62. ANNE-LAURE LE CUNFF: Experiment Before You Commit

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

Anne-Laure: [00:00:00] Whatever happens at the end of the experiment, all you have is new data, and just like a scientist, you can look at it without any kind of self-judgment and use that information to design your next experiment.

Michael: Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael: And you’re listening to The Double Win Show.

Megan: Today, I’m really excited. We have a fantastic show for you. We’ve just recorded it, and we are just pumped up after this recording because- Yes … you know, Full Focus, we teach goal-setting, right? And the Full Focus Planner is functionally a goal achievement system, and our guest today wrote a book called Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.

So we have plenty to talk about. I mean, it sounds kinda like this is a conflict waiting to happen, but actually, there’s some fantastic nuance that we get into, um, with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, who is a neuroscientist at King’s College in London, and she’s also the founder of Nest Labs. So today, we’re asking her [00:01:00] where d- does this idea of tiny experiments actually work better, and we have some great ahas, I think, about our own life, where we’ve already come to this conclusion but maybe haven’t said it as formally, some really practical things that we talk about, and ultimately how this idea of tiny experiments can help you to win at work and flourish in life.

So let’s get to our conversation with Anne-Laure.

Michael: So when you were at Google, you were asked to delay blood clot surgery for work, or actually you asked, right?

Anne-Laure: I did ask, yeah. Nobody asked me to do that to myself. It’s even worse in that case. I know, right?

Michael: And what was it that finally got you to change your mind about that and, and you realized that something had to change?

Anne-Laure: Yeah, this happened when I was in the doctor’s office, and they told me that I had a blood clot in my arm, and they said, “We need to perform surgery straight away.” And instead of saying, “Yes, let’s do it,” I said, “Once again, I need to check my [00:02:00] calendar.” And this was almost like a, an out-of-body experience when you see yourself do something so absurd, so ridiculous.

You know, when you watch a, a movie, and you wanna shake the character and say, “What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” So you know when you notice that your to-do list has become more important than your health, this is when you realize that something needs to change.

Michael: Did you realize that in the moment, or did you realize that, like, sometime later?

Anne-Laure: It took a little bit longer to process. In that moment, I noticed that something was clearly wrong, but we’re very good, I think, at telling ourselves stories. And I had a great job at Google, great team, working on interesting projects, and so I think my mind was trying to hold really hard onto why this job mattered more.

And, uh, it took me a few more months before I realized- Oh, wow … that maybe something needed to change.

Michael: You know, I feel like a version of that [00:03:00] conversation goes on in the head of a lot of high-achieving people, entrepreneurs, business leaders, nonprofit leaders, but people that feel their work is really important, and they really enjoy it.

It’s like your emotions become an impediment. Your health becomes an impediment. Your family becomes an impediment, and they kinda sacrifice everything on, uh, the altar of their ambition. And with really negative consequences. You know, thankfully, you caught it

Anne-Laure: Yeah, it’s really interesting because we know and, uh, there have been studies asking people what was really important when they look back over their life, right?

And almost none of them say that it was the promotion that they got at work or the, the, the money that they made. They all talk about their loved ones, their relationships- Mm-hmm … and all of the moments of aliveness that they got to experience. Somehow we know this, we have the data, but it’s really, really hard to actually apply that insight in our life.

[00:04:00] And in my case, I actually ended up ignoring the signals for a little longer. It took me leaving my job at Google, then trying to start a startup, repeating all of the same patterns all over again, and it’s only when my startup failed that finally, finally I allowed myself to admit that I had all of my priorities out of whack, and that maybe I needed to redesign my life.

Megan: So once you had that kind of second wake-up call with your startup failing, you ended up going into neuroscience, I think, at that point. And, and why? What, what did you decide to do after those two back-to-back wake-up calls?

Anne-Laure: The question that guided this decision was, what is something that I’m so curious about that I would be happy to explore even if nobody was watching?

If- Hmm … I removed external validation and kind of [00:05:00] traditional ambitions out of the equation, and I only focused on waking up in the morning and feeling excited to do so, what would I want to do? And in my case, I had always been curious about the brain, why we think the way we think and feel the way we feel.

And so I decided to go back to school to study neuroscience, not to get a new job, not to progress my career. Really just to make space for my curiosity and see what would emerge.

Megan: Wow. And what was that like compared to kind of the more outcome-oriented, goal-driven pursuit that you had had when you were at Google and then with your startup?

Anne-Laure: I think the main change for me, which was a big one, was that- Admitting that I didn’t know was actually welcomed and something that we were encouraged to do. In the tech world, I think that a lot of lip service is being paid to the idea of saying that you don’t know. But in [00:06:00] general, a lot of companies don’t really provide that psychological safety.

And so people say, “Yes, of course, I’m very happy to admit that I don’t know,” but nobody will actually raise their hand in a meeting and say that they don’t understand something or that they have no idea where the team is going, or whether the plan makes sense. When you are part of a scientific team in academia, and academia is by no means perfect, but this is something that I really like about the way we work, raising your hand and saying, “But what does that mean?

I don’t understand,” or, “How are we going to go about this?” is actually the way we make progress together.

Michael: It can be liberating, for sure. I think pretending that you know everything is a real burden.

Anne-Laure: Yeah. And especially for, I think, leaders, right? Because you’re supposed to project that confidence. You’re supposed to look like you know where we’re going and guide your team to get there.

And so I think there’s even more pressure for leaders to look like they know.

Michael: Yeah, agreed. So let’s talk about goals versus [00:07:00] experiments. I love this conversation because we’ve been deeply into goal-setting and habit formation, and all of that. We’ve written books on that. But you describe three scripts.

Number one, following your past. Number two, pleasing others. And number three, chasing a grand passion And how could we tell when one of those scripts is making our decisions for us?

Anne-Laure: So what you’re talking about here is what psychologists call cognitive scripts. And, uh, a good way to think about it is almost like, uh, an automated piece of software that we’re installing without asking ourselves whether it makes sense to run it.

The nice thing about running those scripts is that it feels more comfortable. You feel like you’re doing things in a way that makes sense, that you’re applying a blueprint or a recipe. But the problem, as you said, is that it means that the script is making the decision for you. The best way to notice whether this is happening is to make space for [00:08:00] observation, to actually pause for a second and look at the way you’re making decisions in your daily life.

The exercise I recommend doing is something I call self-anthropology, and the reason why I called it that is that I invite people to, for just twenty-four hours, pretend that they are an anthropologist, but with their own work and life as the topic of study. And you generally just observe. Like, what gives you energy?

What drains your energy? What are the conversations that you wanna keep on going? What are the meetings where you just wanna go and hide in the corner and not be here at all? Just taking little notes, without judgment, without assumptions, just observing. And I guarantee you that if you do that for just twenty-four hours, you will notice things that you’re doing on autopilot, decisions that you’re making without really thinking about them.

Michael: This seems like, uh, an exercise in self-awareness, which I think all of us need more of. But for [00:09:00] sure, if we’re gonna make progress and do the things that we love, it seems like self-awareness is really crucial. Otherwise, we just unwittingly follow these scripts and wonder why it doesn’t lead us to where we wanna go.

Would you agree?

Anne-Laure: Absolutely. I, well, I agree, but this is another, I think, great example of the gap there is between knowledge- Mm-hmm … and action. Most people know that. People know self-awareness is really helpful, whether you’re a leader or you’re a team member, even when it comes to your personal relationships.

