The Problem With Goals Nobody Says Out Loud
You've been told that the path to anything worthwhile is to set a clear goal, make it measurable, and push until you hit it. It's such standard advice that questioning it feels almost irresponsible. Tiny Experiments, published in 2025, questions it anyway, and the case is more persuasive than you'd expect.
The problem with a rigid goal is that it asks you to predict the future and then punishes you for being wrong. You commit to an outcome before you have the information that would tell you whether it's the right outcome. If the world shifts, or you learn something that changes what you want, the goal becomes a cage you feel guilty for leaving. Worse, a goal is binary. You hit it or you don't, and "don't" arrives labeled as failure even when you learned a great deal on the way.
Le Cunff's alternative is to stop treating your life and work as a series of targets and start treating them as a series of experiments. An experiment doesn't ask you to know the answer in advance. It asks you to run a fair test and pay attention to what happens. You can't fail an experiment; you can only get results, and results are useful no matter which way they point.
This isn't anti-ambition. It's a different relationship with uncertainty, one that keeps you in motion when a goal-based approach would have you frozen, procrastinating, or quitting in shame. The rest of this article is how to actually do it.
Who Anne-Laure Le Cunff Is, and Why It Matters
Credibility matters with self-help, so it's worth knowing where this book comes from. Anne-Laure Le Cunff left a career at Google to study neuroscience, earning a PhD at King's College London, and along the way built Ness Labs, a community and newsletter read by a large audience of people obsessed with learning, creativity, and how the mind works.
That background shows up in the book's texture. The ideas are grounded in research on curiosity, metacognition, and motivation rather than in the usual founder anecdotes, and many of the frameworks were stress-tested for years on a real audience before they became a book. The two we'll lean on most, the PACT and Plus Minus Next, were Ness Labs tools long before 2025.
It also explains why the approach fits a certain kind of reader so well. If you're someone who learns in public, keeps notes on what you read, and treats your own development as an ongoing project, this book is speaking your language. It's the rare productivity title that's really about thinking, and about building a practice of curiosity you can sustain for decades rather than a sprint you'll abandon by February.
The PACT: A Better Unit Than the Goal
Here's the central tool, and the thing to actually adopt first. Instead of setting a goal, you make a PACT, which Le Cunff frames as a simple commitment in the form: "I will [action] for [duration]."
PACT stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable. Compare it to the familiar SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) and the difference is the whole point. SMART goals fixate on a measurable outcome. A PACT commits to a repeatable action over a set period, then lets the outcome be whatever it turns out to be.
Some examples, written the way the format wants them:
- Not "get 1,000 newsletter subscribers," but "I will publish one short essay every week for eight weeks."
- Not "read 24 books this year," but "I will read 20 pages every morning for one month."
- Not "learn Spanish," but "I will study Spanish for 15 minutes a day for 30 days."
Look at what changes. Each PACT is fully inside your control; you can't directly make people subscribe, but you can absolutely publish. Each has a built-in end date, so it's a test, not a life sentence. And each is trackable in the simplest possible way: did you do the action today, yes or no. At the end of the duration, you don't ask "did I succeed?" You ask "what did I learn, and do I want to run this again, change it, or stop?"
That last question is the quiet superpower of the format. A goal that ends has to be either won or lost. A PACT that ends just graduates to a decision, made with real data you didn't have before.
| SMART goal | PACT (tiny experiment) | |
|---|---|---|
| Commits you to | A specific outcome | A repeated action |
| Control over the target | Often partial or none | Almost total |
| Ends in | Success or failure | Findings and a decision |
| Emotional load | High (identity on the line) | Low (it's a test) |
| Handles changed circumstances | Badly (cage) | Well (just run a new one) |
| Best for | Known, stable targets | Curiosity and uncertainty |
Turning Outcomes Into Data
The PACT changes what you commit to. This next shift changes how you feel about the result, and it's what keeps people going.
Under a goal mindset, an unmet goal is a personal verdict. You set out to do the thing, you didn't, and the story you tell yourself is about your discipline or your worth. That story is expensive. It's the reason so many abandoned projects come with a side of shame that makes starting the next one harder.
