Modern WisdomHow To Live Freely In A Goal-Obsessed World - Anne-Laure Le Cunff
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
115 min read · 22,629 words- 0:00 – 9:03
The Process Of Finding Your Purpose
- CWChris Williamson
What's the problem with people obsessing over finding their purpose, in your opinion?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
It makes them miserable. When we try to find our purpose, we feel like if you haven't found it yet, something is wrong with our life. Our life doesn't have meaning. We also spend a lot of time comparing our life to the life of others. We wonder, "Why is it that this person seems like she knows where she's going? Why is this person, um, so excited about what they're doing? Why do they have a passion? Why is it that I don't have my purpose, I don't have my passion?" And because of that, we become so obsessed with figuring out, "What is my purpose?" that we end up not giving ourselves the time and, uh, the possibility to explore and maybe figuring out in the end what that is.
- CWChris Williamson
What is a better way to look at creating a direction in life then?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
A better way to figuring out your purpose is just to experiment. It's, uh, thinking like a scientist. When a scientist wants to learn something new, they don't start with a specific outcome in mind. What they do is that they start with a research question, a hypothesis. They wonder, "Hey, what might happen if I tried this?" If you do that, if you keep on asking questions, if you keep on trying new things, if you keep on making mistakes, learning from them, and iterating, this is how you figure out your purpose.
- CWChris Williamson
How good do you think we are at predicting what it is that we like? It seems sort of in the discussion around having a purpose that there is a inherent sort of self-knowing. "I know what's best for me. I am the master of this universe. And, you know, I didn't know, but now that I do have a bit of a grasp on a purpose, everything else can go and fuck itself."
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
There's a lot of research showing that we are absolutely terrible at predicting what we'll like in the future. We change a lot, and, uh, we think that we're going to be a lot more similar to who we are today than what we actually end up being like in the future. We also think that whatever we like in the future will follow a nice progression, a logical progression, like, a nice narrative based on who we are today and what our life looks like today. But we change quite a lot. And a lot of the things we like are based on our experiences, the people we hang out with, the work we do, the failures we experience, and the growth that we have as well. There are lots of things that you might hate today because they're hard that you will enjoy in the future because you've mastered them, and this is something that's really, really hard to predict. So deciding what you want to pursue based on what you think you will enjoy is not necessarily a great way to go about it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it seems like (clears throat) I don't know, a lot of people are probably living somebody else's dream. I don't know whether they're following their own, but this... They're probably following something that they think is their own but very well might not be theirs and very well might be somebody else's.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah, what you're talking about actually has a name in psychology research. It's called a cognitive script. And, uh, this is based on really interesting research coming from the late '70s where researchers asks people, "Okay, if I put you in this, this specific situation, how do you behave? How do you act?" And what they found is that most people, if you put them in a similar situation, will behave in a very similar way. And that's okay for a lot of everyday situations. So let's say you go to the restaurant, and you know that you're supposed to, you know, go there and wait for a member of staff coming and telling you, "This is your table." If you go to the doctor, you know you wait in the waiting room, and then you go in the doctor's office. That's okay, right? This is how we don't overthink every single decision. But the problem is that we follow these scripts not only in everyday situations but also to make way more important decisions in our lives, and that includes the dreams that we pursue, the careers that we follow, the way we manage our relationships, the topics we de- decide to study at university. And, uh, those cognitive scripts are kind of the invisible threads that actually determine a lot of the decisions that we're making in life.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the mechanism of how these things work? Is it that we outsource learning to the example of people around us and then try to imitate that? Is this memetic stuff? How does this work?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
There are different types of cognitive scripts. Some of them are based on... So I, I call them the, the sequel types of scripts, and, uh, this is based on the fallacy that whatever you do today needs to make sense based on what you did in the past. So we feel like our life needs to have this nice narrative that is legible and that makes sense. So this is the scripts that we follow when, for example, after university, we'll only apply for jobs that align with whatever we studied. This is also why you've probably seen a lot of people rewrite their CVs before they apply for jobs so we can have this nice narrative where they can say, "It all makes sense." And because of that, when we follow this script, we don't open ourselves to doing things that don't make sense on paper. It needs to make sense. So that's one, one script, and that's one mechanism. Another one, which I call the crowd-pleaser script, is similar to what you were talking about, a bit of the, the memetic desire and that social pressure. It's the script we follow when we make decisions based on what we think is going to please the people around us. So we only go for the most impressive projects. We want people to say, "Wow, you're working at this company. You're working on this project. You're so cool."... and this is how we make our decisions. And here, m- we might not go for the project that's a bit weird, a bit different, uh, or that might fail, because we're following the crowd-pleaser script. So, that's the second mechanism. And the third mechanism, I think this is the most insidious one, it's linked to what you were asking earlier about purpose. It's the, the Hollywood one, the epic script, the one that says, "Follow your passion," the script that says that whatever you do, it needs to be big, it needs to be impressive, and anything less than that is failure. And this script is really the one where w- we wanna be part of a tribe and we wanna feel like we matter. We wanna feel like if we're gone tomorrow, people will notice. There will be a hole where we are. And because of that, we wanna take space. We wanna be noticed. And again, we're making decisions here not necessarily based on what would be fulfilling to us, but based on what we think other people are going to perceive as impressive.