But life is so busy, and we’re always thinking about the next goal, the next project, the next milestone, that it almost feels like we’re wasting our time if we’re pausing for a moment just to observe our own behaviors.

Megan: Yeah, I think that’s really true, and it’s almost like we don’t even think about observing ourselves.

We’re just trying to keep up, like you said, with what’s the next thing I need to do, or where do I need to be, or what do I need to prepare for, that we don’t really [00:10:00] have that built-in reflective time. And I think that is kind of a muscle that we have to cultivate and build even a tolerance for because when you’re going at 100 miles an hour, it can be really uncomfortable to slow down long enough to watch yourself- Mm

and, and make observations about what you see in your own life. And maybe even scarier, and I wonder if this has come up in your work, you know, once you realize, oh, that activity or that kind of meeting, for example is really draining, and I wanna go hide in the corner, you know? Or I’d start fantasizing about, you know, being sick and having the flu.

That sounds better than going to that thing, you know, that trip or whatever. That requires a response. You can’t un-know that once you know it. So what have you found in your work about how people handle, you know, on the other side of that anthropological exercise, what they become aware of?

Anne-Laure: So the way people naturally respond to what they discover is [00:11:00] quite often to do what I did after what happened with my blood clot at Google, which is to just ignore it for a while until it’s impossible- Yeah

to, to ignore. But what I recommend doing instead, and which is something I discovered when I retrained as a neuroscientist, is to turn those areas of doubt into a hypothesis that you can experiment around. Hmm. And so instead of looking at this as this big, scary discovery about yourself and your work and your life that can be paralyzing, to look at it with curiosity, and to ask yourself, “Okay, so this is how things are.

How could they maybe be different?” Hmm. And instead of turning that into a big goal or a massive change in your life, you can turn it into a tiny experiment where you say, “Okay, let me try a different approach for a set duration. And I’m not committing- Yes … to this for the rest of my life. I’m not, you know, saying that this is the right way.

I’m just committing to being curious about it for a little while.”

Megan: I love that, ’cause it kinda [00:12:00] takes the pressure off. You know, it doesn’t feel like, you know, today I’m putting a stake in the ground, and I’m changing my entire life, and I’ll never eat sugar again, or, you know, whatever, whatever the change is that we think we need to make.

It’s just like, I wonder how it would feel if I didn’t eat sugar? And I’m not recommending that, you know, people run this particular experiment. I’m not running this experiment myself. But, uh, but, you know, as an example. It’s like that all, all of a sudden feels far less daunting. You know, we can make it positive.

We could say something like, you know, “I’m gonna try getting eight hours of sleep a night for the next week and just see how does that affect my work? Do I feel better? How am I able to be present and have the emotional stamina for being present with my children differently in that week?”, for example. And I love that, ’cause it just kinda takes the pressure off of like, well, we’ll see what the outcome of the experiment is, and then decide if it’s worth continuing or not based on the evidence.

Anne-Laure: Yeah, and you’re, you’re making a really good point. I think the, the example with sleep is actually really good because it’s a really good way to illustrate why you want to experiment and not just copy-paste what other people are [00:13:00] doing. So when people hear you need eight hours of sleep, for example, this is an average across many- Mm-hmm

many, many people. And, but if you look at the results, they follow a bell curve, which means that a lot of people will be around that number, but some people need more, some people need less. If you were to just apply that number blindly, you might not get good results, right? Mm. So it makes sense for you to actually try it, and this is true for almost everything in life, whether that’s a productivity framework, whether that’s the number of hours of sleep, whether that’s your diet, even the way you communicate with other people.

There are kind of general principles that can form, help you form the basis for a hypothesis, but then to figure out what is the exact format, the exact model that works for you, you need to experiment.

Michael: So, like, I’ve actually used this language of the experiment for probably a decade, first on myself, because I noticed that if I’m committing to an experiment, it’s a much [00:14:00] smaller decision than committing to a lifelong lifestyle change And, you know, I might just find that the more I do that thing and experiment…

I mean, ob- obviously one of two things happens: it doesn’t work or it does work. And if it does work, then it’s an easier decision because I’ve taken some uncertainty out of it. But then I started using that with my family and then with my clients. And so, like, maybe if I were to say to them, just to use Megan’s example of, let’s use the sugar one.

I don’t coach on health, but let’s just pretend I did. And if I say to somebody, “I want you to swear off sugar for the rest of your life,” it’s like, are you kidding me? You know, that’s like, that’s, uh, like a giant, giant commitment. But if I said, “Well, hey,” provided that they said that they suspect that that has a negative effect on their health, say, “Well, why don’t you just do a 30-day experiment and see how you feel as a r- result of that?”

All of a sudden I’ve lowered the risk and made it so much easier for them to say yes to the experiment ’cause they’re not committing to it for the rest of their lives. [00:15:00]

Anne-Laure: Absolutely. And this is also completely changing your relationship to failure in the process because-

Michael: Mm-hmm …

Anne-Laure: when you think about traditional goals, there’s a very binary definition of success and failure, right?

You have an outcome in mind, and either you get there, and that is success, or you don’t get there, and that’s failure. When you run an experiment, so as you said with sugar, 30 days, right? So number one, you might find out whether this is actually helping you or not. Great, right? If it works, you’ve learned something and you can now maybe try and implement it longer term.

If it didn’t, then maybe go and experiment with something else that might have a positive impact on your health. Also, let’s say that at the end of the 30 days you did not manage to stick to it. You really struggled to not eat sugar. This is also really helpful data. Oh, okay, maybe there is a deeper challenge here, a deeper problem that you might want to look at.

Maybe instead of experimenting with completely cutting out sugar, you wanna try it again, but with something that is even more [00:16:00] manageable for you, just reducing it. Maybe you wanna try different recipes, a different diet, et cetera. So whatever happens at the end of the experiment, all you have is new data, and just like a scientist, you can look at it without any kind of self-judgment and use that information to design your next experiment.

Michael: So helpful. I think it was John Maxwell who said, “Either you succeed or you learn.”

Anne-Laure: Oh, this is great. Yes.

Michael: I think it’s so much better to frame failure as feedback and learning

Anne-Laure: Absolutely. And for me, it took, um, going back to university to study neuroscience to learn this, but I don’t think that’s necessary, and I think a lot of people would benefit just from having this little mindset shift when it comes to failure.

Mm-hmm. Seeing any outcome as interesting data that you can use to make better decisions.

Megan: So is this why when you talk about growth, you talk it, talk about it more like a loop than a ladder?

Anne-Laure: Absolutely. What you wanna do is that [00:17:00] at the end of each experiment, you wanna close the loop, which means taking everything you learned from that experiment and then using it to decide your next steps.

As long as you close that loop, you’re learning, you’re growing, you’re evolving, without the need for a five-year plan or a clear vision or a blueprint.

Megan: I like that. Again, just kinda takes the pressure off. You know, one of the things that I have started doing in my weekly executive team meetings is that when something…

The, and the purpose of this particular meeting is to evaluate our, our performance over the last week and look ahead and kind of troubleshoot and say, “Okay, how do we optimize what’s working, or how do we maybe get back on track with something that’s not working?” In general, the way that those meetings go, you, if you look at your KPIs or you look at your financial results and maybe they’re off, or maybe they’re on, uh, on track, someone in the room will say, “Well, I think it’s because of XYZ,” which is really Not a factually based assessment, [00:18:00] necessarily anyway.

