I first learned about neuroscientist and writer Dr. when I came across a video of her explaining the pitfalls of traditional goal-setting and advocating for a more experimental approach to life. As someone who had recently quit a job that was destroying both my physical and mental health with no clear plan ahead, Le Cunff’s method piqued my interest. It instantly dulled the ache in my chest that had been telling me I was living life incorrectly for much of my adult life.
Although I’ve always been ambitious, my ADHD (undiagnosed for 30!!! years) hardwiring left me with a disdain for rigid hierarchies, nonsensical rules, and small injustices that run rampant in traditional workspaces (the justice sensitivity is strong in this one!). The result? Deep shame that I wasn’t “living up to my potential,” a constant hum of low-level anxiety that I would die without fulfilling my life’s purpose, and a resume littered with a string of impressive yet short-lived roles that conferred prestige but not fulfillment. Eventually, my ambition faded, and I figured I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, so I headed to Libby to borrow a copy of Le Cunff’s first book, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.1
Tiny Experiments is broken into four parts:
Pact
Create a plan that is Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable
“I will [action] for [duration].”
Act
Take action using a mindful productivity framework that accounts for your energy levels, executive function, and emotional state
React
Reflect on your trial. “What worked? What didn’t? Do I want to persist, pause, or pivot?”
Impact
Leverage your knowledge to contribute to collective curiosity. “Are there communities that I can join to share my knowledge and benefit from the wisdom of others?”
Le Cunff’s main premise is based on the scientific method and posits that short-term, curiosity-driven goals (tiny experiments) are more effective and less stressful than long-term goals embedded within a larger, more ambitious strategic plan. Tiny experiments lower the barrier to action (committing to write for 5 minutes a day for 10 days is easier than promising to write a novel in the next 18 months) and eliminate the pressure of striving for a specific outcome. With long-term goal-setting, the goal is to reach a particular end state. With tiny experiments, the goal is to consistently take action over a set period and evaluate your results. Was this enjoyable? What did I learn? Do I want to keep going? How can I use these lessons in my next experiment?
While reading, I was reminded of a quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech that I first read in Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I’ve spent my whole life researching, learning, and preparing to chase my dreams without actually putting on my boots and stepping into the arena. Why? Fear. Not necessarily the fear of failure, but rather the fear of being perceived as a failure. The fear of trying and failing in front of others. The fear of not living up to the potential that everyone—from my grandparents to my middle school principal—had been drilling into my head since birth. So, I played it safe. I went to a good school, got good jobs (and hated them all), and tried to be a successful figure in local government and nonprofit circles. This year, I finally decided to set aside the goals and expectations that were never truly mine and to figure out what I want my life to look like. If I had access to the Tiny Experiments framework sooner, this shift might’ve happened years ago.
The Tiny Experiments framework makes taking action much easier for those of us who tend to suffer from analysis paralysis. You don’t have to know the full picture to just try something for a few weeks. It also removes the pressure of doing the right thing that serves your singular life’s passion or purpose. If every experiment is purposeful, then you’ll naturally end up living a meaningful life regardless of whether or not you explicitly outlined what purpose you were aiming for at the beginning.
“Change is unintentional; adaptation is accidental. But there is so much to learn from our mistakes; we should learn to fall in love with them.” - Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Tiny Experiments
I also believe that, although Le Cunff presents them as opposites, tiny experiments and long-term goals can work together. You can have bigger, more ambitious goals for your life and use tiny experiments to find the best way to achieve those goals. For example, let’s say you want to become fluent in a foreign language. You can use tiny experiments to see if you retain information better with Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone, or to decide if private lessons or self-study are more sustainable for your language practice. While you’re constantly adjusting your efforts, these experiments all serve your overall goal of gaining fluency.
Where Tiny Experiments differs from many mainstream productivity books, including other mindful productivity frameworks, is its emphasis on community and connection. Most productivity advice starts and ends with the individual—setting personal goals, building solitary productivity systems, and ignoring distractions to get things done. While most of Tiny Experiments focuses on individual experimentation, Le Cunff dedicates the final section of the book to encouraging readers to contribute to collective curiosity by learning in public, sharing their findings, and joining collaborative creative communities.
The benefits of learning in public are numerous: receiving valuable (and sometimes critical) feedback that can influence your future projects, building stronger relationships through vulnerability, and inspiring others by challenging the idea that perfection and expertise are necessary to share your efforts openly. For me, this is both the most liberating and the most daunting element of pursuing tiny experiments. Allowing myself to fail in public feels like an attack on my core identity as a high-achieving strategist who #GetsThingsDone the right way. But maybe I’ve moved beyond that identity. Or maybe that identity was always just a façade, never truly who I was. Perhaps the fact that I’m even asking these questions is the point.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading Tiny Experiments. Le Cunff’s writing is friendly and accessible, blending neuroscience with lived experience. As someone who loves the thrill of planning to try new things but rarely gets past the research stage, the Tiny Experiments framework provides a practical way to explore my many interests without making drastic life changes all at once. As an ADHDer, I also appreciate Le Cunff’s gentle treatment of procrastination as a “gateway to self-discovery” rather than a personality flaw to be deeply ashamed of.
Last year, I started a habit of journaling in the corner booth of my favorite coffee shop every Saturday morning. My first entry of 2026 was a free-flow writing exercise answering the age-old question posed by Mary Oliver in “The Summer Day”:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Back then, I wrote about big goals — earning a certain amount of money, marrying my dream partner, traveling the world, and so on. But after reading Tiny Experiments, I have a new answer. I’m going to experiment. Try as many things as possible. Follow my curiosity. Be a doer, not just a hearer. If that curiosity leads me to those big goals? Great. If not? It might be disappointing, sure, but I’ll rest knowing I’ve lived a full life. And that’s what matters most.
Bibliocinemina is my first tiny experiment. I’m committing to posting one newsletter per week for twelve weeks. Maybe I’ll love it. Maybe I’ll hate it. Either way, thank you for joining me for the ride. I’m glad you’re here.
Yours in curiosity,
Mina
P.S. You can find Anne-Laure’s Substack profile here: , sign up for her newsletter here: Ness Labs, and purchase your own copy of Tiny Experiments here: Tiny Experiments at Bookshop.org (affiliate link - see footnote 1 below).
P.P.S. For my fellow library card holders, follow the link below to see if your local library has a digital copy in the (free) Libby app: Tiny Experiments on Libby.