- CWChris Williamson
All three of those have a sense that somebody else or something else is sort of puppetting our desires, that we're at the mercy of our past, you know, that we need to make this cohesive narrative that ties together very nicely, uh, that we're at the mercy of the opinions of others, what they're going to say about us, uh, that we need to do something which is par for the course or would look impressive, uh, or something which has, like, cosmic impressiveness, you know, not even to a person. It's just this vague sense of legacy, uh, uh, uh, and, and contribution, but not specific contribution. Um, so yeah, it feels to me like all three of those are tied together by outsourcing what it is that you think to something or someone else.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah, exactly. And, uh, this is, this is because it gives us a sense of control, a sense of certainty. Following a script makes us feel like we have a sense of direction, and even if that sense of direction we, we get from the outside still, that feels a little bit more comfortable than admitting to yourself that you have no idea what you want, that what you like today might be completely different from what you will like tomorrow, and that you're a bit lost. That's scary. That's scary to admit that to yourself. And so, that's why we follow these scripts, and that's why we externalize our decision-making in this way.
- 9:03 – 20:45
The Relationship With Humans & Uncertainty
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
- CWChris Williamson
What is the issue that humans have with uncertainty? What, what's our cognitive relationship to the uncertain?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Our brain is designed to reduce uncertainty as much as possible. So, if you think about our ancestral past, the more certainty you had, the more likely you were to survive. If you didn't know what was that weird noise in the bushes over there or where the resour- resources were or who was your enemy in the tribe, you were very likely to die. So, you needed to feel like you knew. You needed to feel like you had enough information to survive. And because of that, and our brains haven't changed that much, right? In the past few thousands of years, we- we're still very, very scared of uncertainty because we associate uncertainty with death. A lot of the risks that we were facing in nature, in our ancestral path, those existential risks of death don't exist anymore. And still, we're reacting, responding exactly in the same way when it comes to uncertainty. And so it does take an effort, and it does take really trying to elevate yourself above those natural automatic instincts in order for you to not just respond to that uncertainty on autopilot.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. To try and fill the gap. There's a, uh... I, I wrote something last week, which I think, I don't know, might, might be interesting to you. So, somebody asked on, uh, Instagram, they asked ChatGPT for a genuinely novel insight that most people don't understand, and ChatGPT said, "Humans never genuinely pursue happiness. They only pursue relief from uncertainty. Happiness emerges momentarily as a byproduct whenever uncertainty briefly disappears." And then, I built-
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... a little bit, a little bit on it and I said, "If you feel like you can't predict the future, you will default to fear, worry, and rumination. Your mindscape will eclipse reality's landscape. Worrying about the thing that you can't predict usually involves a nightmare fantasy, which is way worse than anything that could happen in reality. However, this imagined nightmare briefly collapses the chaos of the world into certainty, and this is how much humans hate not knowing what the future will hold. We would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with something unpredictable."
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
This is, this is amazing. You know, there's actually research that aligns exactly with what you wrote and that shows that people would rather choose self-inflicted pain in an experiment rather than the uncertainty of not knowing when the pain will happen, including the possibility that there might be zero pain, right? So they would rather-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
... press the button and say, "Hit me now." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Rather than waiting and not knowing.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the same reason that Uber is successful. You know, Uber's great because you can order a car from anywhere, from your pocket, and there's safety and reliable drivers and such. But the real reason that Uber's good is that it reduced down the uncertainty of not knowing when the car was going to arrive. You know, it's 10 minutes away, seven minutes away, four minutes away, one minute away, right? I need to go outside. That was what it was good for, as opposed to permanently having to look out of the window to work out...... how long, uh, whether the taxi was there.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
And you see the frustration people get when the time keeps on changing, when it tells you it's going to be here in three minutes, now it's five minutes, now it's back to two minutes, right? You prefer when it's telling you 10 minutes and it doesn't change. So we'd rather have a negative outcome that is certain and where we know what's coming, rather than this outcome that keeps on changing.
- CWChris Williamson
There was a great (clears throat) behavioral science intervention done at Heathrow. So, there was an issue with the wait times for people getting connections in terminal five. It sounds oddly specific if you've never been to Heathrow, but so many people that fly through Heathrow have been through terminal five, so they know exactly the pain. And classic engineering logistics operations mindset, they said, "Well, let's spend 100 million pounds on faster scanners and more conveyor belts, and we'll retrain the staff, and we'll fit them in a different sort of shape, and we'll be able to speed things up." And a friend's company was actually the one that said, "Wa- hang on, before you do that, just let's see if we can not spend quite so much money other than our consultio- con- consultancy fee," um, and they fixed the entire thing just by putting signs up. So they put signs up down the queue that said, "30 minutes from this point, 45 minutes from this point," and all of the signs were about five minutes longer than the amount of time that the actual wait was. So someone got there and they said, "Wow, I mean, you know, it's been 25 minutes, but they said it was going to be 30. Like, that's so great, like, we beat it by five minutes, like, what an amazing..." And it reduced our uncertainty and it actually played with this sort of, uh, I guess, surprise, pleasant surprise of, "I thought it was gonna be 45 minutes. Oh, it was actually 38 minutes." Um, yeah, I just thought that was a, a lovely little intervention.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
This is genius. This is absolutely genius. I love that. And, and I love how it is actually not trying to fix the cognitive bias that we have here, but actually use it, which is the simplest approach and the most cost-effective here too.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. What are some other ways that we can use that cognitive bias, uh, in a, a positive manner, sort of day-to-day life?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
I think the first step is doing a little bit of work when it comes to knowing yourself and, and just self-discovery in general, because we talk a lot about cognitive biases as if they applied equally to everybody, but again, depending on your experiences, depending on the amount of self-work that you've done, depending on whatever challenges that you've faced in the past, it is very likely that you have cognitive biases that are a bit stronger or not as strong. And so I think just having this honest conversation with yourself and knowing which ones you have, and then playing with these. So for example, in my case, I know that if I'm very anxious about something, I'm going to procrastinate a lot. So if I have a big keynote, a big presentation I need to give, I know I'm going to, uh, actually, you know, procrastinate last minute to present this. And so every time I have something really big coming up, I book a meeting two weeks before with a coach that I'm paying to review my content, and because I don't want to show up empty-handed to this, and I, I also know I hate disappointing people, and so I know I will show up with something. And so for me, this is creating a pre-deadline to the deadline, and I will usually prepare for that meeting one hour before. That's how bad my procrastination is. But that's one hour before this meeting, but that's two weeks before (laughs) the actual presentation.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
And you know what? I think since I've implemented this, I'm a lot more, you know, I'm, I'm much happier than when I was trying to fix that bias that I have, and now I've accepted that this is how I respond to anxiety. And a little bit to, you know, similar to what your friends did at Heathrow, I just created a system where it ends up happening, it ends up working, and I don't have to change everything, and I don't even have to change myself too much when it comes to that specific bias.