And so what I’ve started to do in those meetings is to say, “Okay, let’s take a second, and let’s come up with a hypothesis. You know, this happened… We think this happened because of X, Y, and Z, and therefore, we’re going to do this to see if we can, we can get that number to move, and we’re gonna set a, a, a test from this time to this time, and then we’re gonna come back next week, and we’re gonna report on the results.”

And as I’ve done that, what I’ve found is that the speed of iteration has been so much faster. You know, we’re able to not perpetuate things that aren’t working because of the stories that we tell ourselves. And while that’s a business example, I think that this applies so much in our personal life, too.

You know, we can say, “Well, I’m not sleeping well because my kids get up too early,” or, “My husband snores,” or, you know, whatever it is. But if we… But that, that may or may not have anything to do with it. You know, I’m in the season of life where it could also be my hormones, you know? And that would be, like, a good, a good thing to test.

We could test that. You know, [00:19:00] so I think, like, having that hypothesis with a time-bound element to it where you can assess the data that has come in and then make a decision about how to proceed, it enables you to take so much more targeted action way more quickly than you would if you just went from one story to the next story to the next story without any real rigorous evaluation process in the mix, in my experience.

Does that, does that feel like it tracks with what you’re learning in the research?

Anne-Laure: No, this is, this is amazing, and this is really aligned because you’re basically achieving two things by encouraging your team to experiment in this way. The first one is to share what they think even if they’re not 100% sure yet.

Mm-hmm. They can just say, “That’s my hypothesis.” Yeah. “Doesn’t mean this is correct, but this is my hypothesis.” And second, you’re also giving them a very practical, tangible way to turn that intuition into actual action and experimentation. So you’re avoiding the thing which I’ve unfortunately seen way too often where everybody is [00:20:00] sharing PowerPoint presentations and saying, you know, “We think this is what’s happening here.”

Megan: Yeah.

Anne-Laure: Where you’re actually saying, “Okay, great, that’s your hypothesis. It is a hypothesis. You actually don’t know if this is correct or not.” Mm-hmm. “Now, let’s actually collect data and see whether this is, this is correct or not.” And as you said, you can apply the same thing in your personal life. I feel like when it comes to health and when it comes to a lot of those big decisions in our lives, there can be an, an, a tendency to overthink it, where we want to feel like we have all of the data, all of the information, before we make a decision.

We do more research. We look it up. These days, you might end up spending two hours talking to an AI, trying to figure out if you have all of the information that you need before making a decision. What if instead you said, “Okay, that’s my hypothesis. There’s no way I can know for sure until I collect my own data”?

Megan: Love that.[00:21:00]

Michael: Okay, I wanna get into habits and then goals, which is very much kind of in our wheelhouse, but I suspect, I mean, I’ve, I’ve learned a lot since I wrote my book on goal setting and my book on habits. But you make some dis- uh, a distinction that’s really interesting to me. The distinction between a pact, a habit, and a resolution.

Could you unpack that?

Anne-Laure: So what I call a pact in my book is a mini protocol for experimentation. It’s saying, “I will try this action for this set duration,” and it’s based on the way scientists design experiments where they say, “We’re going to test this for this trial period.” The difference between a pact and a habit is the duration.

With a habit, you say, “I will commit to this for the rest of my life,” and that could be drinking X amount of water every day, going to bed at a set time every night, and you just say, “This is the habit I’m, I’m going to [00:22:00] build.” I’m not saying that habits are not good. What I’m saying is that a lot of people would benefit from running a pact or two before they commit to a habit, just to figure out what is the actual format that works for you.

When you’re happy with that format, then and then only you can try and design all of the scaffolding around it so it can turn into a habit. And with a New Year resolution, I think those are actually bad. Like, there’s nothing to save them. I don’t think they’re really good. Mm-hmm. And, the… With a New Year resolution, um, the…

there’s the idea of building a new habit which often tends to be a huge lifestyle change also. I don’t see a lot of people changing a small thing around that time of the year. They take a really, really big thing without any kind of prior testing. Mm-hmm. And quite often another problem with these is that they’re copy-pasted from other people.

Mm-hmm. There’s no reflection in terms of, is that going to be actually good for me? It is [00:23:00] picked out of almost, like, a list of 10 things that you’re supposed to stop doing or start doing on the 1st of January.

Michael: I love this distinction between a pact and a habit. And again, I just think it’s a way to ease into something you, you might be tempted to make a habit, but you’re not ready yet ’cause you haven’t run the experiment.

I love that. Okay, I wanna just ask you a question about goals. So at Full Focus, we teach goal achievement, and we’ve taught it every year for the last decade, both in live events and virtual events. But You know, I’ve, I’ve learned a lot since then. But I, I wanna ask you, where do goals earn their keep, and where do they get in the way?

Anne-Laure: I think goals can be good at a higher level, and I almost think of them more as in a North Star that you might wanna have. But very often, they’re not that practical when it comes to actual execution. Mm. So one way you [00:24:00] can use them is really this kind of, like, big vision that you might have. I wanna become a writer.

I wanna become a thought leader. I wanna become healthier, et cetera. I don’t think it’s bad necessarily to have that in the back of your mind as something that is really important to you. But then this is not enough to actually get there and do it. So as a general North Star, that can be helpful. Another way goals can be helpful is when you know exactly what you wanna do and how to get there, and there can be areas of your life where that’s the case.

I wanna run a marathon. Well, sure, that’s more of a goal. And you know what? Sign up for the marathon and then train and go and do it. Within that, you might want to run tiny experiments to figure out what is the best training program for you, what is the best way to approach it, so it… They’re not incompatible.

But running a marathon is something that is actually a very binary thing. Either you do it or you don’t do it. So it [00:25:00] is a goal. So goals can still be helpful in some areas of your life, but a lot of my work is about telling people, “Stop setting a goal by default. Quite often this is not the right first step.”

Megan: You know, and Laura, as I’m listening to you talk, one of the things that I’m imagining going through people’s heads, and even feels like an impulse of mine, is Oh gosh, but that’s gonna take such a long time. You know, like I, I think the allure of certainly the New Year’s resolution is, the allure of it is the illusion that in one year I could completely change my life.

Like, it could be absolutely a completely different story. You know, every part of my life could be 100% better and, you know, in reality, I think we’re so impatient for change sometimes. You know, I used to think, I, years ago, I lost a lot of weight. During the time when I was losing the weight, I wasn’t really working out a whole lot.

It was kind of like I was just focused on more of like the food [00:26:00] part of it. And then later, about two years ago, I hired a trainer and I started working out and really focusing on lifting weights. Now I’m, I’m still doing that, but now I’m, it’s kind of like, you know, on au- autopilot at this point. And now I’m really focused on integrating walking, and I’m really focused on like optimizing my nutrition for this season of my life.

And what I, I was talking to a friend the other day as I was gardening, and I was like, “You know, I think there was a time in my life when I was so like impatient to do the whole thing at once.” Like, I just wanted to… You know, I’d struggled with this thing for a long time. I just wanted to get it over with.

And now I think of it like I’m on this journey where I’m hopefully continuing to get better over time And I’m developing, like, I don’t think this is a done deal, I think this is a work in progress, but I’m developing the capacity to be patient and, and kind of work on one part of it at a time, and run those experiments.

