Shruti's Blog

Welcome to week 3 of Curious Collective, a community by Anne-Laure Le Cunff that accompanies her book Tiny Experiments. In this post, I will share some reflections and important learnings from the community, recap weeks 1 and 2, and add my notes from the Week 3 session. I am slightly delayed this week as I was busy with work and other commitments. But better late than never, right?

The community has been so supportive and engaging. Probably my favorite online space in a long time. Everyone shares helpful tips, resources, and has your back when you have a question. I will definitely join Ness Labs’ community after this community disappears.

My Learnings

I have been reading Anne’s newsletter for 2+ years now, but the learning in the community with her live lectures and discussions has resulted in a deeper understanding. As a result, I have been internalizing and implementing things in a more meaningful way. Here are some learnings that have become an integral part of my internal dialogue:

• Become an anthropologist of your life – set hypotheses, conduct experiments, take field notes
• Approach procrastination with curiosity and not blame/guilt – why did you procrastinate? Or did you just change the order of tasks?
• Think of growth in ‘loops’ instead of ‘ladder’ – move away from a linear growth mindset
• Maximum growth happens when there is action + reflection – I am good at the reflection part, need to take more action

For week 2, I set up a challenge to write 500 words for 5 days, and I wrote 500+ words on 4/5 days. I could feel the joy of writing slowly coming back to me. I wasn’t writing with a lofty goal in mind – generate traffic/monetize/get published somewhere. I was writing because I wanted to write and found it a meaningful goal to experiment and learn. This approach of curiosity worked way better when combined with the approach of loops instead of stairs.

Recap of Weeks 1 and 2

Week 1

• Becoming the scientist of your life starts with observation
• Self-anthropology is a way to conduct an audit of your life, question the default, and reevaluate your ambitions
• A pact is a template for tiny experiments in the format I will [action] for [duration]. Mine is I will write 500 words for the next 5 days.

Week 2

• Meaningful growth requires action and reflection
• There is no failure when the aim is to collect data for experiments in your life
• We need a new mental self-development model that encourages working in loops instead of a ladder. With a loop, there is no end goal; you keep updating your goals while incorporating feedback.

Let’s get to Week 3: React

Start with reporting how many days in the last 5 days you were able to follow the pact. Answer this: I completed ______ of 5 trails. The data points you collected will be used to inform your next action steps.

“A Liminal Space is an in-between territory where the old rules governing our old choices no longer apply. Life is full of these moments, and the degree to which we learn to reap their lessons is the degree to which grow and improve our lives.”

— Anne-Laure Le Cunff in Tiny Experiments

Excerpt from Chapter 8: Broadening the decision frame

What happens when you are between experiments? I wrote for 5 days, but then what’s next? There are three options for me to pursue:

1. Persist: Continue doing what I am doing
2. Pause: Is this experiment setting me up for success? If no, maybe pause it or stop it altogether
3. Pivot: Is there a piece of your experiment that would lead to more meaningful outcomes? Or expanding the scope might make more sense

In my case, writing every day is something I definitely want to keep doing, so ‘persist’ is what I am choosing right now. I am writing about very general topics these days, mainly whatever comes to my mind. In the coming months, I plan to focus on writing on certain topics, like AI for entrepreneurs. My usual response to liminal space is ‘Pivot’. I review where I was, where I am, and where I want to go. Based on this, I decide whether what I am doing is working or do I need a course correction.

When we reach the end of a loop, culturally inflected ambition spurs us to raise the stakes,
even if that’s not what we really want. It’s an understandable impulse, particularly in the
professional realm. Our economy is built not on the notion of enough but on the notion of
more. Bigger, better, higher, faster. We want to capitalize on momentum or prove that the hard
work was “worth it.” We press on to the next level.

— — Anne-Laure Le Cunff in Tony Experiments

This quote is a reminder to myself to use my goals as a benchmark and not what the economy expects of me. Every time I think of the value I can offer, I try to map it with traditional businesses and startups and come to the conclusion that things might not work. I have a day job, but I want to make a living with creative work that fuels my soul. I am a multi-potentialite and have ADHD, which means I love everything, but I don’t stick to them long enough. Conventional paths of ‘Riches are in the niches’ scare me. I start boxing myself into these pigeonholes of linear career paths. It’s time for me to break free (Miley Cyrus is singing I can’t be tamed in my head).

Anne shared a really good insight on guilt around unfinished projects that really hit home. I personally tend to carry around a ton of guilt for projects that I started but didn’t finish or didn’t persevere with. Most of them were not because I was lazy or I didn’t want to continue; they were banished because my life started looking different, and other things took me closer to my goal than the project I was pursuing. For many years, I couldn’t write because I used to feel guilty for discontinuing minireads. I love books, I love reading, and not writing a blog doesn’t change that. I started the blog because I wanted to read more and better. The goal is fulfilled, and I am continuing to do it, but there is a pang in my heart about Minireads that I tried to rebrand as ‘One Book Smarter’, but have yet to publish more content on it.

This is all for week 3. See you in week 4.