- CWChris Williamson
I've been thinking about this to do with, uh, partner choice and how people choose different relationships. You know, we like to think of ourselves as totally self-authorable, that there is no skill, or characteristic, or trait that I can't gain or rid myself of, or whatever, and, you know, for the super agentic personal growth people out there, that actually might be true, but you have the choice between dating somebody who compensates for your flaws or somebody that you need to fix your flaws for. And it just seems like getting into a relationship with somebody who actually addresses your flaws as opposed to you having to go through the very long and arduous process of fixing them or getting rid of them is kind of what you're doing there. It's like, look, I could just white-knuckle my way through not procrastinating, or I can use my fear of social judgment and this sort of sense that I need to show up for people that I've paid and that are going to expect work from me, I can just use that to my advantage. I don't need to fix my flaw. I can find someone that compensates it on my behalf.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah, and, uh, actually, now that you're mentioning relationships, I think you can even take it one step further where the outcome is even better in the end. I think my presentations, now that I have the coach, are actually better than when I was working on them on my own, and same with relationships. I, I find that the relationships around me that work the best are not even necessarily the ones where the other person compensates for whatever biases that you have or weaknesses that you have, but where both people actually are more than the sum of each o- of the both of them and where they elevate each other. There's something that happens, there's almost an alchemy that happens between the two, where whatever is the weakness of one of them...... becomes a superpower when they're together. And this is kind of what you wanna, you wanna find, where it's actually even better doing, being together than trying to fix whatever issue that you might have.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm, it's not even compensating for somebody's shortcomings, it's turning your shortcomings into a strength, you know?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, you are a person who is very sensitive and emotionally in tune, and your last relationship was you with somebody who didn't really like that, or they didn't really respect that, or it made them feel uncomfortable, or you were made to feel shame for being that sensitive. And then your next relationship isn't just with somebody who is able to soothe your sensitivity, but someone who's actively attracted to the fact that you're so sensitive. And this has now turned from something that was kind of a bit of an ick, or an obstacle or an issue that needed to be worked around and something that you maybe felt shame about, beyond something that was acceptable, and now to something which is actually a green flag or an attractor or something that's a, a real positive part of the, the relationship.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah. And that also frees up attention, energy, uh, and whatever kind of focus that you want to dedicate to the parts of yourself you actually want to improve. 'Cause there are always going to be parts of yourself you want to improve, where you wanna grow, where you want to explore. But having a partner who not only accepts, but loves and celebrates those parts of you that maybe not everybody would like, and knowing that you don't need to change those, and you can focus on whatever really matters to you, this is also a superpower when you think about it. There are so many people who are wasting so much time and energy trying to fix things that they maybe don't need to fix, because they're in the wrong type of relationship. And, uh, you see that. You see that in so many successful researchers, successful entrepreneurs. They have a partner who has their back and who supports them and loves them the way they are, and they can focus on improving whatever they actually want to improve.
- 20:45 – 26:43
The Usefulness Of Liminal Spaces
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about the usefulness of liminal spaces.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Let me first define what a liminal space is, just in case people have haven't heard the term. Because I actually discovered the term fairly recently, a few years ago, while I was working on my book. The word liminal means in between. It's the same, uh, it comes from limen, Latin, and it's, uh, the same word that you find in subliminal, under the threshold. So it's the in between, it's the doorstep of change, it's the transitional space. And, uh, liminal spaces, uh, are those spaces of very high uncertainty, where you're not back there anymore, but you, you haven't made it to the other side yet. So, I'm just going to give you a couple of very concrete examples. So, um, let's say that you are engaged but not married yet. Or you have graduated university, but you haven't started your first job yet. Maybe you have accepted an offer for a new job, but you haven't started that job yet, and you're in this in between. You're, you're not quite sure what's going to happen next, and it's a space of uncertainty. Our automatic response when we find ourselves in those liminal spaces is to try and get out of them as quickly as possible. We've talked about how much our brains hate uncertainty, and this is why we want to get out of those liminal spaces as quickly as possible. But if we allow ourselves to stay in those liminal spaces, to actually see them for what they are, spaces of opportunity, spaces where there a lot of self-discovery can happen, a lot of growth, then you can learn a lot about yourself, about the kind of work that you might want to do, about the kind of directions that you might want to explore. And it will still be uncomfortable. The uncertainty will still be there. But it will also be very fulfilling.
