Why Tiny Experiments Lead to Big Change – Exclusive Interview with Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff

As the pace of change accelerates, the ability to learn, adapt, and rethink our assumptions has never been more important. Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff has built her work around these very skills. She is a neuroscientist and the founder of Ness Labs, where she helps people transform self-doubt into self-discovery.

At King’s College London, her research investigates the neurodevelopment of curiosity with a focus on ADHD. Her bestselling book Tiny Experiments, translated into over 18 languages, introduces a practical approach to navigating uncertainty through small tests rather than rigid plans.

In this interview, she discusses the power of curiosity, the value of thinking like a scientist, and how we can design more experimental lives.

Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Your work focuses on helping people apply their curiosity. Why do you think curiosity is such an important asset in today’s world?

From global events to shifts in the job market and rapid technological change, we are living through large-scale transitions that can feel unsettling. In times like these, being systematically curious can help us explore and adapt even when the future is unclear.

By systematic, I mean getting curious about everything: your work, new ideas, the world at large, but also your own automatic reactions and emotions. Instead of ignoring those signals, you can ask why you feel a certain way and treat each emotion as information worth understanding.

This way, curiosity can replace anxiety and give us momentum in a world that keeps changing. And the best part is that curiosity is natural to all of us; it simply needs to be given room to grow.

In your book Tiny Experiments, you encourage experimentation instead of rigid goals. How can people test ideas to design the lives and careers they want?

When there’s a lot of uncertainty, many of us respond by creating more plans. While this can create a reassuring illusion of control, it can also close the door to unexpected opportunities. A better approach is to think like a scientist. Rather than having a fixed outcome in mind, start with a hypothesis. What might happen if you tried this? What would it look like to explore that idea? Test it for a short period without clinging to a definition of success or failure. Just focus on collecting your data. Afterward, reflect on the results by asking, “how did that go?” and “how did it feel?”

Each cycle of experimentation gives you a better understanding, allowing you to adjust your direction and move closer to the path that fits you best based on the information currently available to you. That’s how you live a more experimental life.

Many people consume more information than ever but feel less certain in their thinking. What’s missing between information and understanding?

The missing step is creation: to go from collector to creator. It’s easy to become a collector of information, but to truly develop an understanding you need to use and apply what you learn to form your own perspective.

Often, it’s only when we try to explain an idea to someone else that we realize what we truly understand—and what we do not. I lost count of the times I started writing my newsletter or a research paper convinced that my thinking was clear, only to discover gaps right as I tried to put it into words.

It doesn’t have to be complicated! You can simply discuss something you read with a friend, journal about an idea, or summarize it in your own words. Better yet, apply the idea to a real project and observe how it shapes the way you work or make decisions.

You’ve written about learning as a lifelong process. What habits actually help people learn better over time, rather than just collect ideas?

Long-term memory strengthens when we form connections between ideas rather than just storing them in isolation. One useful psychological phenomenon is the generation effect: we remember information more easily when we actively produce it ourselves. Writing about what you learned, starting a small book club, or even recording a short podcast episode can all create space for deeper processing.

If you want a practical starting point, choose a note-taking system where you can capture ideas and revisit them regularly, and spend an hour each week tending to this “mind garden”—linking ideas, adding your reflections, writing short memos about what stands out. Over time, this will turn scattered information into a network of knowledge that’s as unique as you are. It’s a fun nerdy habit that’s highly effective for lifelong learning.

Distraction is often framed as a personal failure. From a cognitive perspective, why is focus so fragile in modern environments, and what can we do about it?

The human brain is designed to notice novel and potentially important signals. Whether that’s endless notifications or social feeds, in today’s world we’re surrounded by far more of those signals than our attentional system was built to handle. The result is fragmented attention, which has nothing to do with a lack of discipline. The most effective solution we know of right now is still environmental design: put your phone in another room, turn off laptop notifications, and use headphones if you work in a shared space. You can also block some dedicated distraction-free deep work time on your calendar so it’s easier to enter a flow and stay there long enough to make meaningful progress on your projects.

Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff

What are some common thinking patterns that quietly limit people’s ability to reason clearly or make good decisions?

In my book, I explain that many of us follow “cognitive scripts” without realizing it. These are internalized stories about how we should design our lives and navigate the world, often transmitted through education or societal expectations.

One is the Sequel Script, where you feel your next step must logically follow your past decisions. That’s why we all rewrite our resumes so our career seems to follow a rational narrative. Another is the Crowdpleaser Script, where you optimize for approval and end up drifting away from what you truly want. The third is the Epic Script, where you believe your choices only count if they follow your one true passion or make you feel like you’re on a mission to change the world. That last one might make you want to pursue a startup instead of other opportunities that might seem less impressive but more rewarding.

The first step is to notice these scripts, which are often signaled by the word “should”, and to treat them as stories that can be rewritten. Then you can test paths through tiny experiments and let real-world feedback guide your decisions.

As neuroscience research evolves, what’s one outdated assumption about learning you think we need to let go of?

I strongly believe learning is not meant to stop after formal education. For a long time, people believed the adult brain was relatively fixed. Neuroscience has shown this is not true. The brain remains plastic throughout life. It can form new connections, reorganize itself, and even grow new neurons in certain regions.

While learning may feel different as we age, the capacity to learn doesn’t disappear. What changes over time is not our ability to learn, but the conditions that support it. Lifelong learning is less about going back to school and more about staying curious, experimenting, and deliberately practicing new skills and exploring new ideas you’re interested in.

How has your own relationship with learning and productivity changed as your work has matured?

I no longer see speed as a meaningful measure of performance. Instead, I value slowness—the ability to savor learning, to treat it as a rich experience. I allow myself to sit with challenging questions and remind myself of how lucky I am, how lucky it is that I get to wrestle with such interesting problems. This shift has also meant protecting my time more carefully: taking breaks when needed, saying no more often, and committing to projects that align with my curiosity. Rather than optimizing for output alone, I now optimize for waking up genuinely excited and curious to discover what the day might bring.

If readers wanted to cultivate an experimental mindset this year, what’s one small but meaningful shift you’d encourage them to make?

Design your first tiny experiment! Choose one action you want to test and commit to it for a short, clearly defined period using this simple mini-protocol: “I will [action] for [duration].” For example, “I will meditate every morning for five days” or “I will read one page each evening for a week.” Observe the results without any self-judgement, just with the systematic curiosity of a scientist, and adjust your approach based on what you discover. If possible, experiment with others and share what worked, what didn’t, and what you want to try next. Uncertainty will not disappear, but you’ll have a lot more fun and sense of momentum when you treat your life as a giant laboratory.

Through her work at Ness Labs and King’s College London, Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff continues to explore how experimentation can help us navigate uncertainty with curiosity rather than anxiety. Her work reinforces a central idea from this conversation: growth is not the result of having all the answers, but of staying open, testing ideas, and learning as you go. For more insights, follow her on Instagram and at Ness Labs for research-backed tools on curiosity, lifelong learning, and intentional living.