Under an experimental mindset, the end of a cycle produces findings instead. "I committed to writing every morning for two weeks. I managed nine of fourteen days, the writing was easiest right after coffee, and I dried up completely on days I checked email first." None of that is success or failure. It's a lab notebook. It tells you something true about how you actually operate, which is exactly the information a goal would have buried under a binary pass or fail.
This is why the approach is so durable. By lowering the emotional stakes of any single attempt, it raises the odds that you'll attempt the next thing at all. Curiosity survives where willpower burns out. And the findings accumulate: run enough small experiments and you build a remarkably accurate model of your own motivation, attention, and interests, which is worth more than hitting any one arbitrary number. It pairs well with the slow, compounding view of growth we describe in the synthesis loop.
Plus Minus Next: The Reflection Engine
An experiment without observation is just activity. The piece that converts a finished PACT into actual learning is reflection, and Le Cunff's tool for it is a weekly review called Plus Minus Next.
It's about as simple as a framework gets. Draw three columns:
- Plus: what went well this week, what gave you energy, what you want more of.
- Minus: what didn't work, what drained you, what got in the way.
- Next: what you'll change or try in the coming week based on the two columns above.
The power is in the rhythm, not the columns. Done weekly, Plus Minus Next creates a tight feedback loop where each cycle informs the next, which is what makes a string of tiny experiments add up to a direction instead of a random walk. The Minus column is where you spot the patterns sabotaging you. The Next column is where this week's findings become next week's PACT.
This is also the moment your reading and highlighting earn their keep. A weekly review is far richer when you can scan what actually struck you during the week, the passages you marked, the ideas you flagged, rather than reconstructing it from a foggy memory. Reviewing your recent highlights as part of Plus Minus Next turns passive saving into active sense-making, the same engagement-first principle behind why your read-it-later queue is a graveyard. The review is where the week gets metabolized.
Learning in Public: Where Curiosity Compounds
One of the book's threads is that experiments run better in the open. Sharing what you're trying, and reporting what you found, does three things a private attempt can't.
It recruits feedback. The moment you publish "I'm spending a month testing whether morning pages improve my focus," people who've run the same experiment show up with what they learned, and you skip mistakes you'd otherwise make. It creates gentle accountability, the good kind that comes from interest rather than pressure. And it builds a public record of your thinking that becomes an asset over time, a trail others can follow and that you can mine later.
This is the oldest idea in learning, not a new one. Knowledge has always grown faster when people work in the open, a history we trace in reading was always social. The modern version just has better tools.
It's also exactly where a social highlighting practice and the experimental mindset reinforce each other. When you highlight in public with Glasp, the passages you find worth keeping become visible to others on the same path, and theirs to you, which is its own form of accountability and discovery through the community feed. Your highlights, notes, and the experiments you write up accumulate into a public profile that works like a digital commonplace book: a living record of what you've been curious about and what you've learned, which is a far better legacy than a list of goals you once set.
Running Tiny Experiments on Your Own Learning
Let's make this concrete for a reader and knowledge-builder, since that's where the approach and a highlighting habit fit together best. Here's a full cycle you can start this week.
Pick one curiosity, not one goal. Notice something you're genuinely drawn to: a topic, a skill, a question you keep circling. Don't turn it into "become an expert in X." Turn it into a test.
Write the PACT. Use the format. "I will read and highlight one article about [topic] every weekday for two weeks." Or "I will write one paragraph connecting what I read each day for ten days." Short duration, daily-ish action, trackable with a yes or no.
Capture as you go. Run the experiment and leave a trail. Highlight what strikes you on the web or in Kindle books, and jot a sentence on why it mattered. The trail is your data; don't trust memory to keep it. If you want the deeper version of building knowledge from these traces, see personal knowledge management.
Run Plus Minus Next. At the end of each week, review the trail. What did you learn (Plus), what didn't work (Minus), what will you change (Next). Let any open questions become the next PACT.