- CWChris Williamson
Given that we are in a time where people are more anxious than ever before, it seems difficult for people to want to purposefully put themselves into a situation which causes even more uncertainty, even more of a threat response in their mind. What's the solution to working around that?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Well, liminal spaces are inevitable. So you can either, when you find yourself in one, embrace it and make the most out of it, or you can fear them and experience anxiety. You don't necessarily need to seek and create liminal spaces for yourself, although a lot of people do that. But they tend to be a little bit more comfortable with risk. If you're not someone who's very comfortable with risk, you don't have to seek liminal spaces. But you have to know that you will find yourself in those spaces at some point in your life, and several times over the course of your life. Whenever you change jobs, whenever you change relationships, whenever you lose someone, whenever you meet a new person, whenever there's something new and there's a change and a transition in your life, there is a new liminal space. And so the only thing you can do here is really practicing and training yourself to first recognize them and say, "Oof, okay, liminal space, uncertainty, discomfort here. I know what's going on here. But also, let's take a deep breath. What can we learn here? What can we explore? Is there anything I can discover here about myself? Is there any way I can grow while crossing this liminal space?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. What are some liminal spaces that people find themselves in that they might not realize? What are some examples of those?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
So that's, it's, it's interesting, like at-a, if you look at the research around liminal spaces, um, researchers consider that any space of transition is a liminal space. And so we talked about airports, they consider that airports-
- CWChris Williamson
Mmm.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
... are a liminal space, because you're not at home, you're not at your destination yet. Your sense of identity is kind of blurry. Nobody n- really knows who you ha- you are, right? Uh, you just have this number on your plane ticket. And then on- when you're on a plane, um, you're kind of disconnected again in this in-between. Same here, you can decide that you want to get out of this liminal space as quickly as possible, and some people have this mindset. They wanna go from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Other people actually really enjoy that liminal space. They love that they have this little space of, of in-between where things are kind of tr- in transition and where they can maybe open a book that they've been meaning to, to read or journal or listen to a podcast they haven't had time to listen to, or just do nothing. Close your eyes, do nothing, and let your mind wander, which is also an activity that's really good when you find yourself in a liminal space. So really think about any type of liminal space. Um, another one, which to me, I find it a little bit extreme and not that helpful, but talk to a researcher in that space and they will tell you this is a liminal space, uh, a corridor, just a corridor. So when you find yourself in between meetings, for example, walking from one room to another, again, some people they just go from one meeting to another, whereas you see other people take those two minutes that they have walking from one room to another to mentally prepare themselves for the next meeting or make a couple of mental notes and really use that space. Um, so yeah, liminal spaces are literally everywhere.
- 26:43 – 37:59
What is Compensatory Control Theory?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. And talk to me about compensatory control theory.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
So compensatory control theory is a psychological theory that shows that whenever we feel like we're losing control, we try to over-exert control, to feel like we know what we're doing and to know where we're going. And so whenever we find ourselves in a space where there's a lot of uncertainty, we might cling to the first decision, the first solution that seems the most obvious and that seems to have very clear steps. This is also when a lot of people try to control a lot of their behaviors and start having rigid behavioral patterns, so they will maybe have a more rigid routine, more rigid way of managing their time, their energy, their tasks. And, uh, yeah, you basically turn into a little soldier because you feel like that's going to give you the courage that you need to go through whatever moment of uncertainty you're facing right now.
- CWChris Williamson
So there is a, a degree of unpredictability about the world around us, and we try in an attempt to get some order from the chaos, we overcompensate and we try to apply more effort, more sort of deliberate routine in the areas that we do have that control over.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Exactly. And very often that leads to negative effects on your mental health because a lot of those strict regimens that we create for ourselves when we're trying to compensate for a lack of control are not sustainable, because they're not coming from a, you know, a place of, of wanting to grow or fulfillment, right? They're again coming from this place of wanting to be in control, and this is very rarely something that people can keep up with for a very long time. When, uh, their little system breaks down, a lot of people respond with self-blame and self-judgment, and so that creates this vicious cycle where then they then try to be even more in control to prove to themselves that they can be in control.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. It seems like we're always unconsciously seeking structure in one form or another. Is there a, a neuroscience explanation for why people have an addiction to productivity even when it hurts us?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
So it's not necessarily a neuroscience explanation, it's more of a psychological one, but it really comes back to the fact that we are social animals. And again, if you go back to our evolutionary past, being rejected from the tribe also meant death. And so in order to not be rejected from the tribe, you had to prove that you were useful, that you were not dead weight, that whatever resources you needed, you also contributed back to society. So there is already a natural tendency to prove your worth to the people around you. That's the kind of, that's already embedded, uh, as part of our human nature. And then you have today's societies where we have actually created metrics to measure that. We have metrics of success. We have KPIs, OKRs, leaderboards, we have social media. We have so many ways now to publicly measure how successful a person is and how good of a contributor they are to society, and so that exacerbates that anxiety, that natural anxiety that we have already of saying, "Hey, I, I matter. I'm a good contributor. I'm productive."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah, that, um, public productivity or sort of conspicuous effort, uh, a lot of the time I think f- causes people to... I mean, it's the same reason why there's som- I'm sure you probably know this, I think it's organizational psychology, if you have a meeting that's got more than-... Four people in it and everybody agrees on the outcome, the chance of one person objecting to the outcome, even if they don't fully believe it, goes up. It's like, "Oh, well, you know, I- I certainly think that we could do with having another look at the thing." It's like, "Dude, everyone was happy with this." But there's just this sense of if you think a little bit deeper, even if your first instinct is, "This thing's fine," that sounds like being thoughtful, it looks a lot like doing the work and contributing, but it could just be an unnecessary obstacle that you've decided to throw in front of everyone.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Oh, absolutely. There are so many incentives in today's society to look like you're contributing without actually contributing.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
And I actually saw that when I was working at Google at the very beginning of my career, that a lot of engineers that were better at showing the- the work that they'd done, they've done, even if it wasn't a big thing, who spent 20% of their time building, typing code, and then 80% of their time telling people that they've done the thing, were promoted a lot faster than the engineers that were doing the reverse, where they were spending 80% of their time actually fixing the product and making it better.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, there's an interesting blend. I guess, whenever you're in a team, you need to spend enough time contributing so that people don't think you're a freeloader, but you also need to spend enough time reputation managing, so that people actually see that you did the work. And if you can work a little bit and then multiply it by doing more reputation management, then why not?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah. No, exactly. And, uh, I would recommend that anyone who's doing good work is actually also taking the time and making the effort to let other people know about their good work, 'cause nobody's going to know what you've contributed if you're not telling them. Nobody's following you and paying attention. You need to let them know. But it can become a problem at a larger scale when the- that ratio is out of whack and when people are spending more time actually talking about their work...