Like, my nutrition is, I think, a great [00:27:00] example where I need to run some more experiments. It’s not just about I need to do the thing I know I should do, and, like, stop, you know, eating stuff I shouldn’t, for example, or whatever. It’s more like I have to find things that I like. I’m not very hungry in the morning.

That’s kind of an obstacle. You know, I’ve gotta find, okay, well, what would sound good in the morning? I don’t know. Well, let’s try this for a few days, and what if I did it this time or that time? Or, you know, it’s like I need to run a bunch of tiny experiments before I commit to something, because I don’t actually know what I need to commit to, other than the big goal of I need to fuel my body well so that I can have the energy I need for my life, and, you know, longevity and all that kind of stuff.

But, like, I don’t know. And so how much do you think, like, as you’ve talked to people and you’re doing this work, how much does our own impatience get in the way, and frustration tolerance, with doing these tiny experiments?

Anne-Laure: I think this might be one of the most important things to unlearn if you actually want to start experimenting in a way that is more useful and, and generative.

And actually, everything you just described to me when it comes to your physical [00:28:00] health, and movement, and diet, you are actually saving a lot of time, because you’re correct that this is an illusion. Every time we think we can take shortcuts, we actually very often find ourselves back to square one when we realize that what we tried doing actually didn’t work.

Another example, which I’ve done so many times, is trying to save time in the hiring process for my company.

Megan: Yes.

Anne-Laure: And every single time, I can see Michael’s face looking at me like, “Yes, I think

Megan: this is-” We’ve both paid, we’ve paid that tax before a hundred times.

Anne-Laure: Yeah. Yep. And every time you think you’re, you’re saving time, right?

Because you, there’s a candidate, you feel like, oh, maybe, you know, you, you’re not 100% sure, but you’re in a rush. You have other things that you need to work on, and so you feel like, okay, let’s just go with this person, and then you realize it’s not a good fit. And you’ve wasted all of this time, money, energy, yours and that person’s as well, because you felt like maybe, maybe you could take a shortcut.

And so- [00:29:00] I completely, completely agree with you that our impulsivity, our need for, for quick fixes, for hacks, right? I get a lot of emails in my inbox, people asking me, “Do you have a hack for this?” And I always tell them, “No, I’m so sorry. I don’t have a hack. But I have some principles that you can apply, and hopefully you’ll get where you wanna be in maybe six month or a year from now.

And even that destination might change in the process of you just starting to try and, and experiment here.” So 100%. And something that I find really sad and, and worrying that I unfortunately cannot do much about at the moment is that I do think our society is currently designed in a way that is making those impulsive tendencies worse.

Yes. When we’re on social media and we’re seeing people who seemingly changed their body or became rich overnight or all of those kinds of things, it makes us feel like we need to go faster.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. And that, and [00:30:00] that pressure I think cheats us Of the opportunity to actually do the work that will ensure progress rather than kind of giving us the illusion.

I wanna talk about YouTube, because you paused your YouTube experiment, and I’m so in this exact place right now, because I’m about to redo it. We just did the first video, and it’s about to launch. But you paused your YouTube experiment and returned to it two years later. How do you know, in anything, when to pause and when to push through?

Anne-Laure: You need to look at both the internal and external signals of success.

Michael: Okay.

Anne-Laure: Where most of us are pretty good at looking at the external signals. So in the case of a YouTube channel, that would be any traditional markers of success for YouTube, so subscribers, likes, comments, view time, et cetera. Most of us are pretty good at this.

If you can put it in a dashboard, usually we can track it, we can measure it, and that’s fine. Internal signals is something that [00:31:00] most of us haven’t been trained to look at, and that’s basically how you felt while running the experiment. Hmm. Because if all of your external signals are in the green and they look great, but you’re feeling miserable every time you have to record a YouTube video, then maybe it is not as successful as it looks like on paper.

And in my case, that’s what happened with YouTube. The external signals looked pretty good, very encouraging for a new YouTube channel, but every single time I had to sit in front of my camera and record myself, I was dreading it, absolutely dreading it. I get it. And it wasn’t just when recording it. It was having a downstream impact on the rest of my work.

If I knew I was supposed to record in the afternoon, then I could not focus on, in any meeting in the morning. My mind was elsewhere. I was procrastinating on other tasks, and this is why I decided to pause it.

Michael: I get that 100%. I can [00:32:00] remember back when I first started blogging in 2004, and I didn’t have… I mean, kind of the metrics of that really weren’t in place yet.

And so I did it for one reason. I just wanted to be helpful to my audience, and I also wanted to kinda Do it so I could think through some things, and there’s nothing like the discipline of writing to help you think through things. And so that was enormously helpful. And then I got kind of on a performance basis where it became more difficult because I was more focused on the external part.

And so I thought the other day, I… several weeks ago, actually, when I was thinking about sort of restarting the YouTube channel, I thought, “I need to get back to that. I need to pay less attention to the metrics and more attention to basically just being helpful to people.” And I still believe, you know, if you can be helpful, you’re gonna get an audience if you stick with it long enough.

But it’s not about the metrics. I, I find that such an impediment to progress. At some point it’s good feedback, but I think initially in starting, for me at least, I have to find a different reason to do it [00:33:00] than just what other people are gonna think of it.

Anne-Laure: And you’re pointing at something really important when it comes to building anything sustainable, whether it’s in your professional or personal life.

There is an effects, I think it was called the Pygmalion effect, or I can’t remember- Mm-hmm … exactly what it’s called, but a lot of YouTube creators who are optimizing for those external signals end up creating those personas where they have those huge YouTube channels, but they basically hate themselves for having to become more and more of a caricature of, of themselves.

And so they’re technically successful, but deeply unhappy. I also think about friendships and, and romantic relationships. If you have to put a mask on and pretend to be a different person in order to attract someone, then you have to keep on playing this role for the rest of your life. Maybe that’s not what you wanna do.

And so I think starting from how can I be authentically helpful in a way that actually makes me excited [00:34:00] to, to do the work, right? Is a really good place to start because then when you become successful, you’re not going to hate that success.

Michael: Love it

Megan: Yeah, that’s a good way of thinking about it, and a good warning, because I think it’s…

I- if you’re good at being successful, you can become successful at something you hate, and that’s, that’s maybe the worst outcome of all, you know? It’s a, it’s a prison of your own making, so we gotta be careful to guard against that. You know, you talk about this idea of intentional imperfection, and I love that as somebody who is kind of given to perfectionism.

How do we decide what good enough is? How do we use that idea? What is that idea, and how do we use that in our life to, to grow and become better, but in a way that’s healthy?

Anne-Laure: In the, the book, when I talk about intentional imperfection, I share the story of Shonda Rhimes, who- Mm … gave a speech, um, a, a commencement [00:35:00] speech, I think it was at Duke University.

And he was asked then, “How did you balance it all? How did you manage to actually, you know, maintain the performance across personal, professional life, across all of these projects? How did you do it? What’s your secret?” And she said I didn’t. I just didn’t. I didn’t even try. That was impossible. And so I intentionally decided in which areas to make space for imperfection, in which areas I would strive for perfection in that particular moment in my life and work.

So that meant that sometimes she would not be here to record and, and film one very important scene of Grey’s Anatomy because she wanted to be here for a show for her daughter, that sometimes she would miss a bedtime story because she had to work on something that had a deadline that night. And so every single time, very intentionally deciding which areas you’re going to give your 100% and which areas [00:36:00] that you’re not going to be able to do that.