Make a real decision. When the duration ends, choose deliberately: run it again, modify it, or drop it and chase a different thread. You're choosing with evidence now, which is the entire benefit. You can even interrogate your own trail; ask Glasp's AI chat what your highlights from the experiment suggest, then decide.
The compounding effect is the payoff. Each cycle teaches you something about both the topic and yourself, and the public record grows into something genuinely yours.
The Honest Risks (and How to Avoid Them)
No framework is free, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of dishonesty. Two real risks come with the experimental mindset.
The first is using "it's just an experiment" as permanent permission to stay shallow. Some things only reward sustained commitment, and an endless series of two-week dabbles can become a sophisticated way to avoid ever going deep. Le Cunff's own tools are the guardrail here: the duration and the tracking are what separate a real experiment from idle novelty-seeking. A test you actually finish and review is evidence. A thing you poke at for three days and abandon is just distraction wearing a lab coat. When an experiment's findings point toward depth, the honest move is to commit, and goals aren't the enemy when you've earned your way to one with data.
The second is mistaking motion for progress. Running experiments can feel productive in the same hollow way that highlighting everything feels productive. Reflection is the antidote. Without the Plus Minus Next step, you're just busy. With it, you're learning. If you only adopt one habit from this book, make it the weekly review, because that's the part that turns activity into understanding.
Read with those caveats in mind and the approach is hard to beat for anyone navigating uncertainty, which is most of us, most of the time. And do read it; Le Cunff's research, stories, and full framework deserve the book, not just this guide to applying it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Tiny Experiments about?
It's a book by Anne-Laure Le Cunff arguing that rigid, linear goals are a poor fit for how curiosity and real life work, and that treating your choices as small, time-boxed experiments is a healthier and more sustainable alternative. Instead of committing to outcomes you can't control, you commit to actions you can, observe the results without judgment, and let what you learn guide what you do next.
What is a PACT in Tiny Experiments?
A PACT is Le Cunff's replacement for a goal, written as "I will [action] for [duration]." It stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable. Unlike a SMART goal, which fixates on a measurable outcome, a PACT commits you to a repeatable process within your control over a set period, after which you decide whether to continue, change, or stop based on what you learned.
How is a tiny experiment different from a SMART goal?
A SMART goal targets a specific outcome and ends in success or failure. A tiny experiment commits to an action over a duration and ends in findings plus a decision. The experiment keeps the stakes low, stays inside your control, and adapts gracefully when circumstances change, which makes it better suited to curiosity and uncertainty. SMART goals still work well for stable, well-understood targets.
What is the Plus Minus Next method?
It's a weekly reflection from Ness Labs with three columns: Plus (what went well), Minus (what didn't), and Next (what you'll try based on the first two). Run regularly, it turns a series of experiments into a feedback loop, so each week's findings shape the next week's actions. It's the reflection step that converts activity into actual learning.
How can I use Tiny Experiments to learn better?
Pick a curiosity and turn it into a PACT, such as "I will read and highlight one article on this topic every weekday for two weeks." Capture what strikes you as you go, review it weekly with Plus Minus Next, and then decide with evidence whether to continue, adjust, or move on. Keeping a searchable trail of highlights and notes makes the reflection step far richer than relying on memory.
Conclusion
Tiny Experiments lands because it names something a lot of people feel but rarely say: that the relentless goal-setting we've been sold often produces more guilt than growth. Its fix isn't to abandon ambition. It's to swap the brittle promise of a fixed outcome for the resilient practice of running small, honest tests and paying attention to what they teach you.
The toolkit is refreshingly small. Make a PACT instead of a goal. Treat the result as data, not a verdict. Reflect every week with Plus Minus Next. Work in the open so your curiosity compounds. And keep a trail of what you read and notice, because that trail is the evidence every experiment depends on.
Start with one. Write a single PACT today, something like "I will read and highlight one thing I'm curious about every day for two weeks," and run it with Glasp as your lab notebook. In two weeks you won't have hit a goal. You'll have something better: findings about what you actually care about, and the beginning of a practice you can keep for life. Then read the book, and design your next experiment.