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
... than actually doing work.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. On the sort of compensatory control, reduction of uncertainty, uh, this need for experimentation and exploration, does that mean that it's sort of inevitable for people to run out of steam after they've pursued something for a long enough time, even if it was something that once was superbly aligned and mission-driven and highly motivating? Is it, it's just going to happen that there's a life cycle to your desire to do that thing?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
It really depends on how much self-complexity you have in your life. Uh, so self-complexity is basically the number of identities that you have. And so, you know, you could be, for example, an entrepreneur, and a father, and a writer, and a marathon runner. So you have those four identities. Uh, what's great about having high self-complexity, so you have several of those identities, is that when one of these identities is not something that is working really well right now for whatever reason, and those reasons could be external, so I don't know, maybe you hurt yourself and you can't run, uh, or... or it could be internal, maybe you lost interest in- in one of your hobbies, or maybe you keep on fighting with your spouse or whatever it is, then you have your other identities where you can still thrive and- and explore. What's really nice too is that when you do this, you can actually pause some of those identities that you have and not put as much energy into them and come back to them whenever your level of curiosity and excitement, uh, and all of that is replenished and you actually want to start again. Uh, a lot of people burn out of their ideas or- or get bored or- or decide to stop fully because it's the only one thing that they're pursuing. They put all of their eggs in the same basket, and so at some point, when they feel like they don't want to do that thing anymore, they just move on to the next thing. And so for these people, not being interested in a current idea anymore means that you have to move on to a new one, versus, "Actually, you know what? I'm taking a break from this. I might come back to it later." And so the people who have this high level of self-complexity, you could see them actually still pursuing a hobby that they started in their 20s and now they're in their 60s, and if you ask them, "Have you been doing this consistently every week for your entire life?" They'll tell you, "No, absolutely not, actually. I had five years when I didn't do any woodworking or whatever. I was more interested in something else. But then I came back to it."
- CWChris Williamson
So self-complexity allows people, when they begin to run out of steam or they get a little bit bored with something, because there are other places that they can be kept busy, uh, take a sense of purpose, pleasure, belonging from, as opposed to completely having to exit the position because there's only one position, that position is able to stay open and they can do some other stuff and then go back to it, as opposed to people whose entire identity is wrapped up in one thing. I suppose... That's an interesting... There's an interesting tension going on there between wanting a routine because you know that iterating and consistency and habits are where most progress comes from, uh, and boredom, because by doing a small number of things more consistently, you are speeding up the pace at which you're going to get sick of doing them. Uh, it feels like there's a... a little tension going on there.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah, no, absolutely, and I- I think the idea here is not necessarily to start new things and abandon them every two weeks, right? Uh, it- self-complexity is based on different senses of identities, and so if you want to have those identities, you need to inhabit them for long enough that you actually develop an identity here. So, it's really not about having a thousand things going on at the same time and barely paying attention to them. Uh, it's more about maybe having four or five different kind of routines going on, but also allowing yourself if at some point you feel like your heart is not in it right now, to pause this and come back to it later. It's, uh, it's really the idea of almost, like, instead of being mono-passion and- and then when that passion is gone, you feel like that's the end. "This relationship is over. I'm moving on to the next one." Of having a more of a, you know, being poly-passionate where you feel like, "Okay, that's it. Like, I'm more interested in someone else right now, something else, and I- I'll come back to this relationship later on."
- 37:59 – 56:52
What is Time Anxiety?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
- CWChris Williamson
What about time anxiety? Talk to me about that.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
So, time anxiety is the fear that you're not making the most of your time, and, uh, it's- uh, it's based on the- it's based on the very quantitative definition of time. So, there's something I find really interesting is that in English there's just one word, time, and, uh, in French, my native language, this is- is the same, just tempe, and a- a lot of languages only have one word for time. But in ancient Greek, they had two words for time, chronos and kairos. Chronos is our definition of time, quantitative, where it's the time of- of seconds and minutes and weeks and month, and, uh, there's really this feeling that you have this limited amount of time and you need to fill it with as much stuff as possible. And that living a full life is filling all of these boxes with as much stuff as you can. Um, I don't know if you've seen, you're familiar with, uh, Tim Urban's Your Life in Weeks visual, right? Uh, it's gone viral so many times now that I think most people can see it, and it's really showing your life as this series of identical boxes, which a lot of people report gives them anxiety to look at and- and seeing this that could fit on a little Post-It note with all of these little boxes and feeling like, "Oh, I'm already halfway and- and those are the boxes that I have left." This is time anxiety. The ancient Greeks had another word again for time, which is kairos, which is a more qualitative definition of time, and it's the idea that time is elastic, that it's not a series of identical boxes, but that some moments can stretch forever, where some moments can go really fast. And, um, and an example I can- I can give you, I think we've all experienced is when you're chatting with a friend, and, uh, all of a sudden you look at your phone or your watch and you see the time and you feel like, "Oh, what happened? Where has the time gone?" And that's a kairos moment that- experiencing kairos, where you come- you don't know it- was it five minutes? Was it two hours? You have no idea. And this is because we experience this- this depth of time, and when you focus on kairos, you have a lot less time anxiety because you're not so obsessed with doing as much as you can with your life. You're instead really trying to optimize for having really deep experiences.