What’s really powerful about this is that first, it removes a lot of pressure in terms of trying to be perfect across the board, which is impossible, but also it helps you better communicate and manage expectations with the people around you. If you tell your partner, “Hey, I have this deadline at the end of the week, and so I’m not going to be the perfect partner, spouse or whatever that I aim to be normally, and I thank you in advance for your support,” that’s going to be a lot easier to manage at home than if you try to do everything perfectly and then you don’t manage to do it.

Megan: Yeah, I love this. It reminds me of, you know, as a mom of five kids, I have three kids still at home, two who are grown, and also having a company and running a company, I had to decide pretty early on in this role, like, what will I be letting go? Because doing it all is impossible. Like, even if you could do it all for like five minutes, your list would just fill [00:37:00] right back up again, you know?

So that, it can’t… Our goal cannot be to get it all done, and our goal cannot be to do it all perfectly. For me, it was really a process of deciding, okay, what matters the most to me? You know? Like, what are my non-negotiables that I really… Like in your Shonda Rhimes story, what are gonna be those things that I’m willing to say I’m gonna sacrifice other things for this thing.

And personally, in my personal life, a couple of those things were, uh, you know, I wanted to be able to be home after school with my kids, um, because I have some kids that have, uh, special needs, and when they were younger, they were even more significant, and I wanna have dinner around the dinner table.

Well, that, like, you know, every, every yes is a no to something else, and that meant, okay, if I’m gonna do that, I’m gonna have to be really focused at work, ’cause I’m also really committed to my work being great. That means I’m not gonna volunteer in the classroom, and I don’t. I haven’t volunteered in, w- I, you know, five kids, I haven’t volunteered in the classroom in a decade.

Now, I send stuff, you know, I help in other ways that don’t require [00:38:00] time, but that’s just something I’m willing to be imperfect about, and I feel like that’s a good trade-off for me. You know, you might, if you’re listening, you might disagree with that, and that’s okay. Um, but for me, like, that’s a good trade-off.

But I, you know, I, what I can’t do is be present with my kids, like, in a shorter workday, have dinner for my family regularly, and get all the things that, you know, are really mission-critical done in our business, and be taking off in the middle of the day and going and doing volunteering, you know, for example.

And, and so, like, that feels like a good trade-off to me, and I think for all of us, everybody’s list is gonna be different of what those things are. But that feels like, that pr- that idea of intentional imperfection feels like you said, it gives people like me permission to say, “Okay, I don’t have to be 100% at everything.

And even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. It’s literally impossible.” And I just, I love this. It’s just so freeing.

Anne-Laure: Yeah. And what an amazing example for your kids as well, I think. Just showing them what it [00:39:00] looks like to live a life- Yeah … with intention, where you’re still- Mm-hmm … showing up the best way you can at work, showing up the best way you can as a mom at home- Mm-hmm

making those trade-offs in a very intentional way. And you know, you said, “Oh, so- some people might disagree,” but it almost makes no sense to disagree in the sense that- Right. … like, the list is completely different for everyone, and maybe the only thing we might disagree with is if people do it, again, on autopilot without ever considering what are- Yeah

those trade-offs and what are the things that truly matter to

Megan: them?

Michael: I agree with everything both of you have said, and I find it maddeningly difficult to do for me. Mm. And I probably need therapy. And this is definitely one of the things that I’m in coaching for, and one of the reasons I believe in coaching, because While I agree with everything you’ve said, I tend to be so [00:40:00] perfectionistic in whatever task I’m working on, and how it shows up for me is, like, endless tweaking.

Like, if I’m doing a slideshow, like I’m doing for a presentation I’m doing, you know, it’s, it, it’s very difficult. Like, I only… I usually only stop tweaking because I go live in five minutes or I go on stage in five minutes, but I’m tweaking right up to the end. And I don’t know that I do that in every area of my life, but I just think having a name for this, intentional imperfection, and deciding what things where it’s just good enough and it doesn’t really matter.

Like, nobody’s gonna notice except me.

Megan: Well, and what the trade-offs are. I think that’s really important- That’s key … because I think perfectionism is really validating, like self-validating. Like, it kind of feels good to do. Mm-hmm. The exhaustion part of it doesn’t feel good, but I think if we’re not clear-headed about the trade-offs, like if I try to do this, what’s…

There, there’s obviously an [00:41:00] upside to it, which is like, in your case, I’m gonna have this incredible slide deck or presentation, but what’s the downside? Like, well, I didn’t get enough sleep the night before- Yep … the presentation because I was up till 11 working on it, or, you know, I wasn’t really able to be present with the people that brought me in to speak ’cause I was, you know, whatever.

That kind of stuff, I think if we can start to see that, that helps me personally because I think there’s, in different ways, like I, I feel the pressure sometimes when the note comes home in the school folder. You know, my youngest child is seven. When I get the note from the school folder, you know, we really need volunteers, we got one this morning, to decorate for, you know, this holiday, and we need you to bring your craft paper, and we need your, you know, your painting skills, and I’m like, “Am I a bad mom because I’m gonna say no, I’ll send in the craft paper that somebody else can do it?”

And yet in my mind it’s like, okay, well, what’s the trade-off it? And I always say to myself, how much is my daughter gonna feel loved as, as a result of me decorating the table for that holiday? She’s not [00:42:00] even gonna see me. She won’t even know I’m there. So personally, for me, like the cost-benefit of, of me having to, like, work late the night before so I can take some time out of the day to go do that, like that doesn’t, that doesn’t work well for me.

But I, I don’t know. That, I found that’s helpful is to think through.

Michael: Meghan, I don’t know if you feel this or, Anne-Laure, if you coached to this, but do you feel the need to explain? Like, should Meghan explain to the people sort of the choices she’s making so that they don’t invent a narrative of their own, or is that just me trying to control the perception of me?

Anne-Laure: I think it really depends on the nature of the relationship. So actually, this is the last podcast I’m recording for the next three months. A couple of days ago, I emailed every single podcast host that I had- I was booked with until March and told them that I just signed a book deal for my next book, and I have been finding it really hard to write in between meetings, and I need a couple of months- [00:43:00] Mm-hmm

with just fewer meetings in my calendar. And in that case, I did explain in the email, I said, “This is the reason why, and this is why I wanna cancel, and if you’re happy to reconnect in a few month, I would love to reconnect.” And I was quite nervous sending that email, but everybody came back saying, “We completely understand.

We’ve also worked on big creative projects. This is great that you’re making the time. Let’s talk in a few month.” And so in that case, for me, it made sense because we had already agreed to work on something together, to collaborate, and then I’m changing the plan. And so of course, I need to provide an explanation.

Think this is just basic decency in that case. If you haven’t committed to anything yet, you, you’ve never said you were going to do it, then you don’t need to provide any kind of explanation. Sure. So to me, it’s always about what kind of contract, and of course, I don’t mean a signed contract- Mm … but what kind of contract is in place- Mm-hmm

with the people in your life. And if you are going to change the contract, then yes, I think you’d need to give a, [00:44:00] an explanation in the same way you would expect one if someone was all of a sudden changing the contract. But if there’s no contract, and there’s certainly no contract saying that every single parent is supposed to volunteer in school, then you don’t need to provide an explanation.

That’s just my opinion. There is no research validating what I just said.

Michael: You know that, I, I, I love that. I think that makes total sense, and thank you.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: So…

Megan: I love that. Well, I know that our time is starting to run short, so I want to transition to our last couple of questions here as we wrap up. You have your existing book, Tiny Experiments, which, um, I recommend that everybody get.

