During their recent episode, Tobias Carlisle and Anne-Laure Le Cunff discussed How Tiny Experiments Can Help You Build Lasting Habits Like Meditation. Here’s an excerpt from the episode:
Tobias: Do you think that meditation is important for people?
Anne-Laure: Oh, that’s an interesting one, because that was one of my tiny experiments last year to try and meditate. A way I identify interesting personal experiments, not necessarily in work, but for personal experiments, is when I hear myself saying, “Oh, I’m just not good at this thing.” It’s usually a good signal that that might be something I want to explore. There’s a bit of fixed mindset here. Last year, I heard myself say to a friend, “I’m just not good at meditation. Just not my thing. Can’t do it.” And so, I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting. Actually, let’s design an experiment around this.”
I designed an experiment where I said, I’m going to meditate for 15 minutes every day for the next 15 days. I decided to do it in public. So, I created a Google Doc that I shared with everybody on my newsletter and on Twitter, and I let everybody comment. Every day after each meditation, I would write some bullet points, notes, and thoughts, and let people comment and share resources.
From the research, meditation is good for you. It’s good for your creativity, it’s good for your mental health, it helps you sleep better, it helps you feel calmer. At this stage, the research is so strong that there isn’t really any doubt as to how good it is for you.
The issue, though, is that a lot of people cannot stick to it. It’s very hard to stick to it. Instead of going straight to trying to build a habit, which is daunting and when you don’t manage to stick to it, you just stop, try designing a tiny experiment first. Instead of committing to meditating for one hour for the rest of your life, say maybe 10 minutes every day for the next 10 days. If that feels too hard, make it five minutes for the next five days. If that’s still too much, try three minutes for the next three days.
Just design one tiny experiment that you can complete. If you manage to have enough repetitions and experience what it feels like, this is something you’re going to want to implement as part of your routine.
Tobias: One of the reasons for experimenting is if you feel it’s too much of a commitment to do something long-term, you might be able to get yourself to start by saying, “I’ll just do a little thing for a little period of time.” You trick yourself into doing it. After two weeks, you might feel some of the benefits, and so you might want to then keep on doing it. Is that the advantage of an experiment over a lifelong commitment?
Anne-Laure: Yes. It actually also works well with the idea that the problem with good habits is that we assume that if a habit is good for someone, it’s good for us. The problem with a lot of life decisions is that we think that if a decision is good for someone, it is going to be good for us.
With an experimental approach, you’re not trying to convince yourself of anything. Actually, you can walk into the experiment being quite skeptical. That’s completely fine. You can say, “I don’t know, everybody says meditation works, but I expect this to fail.” That’s completely fine. Just collect the data and make a decision afterward.
Tobias: When you said you meditated in public, I thought you meant you literally went outside and meditated in public. But you mean you did the learning process in public and that was the part that people were able to comment on. What were the results of your experiment? Did you feel like it was worthwhile? Did it make a change that you could notice?
Anne-Laure: Oh, absolutely. I don’t meditate every day now, which some people might say, “Oh, so that wasn’t successful.” But to me, it was because now meditation has become part of my toolkit. This is something that I use when I feel stressed or need a little reset, which would have never happened before.
Even last week, I was invited by someone I had just met in Austin to a meditation circle for a one-hour sit. And I said, “Yes. Actually, this sounds great, let me join.” I joined, we meditated for one hour, and then we had amazing conversations afterward. I would have never joined this before because one hour sitting in silence would have felt like just a crazy thing that I didn’t necessarily want to do.
So now, meditation is just part of my mental health and emotional regulation toolkit in a way that it wasn’t before. Also, the practice of learning in public in this way was amazing. Now, when I feel resistance or like I might quit after two repetitions, I try to think about how I can do it in public, so I have more motivation to at least complete the experiment and see how I feel when I’m done—not before.
Tobias: Some public commitment makes you feel like you’re letting people down if you don’t go and do it, so you feel obliged to show up even though ultimately it benefits you.
Anne-Laure: Yes.
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