- CWChris Williamson
What does focusing on kairos mean from a tactical perspective?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
So, it's really about being intentional with how you spend your time, not based on the quantity of work that you want to produce, not based on your productivity, but based on the depth of the experience. And so to give you a few examples, focusing on kairos is knowing that maybe right now the most- the be- the best way to spend your time is actually to read a bedtime story to your kid instead of finishing that presentation. Maybe the best way to spend your time right now is taking a nap or reading a book or going outside and stretch or taking a walk. Maybe the best time to spend your work- your- your time right now is actually to get into hyper-focus mode and finish that piece of work or that essay that you're working on and that you really wanna get done. And so really focusing on each moment, the depth of the experience, and, uh, really which I'm very aware is hard to measure, um, but your- your sense of aliveness. How alive does this moment feel for you? The more robotic you feel, the more you're in chronos time. The more organic and alive every moment feels in terms of the decisions that you're making and the way you're spending your energy and your attention, the more you're in kairos time.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. I think a lot of people feel a sense of shame when they let go of busyness and-
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... sort of driving forward, uh, maybe toward their purpose, maybe towards some sort of undefined, undetermined sense of progress. But, uh, yeah, there's a lot of- a lot of discomfort and shame around that.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
We live in a chronos society, and so even though we know that for our mental health and well-being the- the more we- we spend, we live in kairos time, the better it is for us. It is the reality that our entire society is designed around the rules of chronos. So, we all use our calendars to know where we should be.... at what time. This is how we're having this conversation right now because we said, "Let's meet at this time and have this conversation." We all have deadlines. If you're working at any kind of company, you have projects with a project plan and you have daily variables. And in addition to this, there is this chronos timeline that we have all created for ourselves that says that you are supposed to have achieved certain things by a certain age. So you're supposed to have children by this age, you're supposed to have bought your first house by this age, to have found a partner by this age, you're supposed to have saved X amount of money by this age, right? So it's really no wonder that people have this time anxiety that you just described, where this pressure and this sense of, of shame if they're not ticking all of the boxes in the right order, at the right speed. I think this is completely normal. And so again, in an ideal world, we would all be in kairos time, but instead what I really recommend is just trying to carve out a little bit of kairos time in your life. It doesn't have to be all the time, because again, not always possible, but what would it look like if on a Sunday you took a couple of hours and you said, "That's my kairos moment." Just listening to yourself, "What, what do I actually want to do right now? If I forget about success, productivity, if I forget about the timeline, what do I want to do in this moment?" And just practicing doing this, even though it will feel a bit uncomfortable at the beginning.
- CWChris Williamson
What would be your advice for someone who's very burned out, struggling with passion, and doesn't even know what to sort of start experimenting with? W- where would they begin?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
It always, always starts with observation. And, uh, I, I see a lot of people suffering even more when they're in that situation, when they feel stuck, because they're a little bit like people drowning and moving a lot and trying to get back to the surface, they're, they're just trying everything. They feel like they need to find a solution right now. And what you're describing here, being a bit lost, not knowing where you're going, and feeling a little bit burned out, that is actually a liminal space that we've talked about. So this is exactly, this is an example where you can practice. Instead of trying to get to the other side as quickly as possible, instead of trying to find a solution as quickly as possible, really staying in that space and observing. So just like an anthropologist that's going to go and study a new culture, you can observe your own life without any kind of judgment. You're just observing this life, which you can pretend you know nothing about, and you can ask questions like, "Why do I care about this? Why do I spend my time like this? Why do I spend my energy and my attention like this? What am I curious about? What am I excited about? What gives me energy? What drains my energy?" And you can take little notes. You can do that for just 24 hours. And really remember that you're not trying to find a solution here. You're just observing the current situation, and it's only when you've started observing the current situation that you can start noticing little patterns, little things that you might want to experiment with. And so things that you've been doing maybe on autopilot for years, routines that you have that have become deeply ingrained, ways of thinking that seemed obvious before you started actually observing them, those can be the seeds of tiny experiments where you can say, "Okay, wait a minute. It doesn't necessarily have to be this way. So what could be different? What could I try here?"
- CWChris Williamson
From a brain science perspective, what does novelty and experimentation do? What, what's the effect that it has on the brain?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
It basically gives you... Not that I wanna say, there's no good or bad kind of dopamine, but, uh, a more positive type of activation of the dopaminergic system, uh, in the sense that it gives you the sense of reward through novel experiences. And, uh, what's, you know, what's really addictive with social media, a lot of modern experiences is the, the variable reward schedule. So the idea that you don't know what you're going to get next. When you scroll on social media, you don't know is it going to be interesting or not? "I'm not sure, I keep on scrolling." When you experiment, you're actually creating that kind of variable reward schedule for your life. You try something and you're not quite sure whether this is going to work or not. And especially if you keep your experiments tiny, you're not taking a really big risk here, right? You're just trying something new for a short period of time, seeing whether that's going to work or not. If it works, it's great, and if it doesn't, you can tweak something and go for another iteration. And so in a way, it's, it's really a way to almost hook your brain on personal growth, where you wanna know what's going to happen next. You wanna try and you have this novelty seeking, but that is targeted at self-discovery.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. Okay. So given that you've done an awful lot of these different experiments, which one, in your opinion, has had the most surprising impact? Or which one could you not have predicted the most?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Um, probably my YouTube experiment. I, um, so a few years ago, I don't know why, but a lot of my friends decided to start YouTube channels and they were all super excited about it. Everybody was saying, "You need to do, you need to create a YouTube channel. You need to be on YouTube." And, uh, up to this point...... just kind of doing what other people around me were doing when it came to creating content online and those kind of things. It kind of worked, right? It's just people said, "Start a newsletter." I experimented with that, liked it, and I kept on going. Um, had a blog and all of that. I created a Twitter account, et cetera. And so I felt like, "Okay, my friends like it. Let's experiment with this." And so I did a tiny experiment where I said, "Until the end of the year, I'm going to record myself and post a video on YouTube every week." And, uh, in terms of external results, it was okay. People liked it. Uh, the, the growth was okay, to the point where if I had only looked at that, I probably should have kept going. But what was surprising to me is that I absolutely hated recording (laughs) those videos. Really hated it, uh, to the point where any time I had to sit down in front of the camera one day... If I knew on a Thursday that in the afternoon I was supposed to sit down and record myself, my level of procrastination on everything else was through the roof. I was not able to work on anything else. I kept on thinking, "Oh, I have to record this thing tonight." And, um, that was... That was surprising to me in the sense that up to this point there hadn't really been anything on the internet I felt uncomfortable (laughs) doing. I had been sharing all of my thoughts, learning in public. I'm, um... I grew up with the internet, you know? I've always been really comfortable with it. And that one thing, somehow, is not my thing. And so I, I learned. I, you know, again, just discovered that about myself. And the great thing about this experiment is that some people might say, "Oh, it's a failed experiment. She didn't continue with her YouTube channel." But to me it's a success because now I know. I'm not wondering anymore. When I see my friends who have very successful YouTube channels, I'm not looking at them and feeling like, "Oh, should I do that?" I know that I shouldn't because I don't like it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah, I suppose that's the unseen benefit of something not working is that you know that you don't need to try it anymore.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah, exactly. I've literally been there, done that, not for me. And again, it really frees up a lot of your mental energy to focus on the things that actually matter and that you actually enjoy working on.
