you a certain sense of joy or excitement or curiosity or whatever it is that you want to optimize for at an internal level.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  And then for the external metrics, this is where it's interesting, is that once you have that sorted, you can ask yourself whether the external metrics are important or not. In some projects, the internal metrics are enough. You're not optimizing for any kind of external success. You're just trying to maybe explore a new hobby or do something like that, and it doesn't matter how successful it is. But it might be that in other areas, those external metrics also matter. I'm going to give you another example, which is not necessarily an experiment, but I think is a good illustration of this, where I'm, you know, I'm publishing my first book, and there are external metrics of success. They are very clear in terms of book sales and all of that.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  And the reason why I'm okay with optimizing for that and working pretty hard, actually, to to make sure that many people get to read my book is because it actually does feel good. It actually feels good and it gives me a lot of joy. So I have that basis sorted. So if you think about the different scenarios you can find yourself in, right? I would say that if the external is not working and the internal is not working, that's pretty clear. You should stop this experiment and this is not working, right? If the internal is working but the external is not working, then it's about asking yourself, is that okay? Is that the kind of project where actually the external doesn't matter? And if the external is working, that the internal is not working. I would also argue that something needs to change.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  And it doesn't necessarily mean you need to completely quit the project, but you should not keep on going exactly in this way, because you're just going to burn out. That's the outcome usually that we get when we do that.

• 1:01:27Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and I think that's the state of so many people's lives, you know, and in all the different domains. There's another really interesting lens that you bring to the notion of just literally living your life as a series of tiny experiments. And this is the impact on decision making. Like, we hear that there's decision fatigue with everything. You know, there's so many things coming at us all day, every day, and we're overwhelmed and we're burned out. We've got to make a million decisions. And by the time you get home and, you know, like, you're like, what am I having for dinner? Literally, like, you can't function anymore or even decide.

• 1:02:06Jonathan Fields?

  So many of us, we try to decide about like, what's the next step? Like, what do I do with this relationship, with this job, with my health? We try to reason it out. We try to think ourselves to the answer. And I think there is value in trying to like, gather data and sort of like, okay, so let me like, like, see what the research says and talk to authorities. And but at a certain point, you know, you get to a place where you can't, you can't get to the answer by just thinking your way to it. You have to do your way to it. So I love that you centered this as a part of the conversation.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  There are actually a lot of decisions that you make in your life where you're wasting a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what the right path is. And it would actually not be a big deal if you chose the wrong one. You can either backtrack and try the other one or actually continue forward and realize that it was okay. Both choices were completely fine.

• 1:03:04Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I think that is the typical dinner choice also. Most of the time, you're really going to be fine no matter what you choose. But like, you know, so the half hour of angst that you cause yourself to try to figure it out, is that half an hour you could have been living your life and doing something else or talking to a loved one? So as we have this conversation, I'm a little over a year into what I've been calling my two by 20. So I decided that I have a big birthday coming up at the end of this year. And like two years before that, I said, you know, I started asking the question, I said, do I feel the way I want to feel with the work that I'm doing, the way I'm living

• 1:03:44Jonathan Fields?

  my life? And when I hit this milestone birthday, do I want to keep feeling this way? I've always had the same philosophy as you. Like, I do pretty much everything in my life, especially in my work life, as a series of experiments. I said, what if I spent two years running experiments to figure out, like, what could I learn to or build over a two-year window that would potentially allow me to step into the next 20-year season of my life, experiencing more joy, more significance, and more simplicity? And what's interesting is that, like, most people hear the two years, they're like, oh, that's really cool. You're running a series of experiments over two years. And some of them have lasted minutes, some of them have

• 1:04:29Jonathan Fields?

  lasted months, some of them have cost substantial amount of money, some of them are completely free. But people get hung up on the 20-year thing. And I'm curious what your take is on this. Because as we were discussing earlier in our conversation, how could you possibly know what something is going to make you feel like, you know, like 20 years from now? But I found it to be a really interesting decision-making criteria when thinking about what experiments to choose to fit into this two-year window, because it allows me to eliminate a whole bunch of things that I just know, that like, there's no possible way this is going to stay in my interest, my curiosity, my passion, my purpose, for

• 1:05:12Jonathan Fields?

  anywhere longer than, you know, like, a hot minute, let alone a couple of years. So do I know that anything that I end up with, you know, like, is actually going to keep me busy, or like, really engaged for 20 years? I have no idea. But using that as decision-making metric lets me eliminate a whole bunch of stuff and run experiments that I found really much more valuable.