And if you wanna go deeper on this idea of tiny experiments, the book is the place to do it, and you can get that, of course, anywhere, uh, books are sold. But you’re also in the process, like you mentioned earlier, of writing a new book about hyper-curiosity, kind of, I think, on the heels of your own ADHD diagnosis and your research about curiosity.

Tell us about this project and what you’re [00:45:00] discovering.

Anne-Laure: So I had the very fun experience of discovering that I had ADHD after I had joined the ADHD research lab as a neuroscientist. So- That’s great. And the reason why is because the more I started looking into it, and also a colleague suggested that maybe I get a, a diagnosis, but a lot of the, the symptoms that I saw in the clinical diagnosis didn’t apply to me And I realized that the reason why was because I had designed my work in a way where I’m actually perfectly fine most of the time.

I have lots of different projects. I can switch in between different tasks. I have a lot of freedom. I can think in non-lean- linear ways. And very importantly, I have a lot of space for my curiosity. I started reading papers about it, and I discovered that there is a very strong link in terms of brain networks in between impulsivity and curiosity.

Hmm. So the same parts of your brain get activated when you’re curious and [00:46:00] impulsive. That was the first seed of a new, big research project that I just concluded, and that I’m going to turn into a book, that looks at what I call hyper curiosity, which is a very intense, quite impulsive form of curiosity that might look like having 1,000 different projects, way too many ideas that you don’t have enough time and energy to work on.

And that can be great for creativity, but that can also be quite overwhelming.

Michael: I think you are my doppelganger. I, I have so many of these same things. I told you before we went on the air that I was diagnosed a couple years ago with ADHD. It began with a self-diagnosis, and, uh, using AI, and then I went to an actual therapist to confirm it and get tested.

And, like, it was so helpful. But it could also be It can drive you crazy. You know, like managing so many different projects and I will be impulsive. And [00:47:00] so for me, I don’t know if this looked like it for you, but I would have so many projects that I had completed, like 85%, and then I got sidetracked on something else I got interested in, and then would start pursuing that for a while.

That was the maddening part. Did you have anything like that?

Anne-Laure: Absolutely. You should see the number of projects that are almost finished- … and not quite finished. And another way that has, it has manifested for me that I have since done a lot of work on, is in terms of managing my team. I had the experience, which I’m going to talk about in the book I think, although it’s quite vulnerable, um, of being the cause of burnout for someone on my team.

Mm. And basically she told me, and I’m so happy that she felt safe enough to tell me this, but every Monday, I, because I spend the weekend reading things and, and like spending time experimenting, I would email her with a bunch of new ideas. We should do this. This is exciting. What do you think? And because obviously I’m the boss, she would just take whatever suggestions I was [00:48:00] making-

and try to implement them, except that by the next Monday I had moved on already, and I had more ideas, which obviously was completely unmanageable for her. And so that can be another manifestation of this kind of way of thinking, getting excited with new ideas, wanting to share them with our team. And so now I have a filter and I add that to my notes, and only if it’s been on my mind for at least three weeks I share it with the team- Oh

as something that we can then start working on.

Megan: That is a great rule. I love that rule.

Michael: I think you’ll appreciate this. So s- being self-aware about this behavior myself, I gave my permission, uh, several years ago to my team. I said, “You know, sometimes I’m just thinking with my mouth open.” “And it doesn’t mean you have to activate on every idea I come up with.

In fact, I would encourage you not to. Don’t take action on everything I suggest or that I’m, seem to be curious about, but let’s just kind of put it on the backlog. And like you, if it persists, [00:49:00] and if it survives for a couple of weeks, then maybe there’s something to it. We ought to look at it.” But I could share an idea that I’m hot on, and two days later I’ve totally forgotten about it And so if people activate on that, it’s a big mistake and an incredible squandering of resources.

Mm-hmm. But I also think you’ve described, I think this behavior, at least in my limited experience coaching entrepreneurs, and Megan, you can chime in on this too, I, I think that’s about 95% of the people we coach.

Megan: Yeah, I think so too. And I was just laughing when you said that about, you know, saying to the team, “Don’t, don’t activate on any of this stuff.”

Uh, my executive assistant, Mika, will often report to me… She’s, she is the opposite of me, thank goodness. You know, it’s like we gotta surround ourselves with people who are different than we are. Um, diversity for the win. And so she’s very different than I am, and she will often come back to me and say, “Oh, I just wanna let you know, I, you know, booked this thing,” or, “I got that set up for you,” or whatever.

And I’m like Oh, I [00:50:00] totally forgot I asked you to do that. You know? Like, I completely forgot about it. It takes me a second to remember, oh, I, I do have some vague memory that I asked you that. And she’s, like, so disciplined, you know, she’s gonna make sure that, that she gets it done. But yeah, I do think this is, this is largely who we end up coaching, you know?

I mean, I think there are… There’s so many things to pursue in life that are so exciting- Yeah … not to mention all the stuff we have to do because it’s just, you know, making our lives work, that it- it’s so easy to become overwhelmed. And like I shared, you know, before, and Laur, before we got on, the people that we serve through F- F- through Full Focus are professionals who are successful, yes, but also very overwhelmed.

You know, they’re up to their eyeballs in life and work, and looking for a way to, like, settle all that down and, and reduce the volume of it because it’s just too much. And so when you think about hyper curiosity, how do you sort of leverage the gift of that, [00:51:00] because there certainly is a gift to that, without it becoming just another reason for overwhelm for yourself?

Anne-Laure: It is, again, a lot about intentionality, and I think also acceptance. I think a lot of people are miserable because they feel like something is wrong with their brains because- Yeah … it works this way. So just accepting that there is absolutely nothing wrong with your brain, and that usually what needs to change is the environment and the systems.

So it also takes a lot of experimentation without any judgment- Mm … without any kind of assumptions in terms of what this is supposed to look like. I do think coaching can be incredibly helpful in terms of having someone external who can reflect back to you and ask the right questions as well. I am still in the middle…

I’m not… No, I wish I was in the middle. I’m at the very beginning of writing the book. So hopefully I will have way better answers in about a year from now.

Megan: Well, I would love to have you back on to talk more about it at that point because I think that it feels kinda like a blessing and a curse in a way, and I [00:52:00] think, like, learning to see it more as a blessing and being able to design to really leverage the gifts of it, as you say, is a, a really empowering thing for people.

So I’m excited to hear more of what you discover about what that design process can be for us.

Michael: And Laur, thank you so much for being this generous with your time and with your insight. One of the things I love about being a podcaster is the opportunity to interview people like you and learn, and it’s, it’s just basically, you know, our podcast is just an excuse to talk to people like you and learn.

And I know our audience enjoys it too. So again, thank you, and good luck with the hyper curiosity book. Yes. We definitely wanna have you back on to talk about that.

Anne-Laure: Thank you so, so much for having me.

Michael: Okay, we gotta debrief. And I know I [00:53:00] say this after every podcast, but I loved this episode. I- it just resonated with me on a very deep level. How about you?

Megan: It totally did with me, and when you said that, I chuckled to myself because w- one of the little jokes in our family is that if we ever have dinner as a family or, like, we go out to, you know, a good restaurant and we have dinner, you’re always like, “This is the best steak I’ve ever had,” you know?