- CWChris Williamson
What is the science of what actually makes a habit stick in the brain, then?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Well, you, you need to do it enough times, first. Uh, there i- Contrary to what a lot of people are saying, it doesn't take 21 days. We actually don't know how long it takes. It varies a lot across people and it varies a lot depending on what habit you're trying to build and where you're starting from. But we know it does take quite a few repetitions in order to build a habit. So, that's one thing. Second, enjoying it does make it a lot easier. We form habits a lot quicker if we actually like what we're doing. Uh, and a third, a sense of progress, uh, in the sense that if there's a habit that's a little bit difficult to build at the beginning, feeling like every time you do it y- you get a little bit better and it's a little bit easier is going to make it a lot stickier. 'Cause again, you wanna see where you're going to go. So, if you're trying to build a walking habit, for example, you wanna go for a walk every day, just noticing that every day you can walk for a few more minutes so it's a little bit easier to get started, that's also going to help you build habits faster.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. What about... Uh, I mean, it's... I- I'm in Austin, Texas. It is the home of the cold plunge. Uh- (laughs)
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) What's the physiology behind why cold works so well?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
So, I actually don't know. I haven't read anything about that, and I've tried to cold plunge once-
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
... in my entire life.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
And... Yeah. Um, and, uh, I can, I can see just from personal experience, I could... I, I could tell why people got addicted to it. It felt... Actually, it felt really, really good. But yeah, I don't know. I haven't read any of the research about that.
- CWChris Williamson
Ah, I see. I... That could have been... That might be the next one. Uh, I know you looked at, uh, posture and how posture is sort of related to mental health and, and, and the way that our bodies respond. I thought power poses had been completely debunked in A Replication Crisis, but I don't know, maybe all of that's actually been double debunked.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
No, no, no, it's been debunked. Uh, so I actually... It's interesting because this is an example I give all the time about my blog, uh, where I actually l-... I wrote an article about power posing and then read an, uh, a research paper. Then someone replied and said, "Hey, that has been debunked." I hadn't seen it. So I posted then another newsletter saying, "That's been debunked." And I left the previous one and, and linked to the new one saying, "Hey, I'm sorry," basically. Uh, and this is something that I really like about learning in public, is that you can actually make mistakes and then say, "I was wrong and that's okay." Um, so yeah, I did write about it and then I wrote about the paper where it's been debunked, and I don't think it's been double debunked. It's, it's fully properly debunked.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Okay. So what should we do with our posture? Does it matter at all?
- 56:52 – 1:06:24
Dopamine Loops & Our Sleep-Wake Cycles
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
What about, uh, dopamine loops on a morning? It seems, it's strange, morning time's really weird for me. E- evening times too, but morning times especially. Um, I've woken up either to classic music, like classical stuff, uh, or talking NPR-style radio for probably the best part of a decade because I found that if I woke up to music, and it was even the most marginally memorable song, my brain was like super permeable first thing in the morning. I don't know what it is about it, but for some reason, you know, oh, I guess it's just Miley Cyrus, Party in the U.S.A., for the rest of my W- Tuesday afternoon because, you know, I woke up and the radio station decided to play Miley Cyrus this morning. So, yeah, what's happening with, with dopamine in the morning with the state of the brain when we first wake up?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah. Uh, what you're talking about, by the way, has less to do with dopamine and more to do with the fact that you're still half asleep and, uh, and when we're, we're, we're asleep, we're still processing a lot of information, but in a very open way. We're, the, you know, we're, we're not consciously processing information, and so whatever comes in and whatever we're, we're dreaming or thinking about, our brain takes at face value basically. And so those first couple of minutes, anything that you hear or that you listen is going to be integrated as part of your memories. Um, so, it's actually really good-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, wow.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah. So good, good intuition to, to go with something you'd rather put in your brain (laughs) rather than Miley Cyrus. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. What about dopamine loops? What else is happening in the morning?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah. So dopamine loops, uh, so, in the, in the morning, the, the problem that a lot of people have experienced is that whatever source of dopamine that you're getting in the, in the morning is then going to be something that you're going to keep on seeking over and over again throughout the day. Uh, and so this is why, I think a lot of people know that, but it doesn't mean they're using that information and acting on it, but we all know that opening your, your phone and scrolling through social media first thing is the m- in the morning is one of the, the worst things that you can do. And if you manage to delay doing that as much as possible and wait until you're fully awake and that your prefrontal cortex is fully active a little bit later in the morning, this is when you have then more willpower. And so you're more likely to be able later in the day to open social media, have a quick look, do whatever's called, whatever stories of your friends that you wanna check and then close it. If first thing in the morning, while again, you're in that very vulnerable state, you start scrolling on social media, you're going to make your brain crave that same source of dopamine for the rest of the day and it's going to be a lot harder for you to, to control yourself and to control those cravings.