• 1:05:30Jonathan Fields?

  Valuable and fruitful. So I'm curious what your take is on that.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think thinking about your experiments in terms of whether they're going to sustain your curiosity for a long time is actually really good heuristic. And that's not a problem at all, because you're not trying to, you're not saying this is the outcome I'm going to have in 20 years. This is where I'm going to be in 20 years. You're just saying, the person I am today feels like this is the kind of thing I'm curious enough about, that it might be able to sustain my curiosity for a long time. And especially when you're very curious about a lot of different things, that's actually a really good way to make that choice.

• 1:06:07Jonathan Fields?

  I love that. Okay, I feel better now.

• 1:06:10Jonathan Fields?

  But it has, because it's been incredibly useful for me to do this process. I run like so many different experiments now. Like I said, a lot of them are really tiny and some of them are like months long and pretty substantial. But I'm thankful that I said no to weigh more of them because I had that sort of like one decision-making criteria that let me really do things that are much, that I feel are, have ended up being much juicier. Well, I mean, I, I love the take. I love what you bring, sort of like the, the way that you bring together neurophysiology and this really beautiful, it's an elegant philosophy of experimentation. It's simple, it's meaningful, it's impactful. Anybody can do this. And, you know, when you really zoom the lens out and think about like,

• 1:06:56Jonathan Fields?

  how can I live my life in a way that is maybe more likely to allow me to feel the way I want to feel and, and keep feeling that way over time? This feels like a beautiful approach.

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  Thank you so much. And I absolutely love your questions as well. It's always nice to hear about people's experiments. And this is what I love about this approach is that I myself cannot really predict how people are going to use it, how people are going to apply it and make it their own.

• 1:07:24Jonathan Fields?

  So I always round out these conversations with one question in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  To live a good life is to have the freedom to experiment.

• 1:07:41Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm, thank you.

• 1:07:44Jonathan Fields?

  Hey, before you leave, if you loved this episode, safe bet, you'll also love the episode where I shared my two by 20 project, all about my own tiny experiments. You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And special thanks to Shelley Del Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube, too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did, because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you

• 1:08:28Jonathan Fields?

  want to share it with more, that's awesome, too. But just one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

• 1:08:49Jonathan Fields?

  Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet Wealth Partners. Are you on track for financial independence? If you're on track, the same way you're getting back to the gym, as in, maybe next year, then this one's for you. NerdWallet Wealth Partners offers free tools for high earners who'd like an actual answer instead of a vibe, like their calculator that estimates if you're on track for financial independence. Plug in a few numbers to see how your savings path may support your goals. Think of it as a fitness test that you can take sitting down. Or their wealth building checklist for high earners. It's a step by step guide for prioritizing your dollars once you're making six figures. And if you still have questions, you can connect with one of their financial advisors who specializes in working with high earners in their 30s and 40s. Good news, this is one workout

• 1:09:32Jonathan Fields?

  you can actually finish. Find out more at nerdwalletwealthpartners.com/good. NerdWallet Wealth Partners LLC is an SEC registered investment advisor. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor does it constitute an endorsement by any securities regulator. Please see nerdwalletwealthpartners.com for disclosures and important information.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets. And our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 1:10:27Speaker 03

  Cash now, more later. From Open Door, gives you cash upfront for your home, plus all the profit later. That's no chaos now, no cash left behind later. Skip the showings now, pocket extra profit later. This is so simple now. This is so awesome later. Or sell fast now and pop the champagne later. Cash now, more later. Now available nationwide.

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  Start your offer at opendoor.com/acast. Profits calculated after fees and costs. Eligibility and offer price may vary.

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  There's one thing that will forever change the way you sleep, and it's the softest 100% organic cotton sheets from Bowlin Branch. You'll fall asleep faster, wrapped in the most luxurious comfort. You'll never sleep hot again, with sheets that feel breathable to sleep in. You'll experience the purest softness on night one, and feel your sheets get even softer with every wash. Discover the difference with 15% off your first set of sheets at bowlinbranch.com with code BUTTERY. Exclusions apply. See site for details.