Or, “That’s the best pie I’ve ever had.” You say that to me, like, when I always make pie for holidays, you know, and it’s like, everything is the best thing ever, and I think that that’s how you think about this podcast, is like, every guest we have is the best guest we’ve ever had, you know?

Michael: It kinda cracks me up that I say that too.

I mean, it’s become-

Megan: I know … funny in our family. Well, if you get what you expect, it’s really working for you.

Michael: Well, I think it works for everybody else too, because I’m very complimentary of everything.

Megan: That’s true. That’s right. You’re rarely dissatisfied. It’s either, it’s usually for you either the best or, like, the literal worst.

You know? Like, “I’d rather die than eat that pie again,” you know? It’s like that.

Michael: Which I, for the record, I have never said to you.

Megan: I know, I don’t think you’ve ever said that, no. You’ve [00:54:00] never said that.

Michael: Okay, so the thing that I thought was so funny, and I said this when we were talking, but I, I felt like I met my doppelganger or my clone- You know-

Megan: Your French doppelganger.

Michael: That’s right, half my age. But amazing stuff, and you know, you were a witness to this. We, we started talking about, you know, just treating things in e- as an experiment. Yeah. And we tried to talk ourselves into taking things on and talking our clients into taking things on. We would literally say, “We’re not asking you to make a commitment forever.

We just want you to try this as an experiment.” I wrote about this on the blog years ago. I need to look that up.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: But she has taken it so much further, and of course, having a PhD in neuroscience and having all that research she’s, she’s done on the brain, I mean, she has biggie-sized it in a way that’s enormously helpful.

Megan: Well, one thing we didn’t talk about in the interview was that this is a very powerful way to persuade other people-

Michael: Yeah …

Megan: um, which I think is how [00:55:00] you’ve used it before- Sure, right … um, more so than with yourself, and I think that’s a, a really great application of this that, again, we didn’t get into. But you know, if you’re trying to persuade someone to do something that maybe they’re reluctant to do but you, you know, you’re a leader or, or maybe even if you’re not a leader, actually.

That could, that could even be more powerful in some ways. But you’re, you’re trying to not coerce someone, but you’re trying to get them to get on board with an idea that they have some kind of hesitancy about. Saying that it could be an experiment is a great way to do that, because it feels a lot less threatening.

It doesn’t feel like, you know, like a life, like a permanent life decision. It just feels like we’re gonna try a thing.

Michael: I, I c- I literally can say no to an experiment. Yes. And people use it on me all the time, and I know what they’re doing. Right. But, uh, like, like for example, back before I started Full Focus, I’d just left the corporate world, and we were up on, in Sewanee, up on the Cumberland Plateau, taking a month off just to kinda rest and think about the future.

And Gail, my wife, your mom, said to me, [00:56:00] she said, “Honey, I think you need to journal.” And I was like, “Ugh. I am not a journaler. You know, I do not wanna do that.” Because… And it felt like she was asking me to become a journaler.

Megan: It’s like an identity shift, you know?

Michael: Like that’s a- Exactly.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And I just wasn’t that.

And so she said to me, she said, “Would you be willing to do it as an experiment- … while we’re here on this vacation for the next four weeks?” And I was like, “Dadgum it, I know what you’re doing.” “And yes, I will try as an experiment.” Well, I haven’t stopped. You know, I’ve been- Wow … not perfectly consistent, but pretty consistent.

Megan: That was like 15 years ago.

Michael: Yeah.

Megan: Right? 15, 16 years ago.

Michael: Yeah. You’re requiring me to do the math now.

Megan: Yeah. And- Ish. Give or take.

Michael: Yeah, give or take. And, and just recently she was saying to me, she said, “I wonder if you’d be willing, a- as an experiment-” to have coffee with me outside in the early morning so we get that early morning sun.

I said, “Sure, I’ll try anything as an experiment.”

Megan: It’s like, you know, those old cartoons, like the Bugs Bunny cartoons, when, you know, the, the little [00:57:00] characters would get, like, the hypnotized eyes. It’s like you say experiment, and you get, like, the swirly eyes. And you’re like, “Sure, whatever you say,” you know?

Michael: What did you think about what she had to say about goal setting, and does that kinda change anything for you in terms of how we think about goal setting or how we teach it?

Megan: I don’t know what the implications are for how we teach it. You know, we, we don’t talk about it as much now as we have in the past.

As people probably remember who followed us for a long time, we, um, kind of retired Best Year Ever last year. That was the last year we did that, um, as a live event, and we decided we were not gonna continue to do that ’cause kind of our focus has shifted, and we’ve just narrowed the things we’re talking about.

But I mean, I definitely think goals still have their place, but I also think we set goals too quickly. You know, like, we don’t… We’re not reflective enough, and we’re not thoughtful enough about what it’s really gonna take to set ourselves up for success. It just feels good to have the certainty of a goal, which actually has nothing to do, uh, as [00:58:00] far as I know in, from a research standpoint, with accomplishing it.

You know- Mm-hmm … like, there’s a psychological payoff to setting a goal that doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not it’s the right goal or whether or not you achieve it, and I think we’re often too hasty. That was one of my big takeaways- I like that … is that our, we would be much more likely to achieve our goals if we took the time…

Like, I think I gave the example of, you know, I wanna focus on my nutrition, which could eventually become a goal. I don’t know. But at this point, it’s not a goal. At this point, I don’t even know enough yet. I’m still trying… I, I don’t even know what the end state I want to be compliant with is because I don’t know enough about what the contents of it are gonna be yet.

I need to spend some more time running tiny experiments. Like, what if I food prepped on Sunday night, or what if I found a service I liked, or what if I always did the same smoothie every day? Would I get tired of it? I don’t know. I haven’t tried it long enough. You know, it’s like those kinds of things.

Like, the older I get, the more [00:59:00] I think capacity I have for taking longer and being more reflective at things. Not always. Like, sometimes my own impulsivity still gets me, but I I hope I’m developing discernment about where I need to apply that, slow the pace down enough, and do the pre-work before I get there.

And I sort of think maybe that’s one of the ways the goal setting and goal achievement changes, is just giving yourself that period of experimentation before you just, like, make this hard commitment, sell out to it.

Michael: I, I feel the same way, and what I’m gonna say next is me thinking with my mouth open. I reserve the right to change my mind on this.

Like, like I said, annual goals, quarterly goals- Right … the weekly big three- Yes … and my daily big three. And so in a sense you could call all of those, maybe not the last one, but it’s certainly the annual, the quarterly, and the weekly as goals.

Megan: Right.

Michael: I think if I was doing it over again, if I had to rewrite Your Best Year Ever, [01:00:00] I think I would create a time horizon that was around the quarter.

Mm-hmm. That’s for starters.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Because I think things are changing so fast, faster than- Yeah … ever in my entire lifetime. Yes. That’s a really good point. That I think it’s really difficult to see a year out.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: But I have some visibility into the next quarter, mostly.

Megan: Yeah. I think you could set really big stuff that’s like, you know, you could set like a, for a business, you can set like a revenue goal.

Michael: Yeah.

Megan: Like a budget. But there’s a lot of stuff underneath that, that like, I don’t know, like what’s gonna hap- There’s g- there’s so much that’s changing, you know?

Michael: Well, and the other thing I was gonna say is I think what I would love to experiment with is setting experiments for the quarter.

Megan: Right.

Michael: Like, maybe there’s some goals that I have that come out of experiments I did last quarter, and now I’m ready- Yeah

to make ’em a goal.

