How tiny experiments can lead to exponential outcomes

This week in my latest Big Think column, I had the pleasure of speaking with writer and neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff about her upcoming book — Tiny Experiments — which comes out next month.

I’ve been a longtime admirer of Anne-Laure’s work — her newsletter has been a genuine source of insight for me — so it was fun to be able to sit down and ask her a few questions. Our discussion explored the intersections of creativity, long-term thinking, and the power of reframing decisions as experiments — an approach, she argues, that can transform uncertainty into a continuous feedback loop of discovery.

One insight — particularly related to investing — stood out to me: “By treating business and investment decisions as experiments, our fear of failure can turn into curiosity about what we might discover,” she says. “Any result becomes valuable information for our next experiment. This experimental mindset is how we can embrace uncertainty as a source of discovery.” She continues:

Key quote: “You’ve probably heard about the exploration-exploitation dilemma. Our brains are wired for efficiency, which can lead us to optimize for productivity at the expense of curiosity. That’s why we need to intentionally create space for exploration. I like to call this a ‘curiosity hour’ — a weekly appointment with yourself to explore questions that fascinate you, even if they have no obvious practical application. Read that intriguing paper, fall into that Wikipedia rabbit hole, or dive into that random topic that caught your attention.”

A simple cure for information overload: “Outcome Orientation”

The writer and entrepreneur Cedric Chin no longer suffers from information overload. Not because he optimized his workflow — or hurled his smartphone into a lake somewhere. It’s for a simpler reason. He adopted a new mindset: Outcome Orientation.

In a recent essay — which I highly recommend to anyone trying to navigate today’s endless flood of content — he shares a simple yet powerful approach: before consuming any piece of information, ask yourself, “What is the outcome I’m trying to achieve here?” It’s a subtle shift, but one with profound impact — one that I’m personally eager to put into practice. “The results are wonderful,” Cedric writes. “Over the past six months my mind feels less like a crowded library, and more like a clean, open field with plenty of space to think.”

Key quote: “The point is not to control your time allocation, the point is to always be aware of why you are consuming something as you are consuming it. If you do this, you will automatically change your time allocation as a result. This seems stupidly simple, but it’s actually really hard to do. This is one of those Charlie Munger-type ‘take a simple idea and take it very seriously’ ideas, which belongs on the same shelf as ‘eat healthy and exercise a lot’ — deceptively simple on the surface, difficult to do because it demands discipline, but if you actually take it seriously and put it to practice … you will change your life.”

Some press:

Watch Nightview Capital Portfolio Manager Daniel Crowley, CFA, discuss his outlook on gaming stocks post-earnings on the Schwab Network this week.

A few more links I enjoyed:

The Conviction that Inspires Us – via Ian Cassel

Key quote: “‍The longer I invest the more I realize only a fraction of stocks (a fraction of winning stocks) are meant for you. The select few where your experience, diligence, temperament, timing, and luck all collide into creating a situation where you can build real conviction before the world finds it.”

AI or Die – via Ravi Gupta

Key quote: “‍Is your company positioned to take advantage of access to a country of geniuses in a datacenter? Is your company positioned to compete with the company that does take advantage of access to a country of geniuses in a datacenter? The game on the field is about to change. The leaderboard in your industry is going to shift violently over the next few years. If you have prepared your company for this, congratulations. You can stop reading. Still here? Great. What do you do now?”

We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It – via Charles Mann

Key quote: “Water, food, energy, public health — these embody a gloriously egalitarian and democratic vision of our society. Americans may fight over red and blue, but everyone benefits in the same way from the electric grid. Water troubles and food contamination are afflictions for rich and poor alike. These systems are powerful reminders of our common purpose as a society — a source of inspiration when one seems badly needed.”

From the archives:

‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination’ – via J.K. Rowling (Harvard, 2008)

Key quote: “So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”