- CWChris Williamson
Can you think about an adaptive reason for why that mechanism exists? Why would it be that the first thing that gives us dopamine in the morning would be the thing that we try and chase for the rest of the day? I, I'm not denying that that's a, a pattern that happens. I can certainly see it in some areas of my own life, but I cannot work out why-
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... we have that.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
This is fully, fully hypothetical, but to me, a potential evolutionary explanation to this is that in the past, and if you even look at, at tribes nowadays with where they do most of the evolutionary research, you have days dedicated to certain tasks. So there is a day where people go hunting or gathering. There is a day that is for resting, there is a day that is for, like, batch cooking or, or mending their cloth or whatever it is. And so I wonder if in a society where we used to have, you know, each day had a purpose, where you knew that's what you had to do that day, there wasn't more value in being primed, in a way, with whatever it is. Where, where you're supposed to get your dopamine from today.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
And, uh, so if you started your day focusing on, you know, talking about hunting and, and whatever, and then you were ready and primed, and you could go and do that for the rest of the day and you would get really excited. Whereas today, we're doing 1,000 different things throughout the day-And so that mechanism doesn't really work as well. And also, the source of dopamine that we get early in the morning might not necessarily be the one we- we wanna be craving for the rest of the day.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's hypernormal. It's at a dose way higher than we would've ever got-
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... previously.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's very interesting. I li- look, this is the home of bro science, so you are among friends here if you wanna speculate and pontificate about different potential reasons for why this theory might exist. What about the other end of the day then, on a nighttime, um, how can we trick our brain into better sleep?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
So again, I think a lot of people know that already, blue light, avoiding being on a screen, having an evening routine. I think the- the one thing really to keep in mind, which is- is going to sound so obvious when I say it but somehow people ignore it, is that by the end of the day you're tired. You're tired. You don't have enough energy to make good decisions anymore. So anything you can do earlier in the day to facilitate good decision making in the evening is going to help you sleep better. So, you know, maybe don't have a TV in your bedroom if you can avoid doing that. Maybe have your phone charger outside of the bedroom as well. Um, maybe... dis- you know, I'm saying, I'm just thinking about screens because I see so many people who literally ha- watch TV while having dinner and then they go to the bedroom and they watch more TV while in bed. Get rid of the- the screens, uh, but a- as I'm saying this, and I know not many people are actually going to do it, uh, it's definitely one of those things where, again, because your energy stores are so depleted in the evening, it's actually really, really hard to make good decisions. So envi- environmental design, anything you can do to design your environment where even if you have one brain cell that's still working in the evening, you're still going to make the right decision, this is really the best investment you can make.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it's a... Uh, you know, the- the two ends of the day seem to be the areas that people make a ton of bad decisions. Um, it... You know, look, everybody fucks up and we are in a world that's designed to capture your attention, but you do have these two windows that are weirdly absorbent, uh, or kind of influential, and, you know, if you were going to spend your time on screens being stimulated by dopamine, you know, bundling that into the middle of the day is... If- if that was a, you know, decision, you could move around the proportion of how all of this different stuff happens. Uh, but yeah, I like the idea of making easy decisions better. I think putting the phone charger outside of your bedroom is a very easy solution for this. And for anybody that uses their phone for their alarm, radio alarm clocks have been around for 100 years, so I think the... that excuse, I'm not convinced quite works. Uh, yeah, I- i- it's- it's a very strange thing to think about how much what we consider of as ingrained thought patterns or a part of our nature is actually some weird reflection of a habit or an activity or an action that we keep on doing to ourselves, and before we know it, we're kind of being puppeted internally by a thing that we did externally.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
No, absolutely. And this, uh... Also, I think, you know, we need to have a little bit of, uh, self-compassion also when it comes to these things, because a lot of the being on our- our screens, scrolling through social media, watching TV in the evening, for a lot of us, this is a numbing mechanism, a coping mechanism to deal with stress and anxiety. Uh, a lot of people come back from work tired and stressed, and the only way they can disconnect that they know of... Because again they... it's just so easy, right? You just turn the TV on or you go and you scroll through social media. And so I think also giving ourselves a little bit of- of grace and knowing that this is what's going on is important. And so, as you said, maybe start implementing easy, small changes. It doesn't have to be perfect.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Uh, so charger outside of the room and also putting a timer on te- in terms of how long you stay on social media in the evening. After... Or maybe saying, "No scrolling while I'm eating. I'm going to eat and I'm not going to look at any screen when I do that." There are small changes that you can do and if it's not perfect, it's okay.
- 1:06:24 – 1:06:59
Find Out More About Anne-Laure
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. Uh, where should people go if they wanna keep up to date with all of the things that you're doing?
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
So people can find my book, Tiny Experiments, anywhere books are sold. I talk about a lot of the topics that we discussed together in it. And, uh, I have a newsletter at nestlabs.com, which I send every Thursday.
- CWChris Williamson
Heck yeah. I appreciate you very much. Thank you for today.
- ACAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
Congratulations, you made it to the end of the episode. And if you want more, well, why don't you press right here? Come on.
Episode duration: 1:06:59
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