Megan: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah.

Michael: But it’d be interesting to just have a page of the Full Focus Planner, and we don’t have to label it, you could use the notes anywhere, but just put, okay, these are the experiments I’m, I’m committed to running-

Megan: Yeah …

Michael: you know, this month, or this quarter, or whatever.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And just [01:01:00] see. ‘Cause honestly, most of the stuff I take on doesn’t work.

Megan: You know, that’s one of the things, like I was sharing in the episode, that I’ve started doing with our executive team, is that we are running experiments-

Michael: Mm-hmm …

Megan: a lot of the time. You know, instead of just saying, “We’re gonna do a new ad campaign”- You know, and we hope that it’ll perform like X, Y, or Z.

It’s like we know what our, our costs need to be. You know, there’s a bunch of, like, marketing KPIs around that, key performance indicators. And I don’t wanna just keep doing that, d- you know, pursuing something in perpetuity that may not be aligned with those metrics that I know are sort of the way it has to work for it to ultimately be-

Michael: Mm-hmm

Megan: successful, judged successful. So I actually need to create, like, a time-bounded experiment and say, “We’re gonna spend this much for this period of time, and we’re gonna monitor the results, and we’re gonna adjust and see if we can get it to where we want it. And if it doesn’t work, then we’re gonna pause, and we’re gonna decide, ‘Okay, now we’re gonna run a different experiment,’ or we’re gonna, or we’re gonna kill it at that point, you know?

But we’re gonna predetermine a [01:02:00] date on the calendar that we’re going to evaluate and either continue or not, and we’re gonna determine what we’re doing in that period and monitor it accordingly.” And I just feel like the quality of our decision-making has improved because of that.

Michael: I’ve watched it. You know, as you know, I’m not operationally involved at Full Focus- Right

that much. I just, as I said before we started recording this, you know, I serve at your pleasure. I do whatever you ask me to do. But, you know, I’ve got this whole other thing that I’m doing with the AI Business Lab.

Megan: Right.

Michael: I’ve watched you do this with the team, and it’s been beautiful to watch. And because I’m not so enmeshed in it or embedded in it anymore- Mm-hmm

I see the progress in a way that you can’t see.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: Because I’m not seeing it every day. It feels probably very incremental to you.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: But it feels like, you know, we’re just clicking through improvements. And one of the things I admire about Elon Musk, and I know, you know, some people hate him and some people will be, you know, scandalized that I would say that, but the one thing I do like about it is he thinks about everything in terms [01:03:00] of almost software development.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: So for example, as you know ’cause I can’t shut up about it, I bought a new Tesla about a month ago. And I thought, you know, he’s manufacturing now the world’s best-selling car, the Model Y. That wasn’t always the case, but he thinks about manufacturing different than every other automaker out there.

It’s like software. And so I’m constantly getting these downloads to the software in my Tesla, and he’s making these incremental improvements over time. And if it doesn’t work, he do- like, doesn’t freak out about it. You know, like, a lot of people give him grief because when he was trying to create the reusable rocket, you know, a lot of those crashed.

They were epic failures.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: But to him, it’s just feedback, and then he’d iterate- Yeah … and he’d iterate. And now he’s reduced the cost of a rocket launch by 100X. Because they can reuse the rocket. And everybody said, “That’s not possible. That won’t happen. These are just, you know, billion-dollar launches, and you just have to eat that [01:04:00] cost.

It’s just part of it.” And he’s just like, “No, let’s just treat that as an experiment and see if we can make it different.”

Megan: That’s really cool. Yeah, I, I think just that iterative approach and running a bunch of experiments, it also kinda makes it fun.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Megan: You know, it doesn’t feel like everything is so high-stakes all the time.

You’re working in shorter time horizons, which I think is kind of nice. Like, I personally enjoy that. I love that,

Michael: too.

Megan: And you get, like, a thumbs-up, thumbs-down. Okay, great, you know? And, and what I’ve seen in our team, and what I feel in myself is I’m a lot less attached to the result. You know? Like, I don’t…

I do my best work when I don’t actually care what happens with the experiment. I’m like, “Cool,” like, “Let’s see what happens. It’ll either work or it won’t work, and then we’ll do something else,” you know? Whereas, like, when you have a goal and all you’re focused on is the goal, it’s, like, existential.

Michael: Right.

Megan: And so I think it’s nice when you’re just, like, doing these little tweaks, you know, and, and, and trying to figure out what’s, what’s gonna work. It just feels sort of, like, I don’t know, more playful or something in a [01:05:00] way that just takes the pressure down. I like that.

Michael: It’s, it’s like you don’t have your self-worth- Wrapped up in the outcome

Megan: Right, right

Michael: and I quoted John Maxwell, I think it was him, you know, who said, “Either you succeed or you learn.”

Megan: Yes.

Michael: And I think that is so helpful. Right.

Megan: I was

Michael: taught this by Eileen, an executive coach I had years ago, whom you know and have talked with, but Eileen said to me at one time, she said, “You need to develop a more powerful relationship with failure.”

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And she talked about what that looked like, ’cause I think most people don’t have… They have a dysfunctional relationship with failure.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And ever since that conversation, I just… You know, I don’t like failing, but the truth is you can’t succeed unless you fail a certain number of times.

Megan: So true, and the more you try to, like, not fail, like you don’t wanna say it out loud, you don’t wanna admit it, you’re really afraid about it, you know, you have a lot of, like, investment and emotion and ugh, all that stuff about it-

Michael: Mm-hmm

Megan: it’s like the [01:06:00] more powerful it becomes in your life in a negative way. And actually, like, when you’re, um, kind of disconnected or, like, not attached to the outcome in the same way, you can just, like, be honest and be like, “Well, that totally didn’t work. Let’s try something else,” you know? And you can actually iterate faster, you can run more experiments.

When you’re not emotionally invested in everything at such a high level, it just… That taking of the pressure off actually makes your performance better, ironically.

Michael: Well, and one of the things I’ve learned is that a lot of the things that I think are gonna be a slam dunk when you experiment, it doesn’t work.

Megan: Right.

Michael: And things that you think, you know, this couldn’t possibly work. Like, you know, when we were talking about re-engineering our webinars-

Megan: Mm-hmm …

Michael: and the consultant that we’re using, Stacy, suggested that we, like, literally go through six slides a minute. I thought, “That’s, like, literally the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Megan: Right.

Michael: Why would we do that? We don’t need that many slides, ’cause for an hour worth of slides, like 360 [01:07:00] slides.

Megan: Yep.

Michael: And all it did was work.

Megan: Yep.

Michael: And so it’s, it’s just like, don’t rule it out till you try it.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And don’t rule it

Anne-Laure: in.

Megan: Just let the data speak. You don’t have to be the genius in the room. It’s kinda great, actually.

Like, pressure off. I love it.

Michael: Well, we could talk about this all day. Thanks.

Megan: Yeah. I appreciate you making time for it. What a, what a great show. And a- as a reminder, Tiny Experiments, you know? Get it? Order it on Amazon. Again, it’s called Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. Anne Laura LeCompte, uh, she’s a neuroscience and founder of Nest Labs.

Michael: Guys, thank you for joining us. If this episode was helpful, I have one ask, and you know we don’t run advertising in this, so this is, like, the only thing that we ask, and that is that you share this episode with someone you think would benefit from it. That’s it. If you do that, we’re happy.

Megan: Thanks, guys. See you next [01:08:00] time.